Comment Re:What else can you do? (Score 1) 1246
"That was a cute, yet lengthy rant,"
thanks! i've had lots of practice.
"What's happened in the past is not relevant."
relevant to what? i was addressing the root of the problem.
"Think kids with mental disabilities."
obviously, i was talking about shitheads and not disabled kids.
"Taking away a child's privileges until age 47 is not a viable answer."
this is just pedantic. if you're going to take all my hyperbole literally, this rant will be no fun at all!
obviously, the age of 47 was not meant to be taken seriously. the idea of taking away a teenager's privileges was.
"So if I child ever says, "I hate school," that tells you nothing about the child, but everything about the school. It means the school has systematically crushed the child's natural curiosity."
let's parse this sentence. if a child EVER, ever ONCE, from the first day of kindergarten to graduation day of high school, ever ONCE utters the words "i hate school", it means that the ENTIRE school, from the principal to the janitor, engaged in a specific pattern of behavior designed to serve no other purpose than to crush your kid's spirit.
this is so ridiculous i honestly don't know where to start.
you apparently had a very abnormal childhood. as somebody who didn't, i can assure you that it is perfectly natural for children to hate school, brushing their teeth, going to bed on time, eating vegetables, and any number of other inconvenient things that make their lives a better place anyway. at some point, i hated every school i ever went to, including a montessori school where i could do whatever i wanted and got no grades. at some point, i also loved every school i ever went to. kids have good days and bad days, and feel them very intensely. your willingness to engage in a wholesale and blanket indictment of an entire school based on a child EVER ONCE saying "i hate school" says much more about your prejudices and quality of judgment than it does about the school.
are your children homeschooled, by any chance?
"What I'm reading here is that you propose to have a heart to heart with the student in the article"
hmm, i must have blacked out when i was writing that, let me go back and... oh, wait, turns out i never actually said that at all.
"I think you'll find that the above will not change the nature of a child like the one in the police report."
no, i suspect proper parental discipline is the only thing that could accomplish that.
"Dropping out of high school is legal in all 50 states"
wow, that's funny that i knew so many kids in high school who were cited (and sometimes arrested) for truancy. so i'm afraid i'm gonna have to call bullshit on that and ask for a cite.
"Regarding "working my butt off in high school for a teacher that I found tedious and dull", I have to say that I never did that. But that is only because I did not work my butt off in high school at all. In fact, I slept through many of my classes--especially if the teacher was uninspiring."
wow, so the moral of your story is "do whatever you want, work when you want to work, slack off when you want to slack off, and there will be no consquences." you must be thrilled to be such a wonderful and responsible role model, demonstrating behavior for your children that's sure to work just great for them in college and the job market. if it feels good, do it. what could possibly go wrong?
"I absolutely had teachers who inspired me in high school."
of course you did. so did i. so does everybody. every school has some good and some bad teachers. you enjoy the good ones and do what you have to do to pass the bad ones.
but there's no teacher that's so good that the only kids who fuck off in their class are those with mental illnesses. there's no teacher that can make a kid learn who just doesn't want to. teachers can't make kids do anything. only parents can. which bring us to our conclusion.
"All this being said, I don't think we are any closer to an answer regarding what techniques should be used to modify the behavior of a girl like the one in the police report."
well, obviously, i don't know the girl in question, so this is all speculative on my part.
first let me say that, at her age, she's likely learned so much bad behavior already that it may be too late to turn her around.
but, were her parents to try, here's a few things that i'd recommend. firstly, divorced or not, they have to present a unified front. kids can't be allowed to turn parents against each other and manipulate them. one very hard thing about being a parent is that you have to show your child that there are boundaries, and that there are consequences for violating them. if you don't teach your kid that they are not in charge then you better believe the world will, and the world will be much more likely to break them permanently in the process.
secondly, there need to be clearly established and predetermined consequences for misbehavior in school. get a D or a C, get detention or suspension, get a call from a teacher, grounded. period. no phone, no TV, no computer (except for schoolwork), no friends. in a particularly harsh case, no extracirricular activites.
if i were this girl's parent, after this incident, she'd be grounded until the start of the next school year. no privileges whatsoever. she could do housework, she could study for next year's classes over the summer, she could volunteer to feed homeless people, but she would basically live the life of a nun until she earned the right to be treated otherwise.
and after missing out on an entire summer of being a teenager, i guarantee you that she'd think twice before shoving a cell phone into her ass crack ever again.
harsh? sure. but not nearly as harsh as jail. which is what happens when you get arrested in Real Life.
once she'd straightened out, i'd be thrilled to be able to reward her positive improvement with anything i could. in my experience kids usually respond better to the carrot than the stick anyway.
so there's my proposed solution. given this girl's age, her parents' divorce and her mother's co-conspiratorial behavior, i'd be very surprised if it - or anything else - worked. i fully expect this girl to have a long, hard, unrewarding life of conflict with authority ahead of her.