Letters to the Editor
-
Bloody Stump?
The "stump" would be what was left of your arm after dismembering most of it. Not a good tool to use for hitting, obviously. No wonder you laughed at your dad's anatomical misnomic threat. I thought Heather H.'s essay was very, very funny. I am also wary of parents who lack the courage to challenge their progeny's antisocial behaviour. However, I am puzzled by Ms. Havrilevsky's thesis. It seems to me that we continue to be a nation of name-callers. Listen to what passes as discourse on the airwaves, highways and breakrooms from this sea to that other shining sea. It borders on the grotesque. Further, I don't agree that name calling has any place in effective parenting. Get mad, punish your kids and they all should be made to say, "yes, sir," "yes, ma'am," "please" and "thank you"--calling names, on the other hand, can only, inevitably, inspire diminishing returns. Humiliation is no motivator. While it may temporarily compel a child to seize up from hurt, in the long run it will undermine the authority of the parent or, even worse, carry unintended consequences. Of course, I can only speak from personal experience. My father chronically calling her a "pig" did nothing to moderate my sister's eating habits. It did, however, help to infect my sister with a sinister body-image psychosis she still struggles with. My brother never seemed to be able to go more than a couple of days until he did something that inspired my dad to call him a "klutz" or "klutz mcgee" or some other variant. My brother's grace remains unchanged. However, he hates my dad intensely and the only interaction he pursues with our father is limited to what our mom begs him to do (it's not much). As the youngest, the impact all this name calling had on me was blunted, I guess. I merely pity my pop as a sad, ill-tempered brute who now sits alone at Thanksgiving and wonders where everybody went. Name calling is never a good choice, unless you are calling someone "sweetheart."
-
No matter what Heather...
...I love you and if we were single and living in the same place I'd buy you a drink.
Nothing infuriates me more than sanctimonious parents.
Life is tough, your kids should be prepared for that. I had a boss in my mid-twenties who routinely called me "Useless Irish Faggot" at the top of his lungs...this was despite the fact that I'm not gay and I'm from Indiana. And this was usually followed by worse. If I hadn't had a father that was a yeller, I would probably have wilted...instead I learned a lot about the business world and made a good deal of money.
We are raising generations of soft little children that will simply cower in the face of real tyrrany. You are supposed to hate your parents a little bit, it's how you learn to stand up for yourself and to want your own life.
-
There's name calling, then there's Jekyll and Hyde
All of you who defend Alec's tirade obviously don't have the BRAINS or the DECENCY as a HUMAN BEING to understand what a raging asshole he is.
You're right, Heather, a little name-calling is way cathartic!
I know it was cathartic for my dad to scream like Alec Baldwin at me. Like Baldwin, he was also "under a lot of stress" at work and coping with "a difficult family life." We always "provoked" him.
Just like Baldwin, he never counted himself as the main problem.
I remember being 11 and wanting nothing to do with him. I begged my mother to leave him when I was Ireland's age. I was 25 when she did, and he still whined about "parental alienation".
God, I would have LOVED for all the world to hear what my father was like in private, instead of the proud perfect papa act he put on in front of people-- just like Baldwin did on Letterman hours before he privately shred her to pieces.
-
Wow, we all need to take a breath here...
Was Alec Baldwin's language rude and over the top, particularly directed at his daughter? Yes. Could he have made his point (that he was upset at his daughter for standing him up) without using invective? Sure. Is it really terrible that we're being made privy to the inner workings of a highly contested divorce and its effect on the family members? Why yes, it is.
That's about all we really know here, all the judgements we may legitimately make about this situation. If all of us were required to be utterly perfect parents in order to enjoy the good graces of society, then I suppose we'd all end up outcasts. We love our kids and invest so much in them that it is only natural that they have the power to incite amazing acts of love and drive us to exasperation and beyond. I've been a parent less than two years and I'll admit that not everything I've done as a parent comes straight out of the "What to Expect..." parenting manuals.
Are verbally abusive environments bad for kids? Sure. Do some kids survive them and become good people? Yeah. Others go on to perpetuate the injuries done to them. It's really hard to pass judgement on the entirety of a parent's abilities based on one incident, deliberately chosen, BTW, for leverage in a court case. I am sure if my darkest moment as a mother was broadcast over all the media outlets in the world, people would think I was a terrible mother. In fact, however, I am a pretty good mother.
Parenting is tough, and true, some parents probably should be a little firmer with their kids. I am a big advocate of actual discipline. But the thing is, discipline is truly more on the part of the parent than the child. To create a child who respects boundaries requires the parent to exercise the discipline to SET clear boundaries, CONSISTENTLY enforce them, and effectively APPLY consequences for violation of them. It takes a lot of energy and time and thought.
I think parents today fail not because they are trying to be "friends" with their kids as much as they are simply too lazy to undertake the hard task of child discipline. And even in the instances where parents ARE disciplined in their approach to child-rearing, it's no guarantee that they won't have their own "Little Pig" moment sometime when they are frustrated and tired and not thinking clearly.
I think the Baldwin-Basingers as a whole are a sad and pathetic bunch. And the only thing that is sadder and more pathetic is how we as the American public feel compelled to make their personal family drama about us.