Facebook Parenting

[Hakaider]

A spoiled teenage daughter recently made a very public post on Facebook, that not only criticizes her parents, but she thought that it was cool to cuss at her parents publicly. (She tried to block her parents from seeing it, but her father was able to find out about her public post.) She also threatened in her post, that she won't take care of her parents when they get old, and she will abandon them.

In response, her father, Tommy Jordan gave a 8:23 minute video rebuttal to his spoiled teen's complaints & cussing, and added the fact that he paid for all her computer expenses, because she refused to work & did not want to do simple chores. At the end of the video, Tommy Jordan, (Along with his wife's approval) shoots her daughter's laptop computer with a .45 pistol in an open field, and stated that her daughter will now have to work, if she wants to get her own computer. (This video has since gone viral in the internet.)

After seeing the video, some parents have commented that they would have ran over the lap computer with their car, while some teens commented that the daughter should have been allowed to swear & curse at her parents publicly at will.

Here's the YouTube rebuttal video that Tommy Jordan had made:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... l1ujzRidmU

[n11pilot]

Well played, sir!

I think we Republicans may have just found our candidate.

[Major Eaton]

My only caveat is why was she allowed to get spoiled in the first place.

[Henri Defense]

My only caveat is why was she allowed to get spoiled in the first place.

Exactly.




Henri

[Indy Parise]

So, I've just started a blog and made a post about just this.

http://scotchandpomade.blogspot.com/2012/02/heres-lookin-at-you-kid.html

[Doug Palumbo]

I'm under the impression that this has been a long time coming. Better late than never on the patents part I guess. What a waste of perfectly good ammo. Some C-4 squished between the keys or running over it with a good ol' Sherman would have worked well too.

[AeroDillo]

I'm not sure what to say to this. On the one hand, yeah...great. Dude's standing up to his kid. Good for him - though frankly, it's probably a little late to be applying discipline. Contrary to popular belief, problem kids don't just come out of nowhere.

On the other hand, this strikes me as just the far side of psychotic.

Also (and I've heard this from another friend, so it's not just me) look at the body language there. He's upset, granted. But it looks like he's fixing to administer a beating to said kid. Not a discipline. A beating. Much like bad children, this sort of thing doesn't surface at once. You ask me - and I know no one did - the man has anger issues. This is not the result of a single facebook post and something 'stupid and childish' a few months back. This rings like a deep-seated resentment that's finally been allowed an outlet.

I'm glad he isn't my father. For that matter, I'm glad we don't live in the same zipcode. And frankly, if this WAS my father, I'd be looking to run away at first opportunity. Or steal that shiny .45 and make some relationship adjustments. Because no matter how whiny and intolerable a teenager is, I have dire reservations about bringing the threat of deadly force into the equation. And that's exactly what this man did. You DO NOT under any circumstance use it so carelessly to establish relationship dominance. And if you do...congrats. You've failed as a parent. Utterly and completely.

In sum...man managed to out-teen a teenager for dramatics. I'd call this a failure on all conceivable fronts. Thing is...I'm not sure this man should be left unattended with guns OR children.

But I'm just a guy with no kids. So there's that.

[Hakaider]

AeroDillo:

I would say that before you judge him, I would strongly suggest reading what he had to say in his own words on Facebook after he made the video, and what his daughter said afterwards after she saw the video.

Here's some excerpts from what he had said on his Facebook:

I'm ok with you picking on me. And I'm ok with you picking on my posts, but I'm NOT ok with you picking on my kid. Yes, I've already dealt with the local police, who by the way said "From our entire department, Kudo's to you, sir."

Now I'm letting my daughter have her interview with Social Services, so they too can be satisfied that I don't yell at her, beat her, traumatize her, lock her in a closet without food, deprive her of basic human rights, make her cut the grass with scizzors, hunt for her meals in the wild with only a spork, or otherwise fail to provide for my daughter. She's great. She's strong. And apparently she's handling it better than some of you are.
And yeah, Jessica-Mason Everett, I'm talking to you.

