Mom makes daughter stand on street with sign

[AnnInLa]

Mom Makes Teen Stand on Street With Sign
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Nov 16, 9:42 PM (ET)

By SEAN MURPHY

(AP) Tasha Henderson, right, and her daughter, Coretha, left, pose for a photo outside their home in...
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http://apnews.myway.com//article/20051117/D8DTUSBG3.html

EDMOND, Okla. (AP) - Tasha Henderson got tired of her 14-year-old daughter's poor grades, her chronic lateness to class and her talking back to her teachers, so she decided to teach the girl a lesson.

She made Coretha stand at a busy Oklahoma City intersection Nov. 4 with a cardboard sign that read: "I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food."

"This may not work. I'm not a professional," said Henderson, a 34-year-old mother of three. "But I felt I owed it to my child to at least try."

In fact, Henderson has seen a turnaround in her daughter's behavior in the past week and a half. But the punishment prompted letters and calls to talk radio from people either praising the woman or blasting her for publicly humiliating her daughter.

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((I have a son who was just like that girl...nothing worked with him, and I mean nothing. Do you agree with this mother's actions?)

[Clark2008]

1. Actually, yes.

I expected something else, but I think this may work.

If the woman's tried everything within her means - and the girl's still just lazy - this might be the cure.

[notadmblnd]

29. Our children want our attention

and if they don't get it for being good, they'll get it by being bad.

When my step son was 9 he was a little hellion and his mother (who had punished the father by cutting off all contact with his child) called his father to step in and do something. The boy was over one weekend and I asked him why he was so bad? His exact words to me were "it's no fun being good all the time."

Seems mom was busy working and when she wasn't working she was out looking for a man to take care of her. He was home alone and was getting no attention.

I think the mother should be standing right next to her daughter at the busy intersection with sign of her own displaying her failings as a parent.

[EFerrari]

2. Children do not fail on purpose. This parent needs to find out

what is going on with her daughter.

One of my sons behaved in this way. He had a learning disability but he was so smart, no one suspected it. :shrug:

Once I had him tested and got him help, he did a 180.

I remember being so frustrated with him, I'd grind teeth like Cheney. :)

[vonslagle]

3. It would serve her mother right

If the girl came home that night with a couple hundred bucks!

[JHB]

4. If the reporting is accurate, yes, if nothing else worked.

n/t

[xchrom]

5. lol -- if nothing else -- this is funny.

i am not commenting on whether i think it was a good or bad idea.

[ticapnews]

6. Reminds me of yesterday's "Close to Home" comic

[Mountainman]

7. Humiliating your children in public is a stupid heartless thing to do.

My dad use to humiliate my older brother in front of people because his grades were poor and he was not good at sports. I know it left deep scars and my brother never really succeeded in life. He became a recluse and anti social. He was good at music and played 3 instruments and was in several bands but dropped out of the scene.

[MADem]

10. I don't go for humiliation, either

I've never had to use it as a tactic.

[HughBeaumont]

20. Almost every teacher I had took GREAT pleasure in doing this

. . . to the extent of telling the whole class I was failing. This is pretty much the reason I have such an aversion to school and disdain for classrooms to this day.

[wakeme2008]

8. I like it

:)

[EFerrari]

9. Humiliation is not a teaching tool.

[laylah]

11. Personally,

I think Mom was spot on. When my youngest was 14, she would constantly skip class or was chronically tardy. Finally, fed up and more than pissed off, I put on my pj's (flannel...looked like a plaid potato sack), put curlers in my hair (I hadn't used curlers since highschool), cold cream on my face, and dragged her happy ass into class. She was never tardy again, nor did she skip classes. Somethimes, a Mom's gotta do what a Mom's gotta do :woohoo:

Jenn

[fasttense]

14. Laylah I like your way better

It just put your daughter in an uncomfortable position. It wasn't her in the rollers and cold cream.

But a close loved one tells me of a time his step mother made him put his dirty underwear on his head and stand outside on their front lawn as cars passed by for school because he wet his bed. There is a fine line between humiliation for revenge and teaching a lesson.

