Most ‘tough love’ parenting doesn’t lead to an arrest. That’s what makes this one different.
It can be frustrating trying to get a kid to respect the basic rules of the home. Homework. Chores. Attitude.
And we have more than a few examples of where FAILING to discipline kids leads to absolute disaster.
Kids blowing themselves to kingdom come live on social media because they’re goofing off with a handgun, for example.
Parenting isn’t getting any easier.
But sometimes, the methods a parent uses to try to correct wayward behavior goes too far.
An Arizona man allegedly tasered his 11-year-old son as a form of punishment for not finishing his homework.
[Ingram], was arrested and charged with child abuse after staff from his son’s school in Goodyear, just outside Phoenix, reported the alleged abuse last week.DailyMail
When you hear the kid’s side of the story, it sounds really horrific:
The boy told police that Ingram had allegedly used the Taser on his shoulder, arm, and legs several times over the past year when he didn’t do his homework, ABC15 reports.
He claimed his father told him ‘it was like a toy and wasn’t charged all the way’.
The child told police he chose the Taser as a form of punishment when his father would give him a choice between the stun gun or being ‘whooped’ 40 times with a metal cane.
Police later located the Taser gun in Ingram’s home. —DailyMail
‘Like a toy’. That sounds pretty cold, right? Context matters, though.
When the father gave his side of the story he admitted using the phrase ‘like a toy’. But he actually said it’s like a toy ‘compared to what the police use’. That DOES change things.
It shifts the exchange from a perhaps sadistic mockery (as you might have assumed it to be without this context) to a concerned warning about the dangers waiting for his son in real life.
It’s not easy being a parent these days. Especially when the ditches kids can fall into these days are FAR more catastrophic than the ones we saw twenty years ago.
Admittedly, it is easy to sit in judgment when you live in a safe neighborhood. When you don’t actually believe your kid is at risk of falling in with ‘that’ crowd.
But would it still be as ‘cut and dried’ when you think it’s a real threat lying in wait for YOUR kid? It’s harder than you would think to imagine yourself in that position, isn’t it?
Did this father go too far in using the ‘scared straight’ method? Or to you think he was he justified considering the Greater harm he was trying to keep his son from falling into?
Did this dad go too far?