Media Response to Anita Li, from the Toronto Star

Since you took the time to email us with your requests like we asked, I’ll take the time to give you an honest follow-up response. You’ll have to forgive me for doing so publicly though; again I want to be sure my words are portrayed the way I actually say them, not cut together to make entirely different points.

Your questions were:
Q: Why did you decide to reprimand your daughter over a public medium like YouTube?

A: Well, I actually just had to load the video file itself on YouTube because it’s a better upload process than Facebook, but the intended audience was her Facebook friends and the parents of those friends who saw her post and would naturally assume we let our children get away with something like that. So, to answer “Why did you reprimand her over a public medium like Facebook” my answer is this: Because that’s how I was raised. If I did something embarrassing to my parents in public (such as a grocery store) I got my tail tore up right there in front of God and everyone, right there in the store. I put the reprisal in exactly the same medium she did, in the exact same manner. Her post went out to about 452 people. Mine went out to about 550 people… originally. I had no idea it would become what it did.

Q: How effective do you think your punishment was (i.e. shooting her laptop and reading her letter online)?

A: I think it was very effective on one front. She apparently didn’t remember being talked to about previous incidents, nor did she seem to remember the effects of having it taken away, nor did the eventual long-term grounding seem to get through to her. I think she thought “Well, I’ll just wait it out and I’ll get it back eventually.” Her behavior corrected for a short time, and then it went back to what it was before and worse. This time, she won’t ever forget and it’ll be a long time before she has an opportunity to post on Facebook again. I feel pretty certain that every day from then to now, whenever one of her friends mentions Facebook, she’ll remember it and wish she hadn’t done what she did.

The second lesson I want her to learn is the value of a dollar. We don’t give her everything she asks for, but you can all imagine what it’s like being the only grandchild and the first child. Presents and money come from all sides when you’re young. Most of the things she has that are “cool” were bought or gifted that way. She’s always asked for very few things, but they’re always high-dollar things (iPod, laptop, smartphone, etc). Eventually she gets given enough money to get them. That’s not learning the value of a dollar. Its knowing how to save money, which I greatly applaud in her, but it’s not enough. She wants a digital SLR camera. She wants a 22 rifle like mine. She wants a car. She wants a smart phone with a data package and unlimited texting. (I have to hear about that one every week!)

She thinks all these things are supposed to be given to her because she’s got parents. It’s not going to happen, at least not in our house. She can get a job and work for money just like everyone else. Then she can spend it on anything she wants (within reason). If she wants to work for two months to save enough to purchase a $1000 SLR camera with an $800 lens, then I can guarantee she’ll NEVER leave it outside at night. She’ll be careful when she puts it away and carries it around. She’ll value it much more because she worked so hard to get it. Instead, with the current way things have been given to her, she's on about her fourth phone and just expects another one when she breaks the one she has. She's not sorry about breaking it, or losing it, she's sorry only because she can't text her friends. I firmly believe she'll be a LOT more careful when she has to buy her own $299.00 Motorola Razr smartphone.

Until then, she can do chores, and lots and lots of them, so the people who ARE feeding her, clothing her, paying for all her school trips, paying for her musical instruments, can have some time to relax after they finish working to support her and the rest of the family. She can either work to make money on her own, or she will do chores to contribute around the house. She’s known all along that all she has to do is get a job and a lot of these chores will go away. But if you’re too lazy to work even to get things you want for yourself, I’m certainly not going to let you sit idly on your rear-end with your face glued to both the TV and Facebook for 5 to 6 hours per night. Those days are over.

Q: How did your daughter respond to the video and to what happened to her laptop?

A: She responded to the video with “I can’t believe you shot my computer!” That was the first thing she said when she found out about it. Then we sat and we talked for quite a long while on the back patio about the things she did, the things I did in response, etc.