[Ex Lion Tamer]

24. BRILLIANT!!!

That's going into my arsenal (well, slightly adjusted because I'm a male). My kids aren't that age yet, but it's not far away . . .

[Moosepoop]

26. lol! I did much the same thing!

My oldest daughter got caught skipping school in 6th grade, and I told her (along with grounding her) that if she ever did it again I would take the day off work and accompany her to school for the day. Shortly thereafter, she skipped again. The gauntlet was thrown down.

So, I arranged to miss work the next day, and called her homeroom teacher at home to make sure that my presence would be OK with the school. The teacher was delighted, and alerted the other teachers to the fact that I'd be there. All of the teachers were very receptive to the idea.

The next day, I accompanied my daughter to school. I sat with her in all her classes, I walked through the halls with her, I sat at her lunch table with her and her friends, and even went into the bathroom with her (but not the same stall). I threatened to hold her hand while going from class to class, but didn't do it as she didn't give me any trouble throughout the day.

I also let her know that the next time she skipped school, I would do the same thing all over again, but in pj's, robe, and slippers, with curlers in my hair and a mud mask on my face. She was mortified at the thought. And she knew now that I would do what I said.

Even better, after hearing of the pj threat, one of her teachers said that though that sounded good, he really liked the idea of "mother/daughter" dress-alike day!! I laughed and started imagining out loud how that could work... daughter and I with matching side pigtails, plaid bell-bottom pants, sandals with socks... oh, the horror on that girl's face!!!

Skipping problem solved. :)

[neebob]

12. Sure, that's a swell idea

Put a 14-year-old girl on a street corner with a sign offering to provide services to strangers. Be sure to stand there with her, just to make sure you catch a glimpse of anyone who might fixate on her (in case you need to identify that person in a lineup at some point). Hopefully no one will stop and offer her a job, giving you the opportunity to prove you're not serious about anything but the humiliation. You are, after all, most concerned about whether people think you're a responsible parent, which is the real reason you're standing there. You'll need to defend yourself after satisfying your own pathological need for attention in this manner.

First, though, take away basketball and track and anything else she loves and probably does well in. Whatever you do, don't admit that your wingnutty bullshit controlling parenting might have anything to do with all those dreadful, nasty, awful Cs and Ds and that hideous, horrible, incredibly shocking talking back to the teacher. It's not because she doesn't have any control over anything else in her life or because she doesn't get any attention from you that feels good.

[fasttense]

15. Good point neebob. n/t

[HeeBGBz]

17. A mother like that would make anyone act up

I never could bring myself to humiliate my children in order to get them to do anything.

I never could understand how people deliberately use public humiliation as a learning tool. They learn alright, just probably not the right lessons.

[neebob]

27. I had a dad like that

although I doubt he'd have done much more than be omnipresent and shout his head off and revoke my so-called privileges and make a lot of dire threats and guilt-trip me into oblivion with hokey religious garbage like the Lord made me sick to teach me the lesson that I couldn't just do whatever I wanted (as if I didn't already know that). I now have a 16-year-old dream kid to prove that doing the exact opposite of what my dad did works really well, despite past worries that I'd gone too far in the other direction, trying not to be like him. I'm still waiting for my chickens that he always said would come home to roost.

[Ian David]

22. I see where this comes from... Deuteronomy 21:18-21

21:18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

21:19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;

21:20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.

21:21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

More:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/dt/21.html#18

[MarianJack]

13. I'm Not Crazy About It,...

...but I can understand the frustrations of the Mother.

Our son is having behavior problems in school that threaten others' ability to see him as the wonderful and smart little boy he is.

We're working on it, but there has been more than one night that ChicaAzul and I have been awake trying to think of what else to do!

[BiggJawn]

16. Better than beating her or pouring brine down her throat...

..To drive out the "demons" or whatever.

I'm sure somebody in her city will have her charged with cruelty and neglect for ruining her daughter's precious "self esteem"...

I never made my daughter stand out on the corner, I just drove her through the really poor sections of town. Including where *I* used to live.

You see, I was a lazy student, too.

