Letters to the Editor
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Anon...
that (It was the painful beatings and asskickings and occasional rapes that did the real damage.) is horrific, to be sure. but the horrendous actions of an abusive parent is not what HH is discussing.
she's talking about parent's asserting their authority by occassionally raising their voices and setting their kids' orbits back in line.
i think baldwin took it too far, sure. if basinger is deliberately obstructing his access to his child, she's way out of line. as is whoever leaked this take. however, parents raising their voices and getting occasionally creative with language? just not a step down the road to hell.
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Hurray for Havrilevsky
I know I'm late, but just for the record I'd like Ms Havrilevsky to know that one more person backs her up... and understands the humour as it is used. Kids today are growing up with too many "permissions" that do them no good. They need, and want boundaries, which mollycoddling does not provide. I think children are undeveloped in many aspects and using "reason" can be an abuse in itself, neglecting to communicate the most important lesson: Act stupid and there will be bad consequences... afterall as adults we all know that; why hide it from children? None of this means being abusive. Stop throwing out the babies with the bath water!
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Lucky Louie
I apologize if someone else has mentioned this, 140 letters are a lot to get through!
This reminds me of that GREAT ep of HBO's Lucky Louie when the husband and wife come to the realization that their 5 year old girl was "an asshole!" And she was! Sassy, rude, and thoughtless, and, well, an asshole.
I don't think they ever said it to her face, but keep in mind our kids, though we act like the sun shines out of their butts, are actual real people. It was shocking to hear them say "asshole", but I thought it was really brave of the parents to look beyond their besotted love and take a good long look at their kid, be honest, and then do something about it.
What no one in the press has mentioned is that sometimes a ten year old IS a rude pig, and as a parent, I think it's your duty to point that out to her before it gets any worse.
I reserve the right to call my son a shit and scare him a little, just like my dad did with me. To the poster who said we had lousy parents, my father never, ever, ever swore. But one time when I was about 14 I went to a roller rink and then snuck away, and when my father finally found me and drove me home he called me a "little shit" repeatedly and it scared the pants off me. I never saw him so mad, and I knew I'd done something really bad, that I had really scared him, and I never did it again. So, there. I call that a great parent.
(I will say that parenting by answering machine isn't the best choice, but I take it AB doesn't see her.)
PS I also wonder about all the kids who heard Thomas The Tank Engine yelling at his kid on the news. You know he narrates that? And because it's AB, it makes TTE almost sound a little dirty...)
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Being blown off isn't OK
Since when is it OK to blow off an agreed-upon meeting? It's rude, belittling, insulting and unapologetic. By age 11, you know that. If you don't, somethings wrong. If you do and ignore it, somethings even more wrong. Being blown off makes people angry -- and things get said in moments of anger. An apology by Dad was in order to Daughter for adding "pig" to the correctly identified "rude and thoughtless" behavior -- but, it would need to be offset by an apology to Dad by Daughter to acknowledge her behavior was rude and thoughtless.
Couple of basics: 1) an appointment is an appointment -- don't make one if you're not going to keep it, or leave a message if something critical prevents it; 2) when you blow someone off, the person you blow off is going to be upset -- don't be too surprised or offended if they let you know; 3) releasing a private phone message to the media is the action of a pathetic, short-sighted and vindictive person.
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Do unto others...
If this article isn't satire, it's an unintentional argument for its own antithesis. Why is it that for every courageous expose of the abuse of our men and women in uniform, Salon has at least five sneering commentaries of this ilk? I guess it's un-hip to be too kind.
But what an astonishing outpouring of hatred toward children here! Since when has "I'll do unto others what was done unto me" been a wise moral prescription? The amount of projection perpetrated on these much more vulnerable humans, who are neither little adults nor miniature versions of ourselves, is staggering. Every testing of boundaries is an insurrection to be taken utterly personally. As Freud asserted, children are born bad, and must be civilized into being good. End of story.
Could it be that interacting with these less "civilized" beings brings up the memory of our own "civilization" process, and with it the hostilities and anxieties of our own experiences? Were we never misunderstood ouselves? We see inappropriate curiosity and dangerous exuberance, and it makes us nervous. This must be brought to heel. People are looking at us.
No, no, don't give me that postmodern psychobabble. We coddle the little snot-nosed bastards far too much these days. Name-calling is hardly an offense.
Yet Dostoevsky wrote this back in the 1870s, in the words of his character Father Zossima:
"You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love."
What a wuss, that Dostoevsky. He must have gone soft in Siberia.