Later after she’d had time to process it and I’d had time to process her thoughts on the matters we discussed, we were back to a semi-truce… you know that uncomfortable moment when you’re in the kitchen with your child after an argument and you’re both waiting to see which one’s going to cave in and resume normal conversation first? Yeah, that moment. I told her about the video response and about it going viral and about the consequences it could have on our family for the next couple of days and asked if she wanted to see some of the comments people had made. After the first few hundred comments, she was astounded with the responses.

People were telling her she was going to commit suicide, commit a gun-related crime, become a drug addict, drop out of school, get pregnant on purpose, and become a stripper because she’s too emotionally damaged now to be a productive member of society. Apparently stripper was the job-choice of most of the commenters. Her response was “Dude… it’s only a computer. I mean, yeah I’m mad but pfft.” She actually asked me to post a comment on one of the threads (and I did) asking what other job fields the victims of laptop-homicide were eligible for because she wasn’t too keen on the stripping thing.

We agreed we learned two collective lessons from this so far:

First: As her father, I’ll definitely do what I say I will, both positive and negative and she can depend on that. She no longer has any doubt about that.

Second: We have always told her what you put online can affect you forever. Years later a single Facebook/MySpace/Twitter comment can affect her eligibility for a good job and can even get her fired from a job she already has. She’s seen first-hand through this video the worst possible scenario that can happen. One post, made by her Dad, will probably follow him the rest of his life; just like those mean things she said on Facebook will stick with the people her words hurt for a long time to come. Once you put it out there, you can’t take it back, so think carefully before you use the internet to broadcast your thoughts and feelings.

You can read more of his views here:

https://www.facebook.com/tommyjordaniii

[AeroDillo]

I stick by my earlier post.

Wouldn't want him for a neighbor. Damn sure wouldn't want him for a blood relation.

[Hakaider]

I stick by my earlier post.

Wouldn't want him for a neighbor. Damn sure wouldn't want him for a blood relation.

I would love to have him as a neighbor, but to each his own.

[Blackthorn]

But I'm just a guy with no kids. So there's that.

Yup. There's that.

[Henri Defense]

From the sounds of it, it looks like this is working out for the father...supposedly.

However, I'm on Aero's side here. Had my father done this, that would've been the final nail in the coffin of alienation. But I don't know the kind of relationship the daughter and this father have...so I can't say for certain. I'm merely going off my life experience, and not afraid to admit that. My father and I still have a strained relationship. Sure he may have provide the necessities for me, like food and house but otherwise he wasn't there in the ways I needed him to be. He did the VERY bare minimum and complained about doing it...

So from that perception, I don't see how this guy's tactic could be effective.

But hey, each to their own I guess.



Henri

[n11pilot]

For all I know this guy could be the worst parent on the planet and his child's behavior is solely his fault. I tend to believe that there is more to this than we can perceive from the video. I have seen really good parents raise really awful kids, I don't know why it turned out this way but it did.

Now if you believe what he read as an excerpt from his daughter's Facebook page the child is spoiled and has reached the point of assumed entitlement. This could be the father's fault or it could be the result of current popular culture or peer observation and mimicry. The cause at this point is not the issue the daughter's behavior and attitude is.

The daughter using the best technology available to her sought to publicly denigrate and demean not only her father but her mother and a lady who is so lowly as to actually work for something she has received. The daughter also using this technology tried to do this in a cowardly way so that her father would be the brunt of ridicule and not be aware. Her actions showed several things: 1. She feels entitled to everything and is willing to work for very little. 2. The technology and her Facebook friends mean much more to her than her family in general and her father in particular. 3. The technology has given her the assumption of intellectual superiority over her father and family and it seems most everyone else.

The father's actions make sense from a PSYOP point of view if not that of a contender for parent of the year. 1. It removed the revered technology from her control in an irretrievable way and showed it to be both fragile and subject to outside forces. Face it MR Spock and Scotty together couldn't make that puppy work again. 2. It demonstrated that the girl was not as smart as she thought and that her father was not nearly as stupid as she believed. 3. It proved that there is a price to be paid for the attempted denigration of her parents and their values. 4. It seems to indicate that the free ride is over.