[Horse with no Name]

18. Tough one

I have a difficult child.
She was difficult when she was 2 and she is still difficult when she is 20.
She simply will not do what you ask her no matter how nicely you ask and in fact will do what she can to flaunt that she hasn't or won't do it.
My parental responsibilities have been to make sure she succeeds and it has been tough.
We are almost there, she graduates from college next year.
It has not been easy on any of our family. For example, she got pregnant her senior year. We weren't sure she would end up graduating. She missed all the deadlines for purchasing announcements, etc.
I ended up driving to Balfour Company in the 11th hour to purchase her memory book and cap and gown when it became apparent she would graduate. It was too late to get announcements, so I spent 12-13 hours designing and printing announcements at home (which isn't cheap either).
When all was said and done, she had everything she needed. Mission accomplished. I never thought anything else about it.
My youngest daughter is a senior this year. We were ordering announcements and cap and gown a few days ago. We were treated to a fit of verbal rage and abuse and tantrum because SHE didn't get to order announcements and stuff (never mind she wasn't in school when they did this).
I wouldn't even begin to judge another who has a difficult child. I haven't walked in their shoes. (we've tried counseling and behavior modification, etc)
I think that what alot of people don't realize is that there are some children out there that are not reachable by traditional methods.
I've done everything in the world and have not been able to reach my child and everyone in our family suffers on a daily basis for it and has for many years.
I think this mother should be given credit for trying alternative methods however, I don't think shame and humiliation would be effective on all children, but it just might be on this one.
Personally I would rather read about this than another child being found abused or locked in a closet or starved.

[Ilsa]

19. I think sometimes teens can't think abstractly enough

about their futures, so a taste of the life ahead awakens them. But I wish it was something less humiliating. Perhaps making the sign would be enough for some teens.

A story on NPR:
This young woman told her father she was going to drop out of high school. Said she felt like she didn't need it. So the next morning he told her and her two sisters to dress for "work", bring gloves, pack a lunch, and he'd give them work. He took them out to some land and told them he needed for them to remove all of the large rocks on this acre over to the next acre. At the end of the day, they asked him why they had to work like that and he told them he has to work that hard every day. He said it wasn't fair that they were getting educations and he had to work like this. The teens all graduated from college, most with graduate degrees. The oldest is a medical doctor. They all came from a reservation, but I don't remember which one.

[Horse with no Name]

21. A friend of mine is an attorney

and he was telling me a story of a single black woman that raised five children in a little town across from us.
Everyday when the kids got home from school, she made them attend more school. She then proceeded to enhance their public education with private education. She told her kids that if they wanted to be a success, that their day wouldn't end at 3 in the afternoon, so she held a continuum of class until 6 pm.
She gave them "assignments" that were in addition to their school work.
They read and understood ALL the classics.
She tested them on it.
She instilled an ethic of success in these children.
They all grew up to be doctors and lawyers and successful businessmen.
One is even a judge.

[porphyrian]

23. Discipline has to be tailored to the child.

Sweeping statements about what we should and should not do to punish children are wrong.

[Ilsa]

28. You're absolutely right.

It has to be tailored to the child's personality, abilities, maturity, etc, or it can go terribly wrong.

[dr.strangelove]

25. I am fine with this

Who the hell am I to judge her parenting. She sttod by her side to make sure no physical harm came to her and to support her during a punishment. I'm okay with this. I might not choose to go this route with my daughter, but I am not going to judge her decision when there were protections for the girl's well being clearly thought out.

[Javaman]

30. When I was a kid, there was a guy that lived next door to us...

He had 3 kids. He was a former drill instructor. He never saw combat and he would always complain about that. Major type "A" personality. Anyway, his three sons, no matter what they did, they could never please this idiot.
One son failed math. The father, put a sandwich board on him and had him march up and down the block wearing it. It said, "I am a failure, I can't add 2 and 2. I will never be a success." This was one of the "minor" things he would do to his kids. They all at one time or another did the sandwich board routine.
Fast forward to the future. Two of the sons are dead from suicide and the third one had a complete nervous breakdown when he was in high school.
Yeah, this woman is a fine example of a parent. Her parenting skills are brilliant...:sarcasm:

I hope she's still around later to pay for her daughters therapist.