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Zonie63 -> RE: grieving teen humiliated by parents (3/23/2013 5:25:19 AM)
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The article doesn't say what she actually did to deserve this particular punishment, just that "she became defiant."
Regardless of whatever problems may be going on in that family, I'm somewhat bemused that they would feel the need to involve the public.
This part of the article also struck me as interesting:
quote:
Now, however, the parents are feeling a little public humiliation of their own.
“I wasn’t even thinking about what the public was going to think,” her mom, Renee Nickell told the Northwest Florida Daily News.
So, they concoct a public punishment, yet didn't seem to know or care how it might impact on the public? Personally, I would be somewhat embarrassed if I came across a family with a teenager carrying a sign.
How does a teenager become "self-entitled" in the first place? This is something that always floored me about the so-called "tough love" approach, since it makes it seem like the kid was an angel for the first 12 years, and then suddenly she wakes up one morning and turns into a monster? I'm not buying it. Something else seems wrong with this picture.
I was a bit of a defiant kid at that age, so maybe this story hits close to home for me.
This part of the article also struck me:
quote:
They didn't forbid her from attending activities at church, they said, because the activities were supposed to reinforce the Christian values they were struggling to instill in her. They didn't confiscate her electronics because neither she nor their two younger children, ages 2 and 6, have any, they said.
They also said that the idea for this punishment came from a Christian counselor. That's kind of a red flag in my eyes. I wonder if there's been some religious indoctrination in this family, with the child getting to an age of better understanding and resistance, and they view it as "she became defiant."
I can identify with some of that, but my religious indoctrination was somewhat different because my mother kept changing religions every year or two. It got a bit ridiculous, and from a child's viewpoint, it creates a great deal more internal confusion which is difficult to process at an early age.
I also can identify with going to "family counseling." It wasn't strictly a "Christian counselor," but I do recall feeling somewhat resentful that my parents found it necessary to bring in "outside help." Instead of just talking to me like a normal human being, they had to create far more drama than was really necessary. It also undermined their authority over me, since it made it look like they didn't know what they were doing and had to call in some sort of "expert" (who turned out to be equally clueless).
That's another thing about this situation, since the parents said "We just got to the point where we just didn't know what else to do." So, this is what they come up with, because they don't know what they're doing and couldn't think of anything else to do?
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