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Which is worse - the rioting or this act by the mother?
In a vacuum, I think what the mother did was awesome. This is not a normal situation in which to punish a child, regardless of age. What is happening is a dangerous and deadly assault on a city, and his son was in the middle of it, whether by choice or not.
Either way, she walked into the heat to do what she did.
Enough with the politically correct BS, and how this isn't good parenting. Look at the situation at hand, for which I believe for most of us has no comparison to our own parenting through a situation. This is intense stuff in Baltimore - it is not a joke at all. It's like a gang drive-by multiplied by whatever high number you pick. I never dealt with something like this in bringing up my two kids.
She reacted. So go ahead and say over reaction. I think you're wrong. She's a mother who took action, where most others didn't either out of fear or indifference. I give her a gold star.
When I watched the video, I didn't see "mom of the year." I saw a woman who's reached her peak level of stress as she doesn't want her son participating in an activity that could get him killed.
I'm not the most pro-corporal punishment person in the world, but I get it.
I actually feel bad for her as she looks so desperate to keep her son from doing something he may regret that she's resorted to something that some people might see as barbaric. She looks like a sad woman who's lost control and this is all she has. Her son may be too naive/young to realize it, but she clearly loves him with all her heart and she simply doesn't want him to get killed.
I totally agree with lowonluck and marlow. He still walked away...so she didn't have an impact. And she is smacking him...great parenting. Not. I bet lots of great mothers talked reason into their children and kept them home.
Great parents woudl never have their kids there in the first place.
I don't understand why this woman is getting so much praise for slapping her almost adult son around in public. In my book that does not qualify as stellar parenting.
I agree...but I'm too afraid to comment that elsewhere for fear of attack..
At the risk of being accused of being prejudiced, I will say that it is my observation that African American parents are more likely to use physical punishment on their children than white parents are. If physical punishment worked so well, I doubt that the percentage of African American young people who are in trouble with the law would be so high. I think, often, physical punishment is a manifestation of angry, frustrated people who cannot control events around them. Its often used by powerless people against those who are even more powerless--their children. The other factor is that culture (the way we were raised) exerts a powerful influence on how we raise our own kids. This is true whether our cultural values were helpful or not.
The back story on this mother is that she was a single mother raising six children in inner city Baltimore on her own.
The only equation I've seen that makes sense over time to me is this:
Violent societies seem to need violent punishments.
Non-violent, or less violent societies tend not to need violent punishments.
At the risk of being accused of being prejudiced, I will say that it is my observation that African American parents are more likely to use physical punishment on their children than white parents are. If physical punishment worked so well, I doubt that the percentage of African American young people who are in trouble with the law would be so high. I think, often, physical punishment is a manifestation of angry, frustrated people who cannot control events around them. Its often used by powerless people against those who are even more powerless--their children. The other factor is that culture (the way we were raised) exerts a powerful influence on how we raise our own kids. This is true whether our cultural values were helpful or not.
The back story on this mother is that she was a single mother raising six children in inner city Baltimore on her own.
The only equation I've seen that makes sense over time to me is this:
Violent societies seem to need violent punishments.
Non-violent, or less violent societies tend not to need violent punishments.
Asian parents too use corporal punishment. And Asian kids are probably the most respectful of their parents.
Smacking is not an issue. Smacking and then being indifferent towards a child is the issue.
The only thing the d.s. understands is a good smack.
The mother did the right thing.
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