A kid recorded on Xbox Live yelling at his mom

[Thorin]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7153152098207965240

Turn it up loud, so you can hear what his mother says back to him.  I'm pretty sure this would never fly with either myself nor my wife.  But hey, some people are just wimps when it comes to raising their kids.

So what would *you* do?

[Mr. Analog]

Man, if that were my kid he'd be up to his armpits in chores so fast...

[Cova]

I turned it up pretty loud and still couldn't hear the mom over the kid screaming and shooting and stuff - not that hearing the mom would change my opinion at all.  If that was my kid I'd have taken the xbox away completly about 30 seconds into that.

[Fedora Gal]

holy crap!

If that was my kid I'd have taken the X-box away and every other electronic gadget he had, had him doing chores for a month and he would have been totally grounded.

Not to mention given him a very sore bottom! just for the language alone.

wow... no wonder he's like that though, she threatened to turn off the power then never did...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7153152098207965240
But hey, some people are just wimps when it comes to raising their kids.

sooo true

[Adams]

No no... you are not thinking as mischievously as you can.
You don't take anything away... you kill the power to his room.

muhahahahah... I am so going to have fun when I am a parent.

[Thorin]

One thing's certain, if you stepped into this situation as an outsider it would be difficult to change it.  I would sit down the mother and explain that she doesn't have to put up with it, that it's okay for her to require that he at least be civil to her.  Because honestly, as mouthy as this kid is, he got there because he was allowed to get there.  If he were 13 or 14, it could be blamed on his peers, but at 9 it's very much due to the lack of backbone of his parents.

So here's what I would do (if I could calm down enough to think rationally):
- Tell him he's being rude to his mother
- Take away his Xbox for a week
- Take away Rainbow Six until he's 14
- Tell him that if he continues being rude to his mother he will not be allowed to stay in her house
- Tell him since he was demanding that his mother serve him, he will instead serve her all day tomorrow
- Send him to bed
- Tell mom to make sure to get him to do things for her he wouldn't usually do, but not to overdo it (gotta get him to see what it's like to be a servant without having to do so much stuff that he just gets angry and doesn't learn the lesson)
- Remind him in the morning what I told him just before bed about continuing to be rude and being mom's servant
- Review in the evening to see how the day went
- Look up the number for Social Services in case I have to follow through on the threat that he can't stay in her house anymore and let him know I have the number
- Ask him if he's decided to be more civil now

Simply taking away the fun stuff and making him do manual labour, well, his brain won't connect those negatives with his actions unless it's spelled out for him.

[Cova]

One thing's certain, if you stepped into this situation as an outsider it would be difficult to change it.

Can't agree more with that part.  The question put forward in the original post was a "what would you do in this situation" type question, which I tried to answer above in my other post.  However I really doubt I'd ever be in such a situation, as I'd have put my foot down a LONG time before it got anything near that.  I think for anyone on these forums to actually be in a situation like that, you'd need to put them on a reality TV show like that wife-swapping one.

If he were 13 or 14, it could be blamed on his peers, but at 9 it's very much due to the lack of backbone of his parents.

Even at 14 I'd still blame such behaviour on the lack of backbone of his parents.  IMHO parents should be held responsible for the behaviour of their children, until those children are around the 16 to 18 year old mark.

[Thorin]

If he were 13 or 14, it could be blamed on his peers, but at 9 it's very much due to the lack of backbone of his parents.

Even at 14 I'd still blame such behaviour on the lack of backbone of his parents.  IMHO parents should be held responsible for the behaviour of their children, until those children are around the 16 to 18 year old mark.

Since you say the parents should be responsible, what tools are you willing to let those parents use to enforce proper behaviour?  And what would you do to the parent if the child behaves poorly?  And what's considered proper behaviour?  And what if a child is simply socio- or psychopathic and all of the parents' attempts at getting the child to behave have no effect?  These are the hard questions that go along with stating that parents should be responsible.  I'm not saying that I disagree with your statement, I'm just playing devil's advocate.

[Shayne]

what tools are you willing to let those parents use to enforce proper behaviour?

[Mr. Analog]

How about hypnotism?



"You WILL do your homework..."

"You WILL clean your room..."

"You WILL do EVERYTHING I SAY..."

[Cova]

what tools are you willing to let those parents use to enforce proper behaviour?

Or maybe something more like this...

Since you say the parents should be responsible, what tools are you willing to let those parents use to enforce proper behaviour?  And what would you do to the parent if the child behaves poorly?  And what's considered proper behaviour?  And what if a child is simply socio- or psychopathic and all of the parents' attempts at getting the child to behave have no effect?  These are the hard questions that go along with stating that parents should be responsible.  I'm not saying that I disagree with your statement, I'm just playing devil's advocate.

Someone needs to be responsible for the kids behavior until they are old enough to be responsible for themselves.  Punishments for parents in most cases should be similar as though the parent had commited the offence themselves (eg. kid vandalizes something, parent pays the damages, parent disciplines kids) with more serious offences having some/all punishment for the kid as well (eg. if the kid commits murder jailing the parent for life doesn't help).  Proper behavior I thought was already reasonably well defined, we call them laws, they deal with everything from murder to vandalism to disturbing the peace.  What do we do with adults that are socio or psychopathic, and why should kids necisarrily be treated differently?  If an adult requires constant supervision due to some problem, it's pretty safe to assume a kid needs even more supervision under the same circumstances.

Under the current legal system, no-one is really responsible for something that a kid does, and I think thats the real problem.  And I think one of the best examples of this (though it has nothing to do with kids misbehaving) is the whole system of having parents sign waivers for minors.  I used to be a scout leader, and my dad was a scout leader when I was a kid - he did most of the research on this...  Before we'd take all the kids out on any kind of trip, they'd all need to get waivers signed by their parents.  Parents however don't have the legal right to sign away their childrens rights (eg. to sue the scouts).  If a kid got hurt, once they turned 18 they'd be free to turn around and sue even though we had a waiver signed way back in the day. Suffice it to say I'm no longer a scout leader, nor would I do it again.  Over 1/2 of the kids in our troup were there because it was cheap baby-sitting for the parents - those kids were all on various medications for attention spans or being overly hyper and none of them were interested in any of the activities we did.  One of them forgot to take his pills on one camping trip and ended up pulling a knife and not letting anyone get near him, for which his "apology" was nothing more than "I forgot to take my pill, it wasn't my fault."  Perhaps with that little story you can better understand why I don't think highly of most modern parents.

[Shayne]

....or, we could shoot them with a taser gun

[Adams]

I am all for the taser but... should you look down on a parent giving a punishment in the mall? NO the little bastard probably deserved it.

[Brendan]

Loving the Taser idea.

Until it gets used on like me for no reason, because Shayne feels like buying one and shooting me...

[Adams]

Lets get two