Watch His Face!

I like Fox news. I like the personalities and the honesty in their reporting. However, today they had a segment that made me both furious and sad.

When parents aren't sure what to do, they can make some horrible mistakes. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of people schooled on being a "Mommy or Daddy detective". Again, that doesn't mean you invade your child's space. It does mean that you are looking for the clues that will tell you what's going on with your child. It does mean that you are going to be creative in finding a way into your child's heart.

I caution in my book Discipline Exposed, that using embarrassment as a form of punishment will never work. In my new book, Mommy Detective, I explain all the reasons why.

The segment on Fox was about parents who were so frustrated with why their child wasn't making good grades, that they made him wear a sandwich sign listing his grades and ending with a negative statement about his future. The parents explained that they had talked with teachers and professionals and that they were so worried about his grades that they didn't feel they had any other choice.

When Brian asked the 12 year old how he felt about it, his only remark was that "it sucks". For the rest of the 90 second interview he sat between his parents looking totally embarrassed and at certain times he rolled his eyes. Tears flooded my eyes as I thought, "Isn't anyone watching this child's face?" I felt so sorry for him. His problem was no longer bad grades - now he was a national example of failure.

These "uninformed" destructive parents were actually congratulated by people e-mailing the station. Gretchen (so disappointed in this) said she admired the parents for taking a stand.

Okay. I agree that parents should be pro-active in their child's life. But if you don't take your child into consideration and you make a "stupid" decision like this one - you aren't helping. You will damage your child.

Here's why this method will not work....

Embarrassment never works because you can't control the outcome. If your child hits little brother and you've tried everything else - you can take matters in hand and put him in the corner or smack his little behind or get creative and make him "serve" his little brother in some way. With all of those actions, you can control both the responses and the environment. The situation and responses are confined to your home and to three personalities only. No one else is involved and you can oversee the good responses as well as the bad ones.

But....if you open the playing field to extended family, friends or the public - you are no longer in control. Grandma who doesn't understand the issue may say something that will stay with him forever. What if she says, "I'm so disappointed in you. I always thought you were a little delinquent. I guess you are going to grow up and be as stupid as your father."

While most grandmothers would take up for the child and not say something like this - there are a few that would. Now you aren't only dealing with a small altercation between brothers, now you have brought the issues of self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy and failure, and the deterioration of love for grandma into the mix. As those issues bombard your child, you aren't dealing with a simple brother/brother issue. Now you have to defend or support people who don't have your child's best interest at heart.

Your role as parent is to protect your child from the outside world until he is strong enough and wise enough to provide his own protection. Until then, if you throw him out for ridicule by the public - you are placing your child into a situation that he's not prepared for and allowing other people to hurt him. You are also ultimately placing your rights as parents into the hands of strangers.

And will this change your child's bad behavior? Absolutely not. He will choose one of two responses. He will either be so embarrassed that he will continue to fail just to say.... "Okay, you think I'm a delinquent - I'll just accept it and prove that you're right."

Or...He will be so embarrassed that he will change his behavior on that one point. He will refrain from hitting brother. However, he will be so angry about the embarrassment that the problem will manifest itself in other areas. So, he may be nice to brother, but decide mom is the issue and he will take all his anger out on mom.

I would guess that 90% of the issues with parents of teens is based on the fact that teens don't trust and won't talk to their parents. Well, duh! If you throw your child into an embarrassment situation, why would they ever trust you with internal or personal information again? You just proved to them that you are more interested in public opinion and personal action than you are in the protection of your child's feelings! Who could trust that? I wouldn't. Think about it in your own life. Would you put up with a boss that berates and belittles you in front of other co-workers? Would you continue to go to a church if the pastor stops in his sermon to point to you and ask - "Have you conquered your problem of lying yet?"

No? Well, why in the world would you do that to your child?

As Mommy and Daddy Detectives you must be clear on this....Your job as a parent is to see inside your child and discover what is TRUTH. Maybe he hits because he feels brother is getting more attention. Maybe you've never taught him how to properly handle anger and frustration. Maybe when you aren't looking, little brother is mean or starts arguments.

If you don't find out and handle the real source of your child's problem, you are only suppressing a problem on one end ultimately causing it to erupt on the other end.

So Debbie, what would you tell the parents on Fox? I would tell them the damage has been done. While they may be getting positive responses to their actions, it's not their parenting self-esteem that caused this problem. They need to quickly find out what is being said to that child by his peers. They need to find out what's happening now that they have displayed him negatively on national television. And...they need to apologize and ask for forgiveness. Their relationship with their son is in jeopardy and before they fix anything else - that must be repaired.

And as far as the grades are concerned. What if he's really smart and just bored with school? What if the teachers are bad? What if no one has "inspired" him to love learning? What if he doesn't turn in homework because he needs help remembering long term tasks? What if he's being bullied and has chosen to be stupid so people will look the other way? What if someone that he admires has convinced him that he's stupid - oh wait....the parents have already done that!

If you want more information about how to handle this right by developing a behavior modification plan or implementing a truth time with your children, please order my book Discipline Exposed. You can also send me an e-mail. I will be happy to help you.

Seeking God's Wisdom

Debbie