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As a parent myself (and a grandparent too), I can only offer up my viewpoint on this.
When I brought up my kids, EVERY time a report card came home, I would look at it as any parent would. As a whole my kids did well, but at times grades weren't great (never failed though). I told my kids the same thing every time -
Take the report card and go look at yourself in the mirror and ask how you did. If a C was your best in truth to yourself, then to me it might as well be an A. I never thought life revolved around grades.
That being said though, you also have to parent by teaching. If playing video games is taking away from studying which has a direct effect on grades, then you need to step in. We can argue about right or wrong in destroying an xbox. To each his own with regards to money. In my case I would never destroy something of value to prove a point or teach a lesson - I would take it away plain and simple if I felt it was the correct thing to do. So in seeing this, I personally feel it was a stupid thing to do.
I watched the video and the father sounds like a typical ghetto, uneducated (ironic, isn't it?) Hispanic father who knows nothing but machismo. Hispanic parents don't play around, but regardless this father has a ghetto mentality - the profanity, posting the video online (the video was first posted on WorldstarHipHop which is the epitome of online ratchetness), his general attitude, how low the kid's shorts were...
The video made me uncomfortable. Why not lock the Xbox up, sell it, or donate it? Does making the kid destroy their own belongings somehow make him more mature? I somehow doubt it.
Again, it's less about 'teaching' a kid a lesson, and more about the narcissistic 'parent' filming it.
Nothing is out of bounds these days for people wanting their 15 minutes of fame online to stroke their own egos and need for attention (Looook at me, look how 'brave' and 'courageous' I am for teaching my kid a lesson).
Good luck to this kid - the parenting he is receiving is atrocious.
How about not having an X-Box in the first place? I have three kids, all in high school. We've never had a video game console here. The result? Not all that much interest in video games. Oh, our younger son liked them for awhile. And he got his fix at his cousin's house. But it wasn't at our house, it wasn't a distraction present on an everyday basis, and it was thus never a problem.
How about not dealing with the problem through the violent destruction of the device? Did you make him throw the television on which he played the games out the upstairs window onto the sidewalk below? If he gets a careless driving citation, will you make him roll his car off a cliff?
How about not going through a combination of humiliation and self-aggrandizement by videoing and posting this silly exercise of yours?
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