Now would I do this? Probably not, I would have sold the laptop and bought time at the local indoor range. The thing is I too am a childless bachelor so my opinion is really pretty much academic and not really worth much.

[Hakaider]

My father and I still have a strained relationship. Sure he may have provide the necessities for me, like food and house but otherwise he wasn't there in the ways I needed him to be. He did the VERY bare minimum and complained about doing it...

No offense is intended, but I think the big difference here though, is that you weren't spoiled, you had to struggle through life & you learned to be a good man, but this man's daughter obviously was spoiled, and did not learn her lesson. Before she lashed out and publicly ridiculed her parents to more than 500 people, he had just spent 6 hours upgrading his daughter's computer, and spent $130.00 for the computer components. I wouldn't call the actions of that father, "Bare minimum".

It was obvious that he had given his daughter what she wanted, and even tolerated her laziness, to the point that he hired a person to clean the house. The daughter was already complaining that she had to make a simple cup of coffee for her parents. (And getting a cup of coffee for your parents is so hard & harsh, that it's worth complaining about?)

It wasn't also the first time that she did this. The previous time that it happened, she was "grounded" for a few months, but apparently it didn't work, because his daughter didn't take it seriously & just thought that she would "wait it out". (He also had made it very clear that he haven't beaten her, or starved her in anyway when she was "grounded".)

After he did this video, she had learned her lesson, and you can be sure that she would take it seriously this time. What also works for his daughter, may not work for you. When it comes to parental discipline, there is no "one size fits all".

Also, what would the real difference be if he used a hammer, a sledgehammer, he stomps on the laptop or he runs it over the laptop with the car, instead of using a gun? (So it's "psychotic" if you use a gun to kill a computer, but it's not, when you use a car, or a sledgehammer?) The point was being made here that this action of cussing & threatening at one's very own parents to over 500 people publicly was simply unacceptable. (Especially after this was the 2nd or 3rd offense.) I can see if he had beaten her, and that would have been very wrong. But he never laid a single hand on her throughout the whole ordeal.

Incidentally, the liberal press media have been going after him big time ever since the video went viral, and they are all ready to crucify this man in the press & media. You can expect him to get to sued big time by someone connected to the media sooner or later. (You can bet that they will try to have him arrested.) Some of the psychologists from these media outlets are already saying that "grounding" her was already too harsh for her, and she should have been allowed to "express her feelings" in public. (Even if it means cursing & threatening her parents.) Some of these psychologists believe that any form of discipline (Even "time outs") is detrimental to a child & it will "stifle" a child's creativity, and they should be allowed to express anything, and do whatever they want.

The man also mentions that the video was originally intended for his daughter's friends only, but the internet being the internet, the video spread like wildfire, and it was reported in the media within a matter of days. That's the power of the internet. This means that when things go viral, thousands and even millions or people will see it within days or even hours.

Before you judge this man, you have to ask yourself, what would you do, if you had a teenage son or daughter who publicly ridicules & cusses at you & your spouse to more than 500 people? And threatens to abandon you when you get old? And this is the 2nd or 3rd offense, after you had "grounded" them? How many times would you tolerate their offenses? 10-20 times? And you aren't allowed to spank them? And if you yell at them, or hurt their feelings in anyway, some of those psychologists would say that you are "stifling" their creativity?

What would you do?

Also keep in mind, some of the people who work for Child Protective Services today does not even allow for the parent to "spank" their child even once.

[AeroDillo]

I had, with some difficulty, written a response to this. Having slept on it I've decided it's not worth posting. I doubt I'll change any minds. I know you guys won't change mine. You've heard the short version. I'll leave it at that.

We part on opinion. But we part nonetheless.

My last two cents on the matter.