What do you do when your child breaks the rules? Shout at them? Take away their favourite toy? Post a humiliating photo of them on Facebook, which quickly goes viral exposing their wrongdoing to millions and staying online to haunt them for the rest of their lives?
It seems extreme, but an increasing number of parents are choosing the last option, publicly shaming their kids on social media networks when they misbehave.
American father Tommy Jordan became an internet sensation after a video of him shooting his daughter’s laptop — with a gun — went viral.
Jordan’s daughter had written petulant comments about her parents on Facebook, prompting Jordan to retaliate with his own brand of tough love.
The video prompted outrage, with some critics complaining to the police but the detectives, Jordan said, were entirely on his side. ‘The police, by the way, said “Kudos, Sir” and most of them made their kids watch it,’ he said. “I actually had a ‘thank you’ from an entire detectives squad … another police officer is using it in a positive manner in his presentation for the school system.
‘How’s about those apples? Didn’t expect THAT when you called the cops did you?’
Another father (unnamed) took to website Reddit after his three-year-old daughter had a potty training incident in the shower.
In a rather questionable parenting move, he uploaded a photo of his daughter (pictured) with a sign around her neck reading: ‘I pooped in the shower and daddy (sic) had to clean it up. I hereby sign this as permission to use in my yearbook senior year.’
The photo sparked a major backlash on the site, with the majority of users labelling the father’s actions ‘sick’ and ‘exploitative’.
Reddit user ilikepix wrote: ‘You don’t make a child tough and resilient by having her parents, who are meant to be the two people in the world she can trust absolutely, set out to embarrass her in the most public of settings.’
The father jokingly replied that his daughter can sue him for ‘defecation’ not defamation.
In the latest example of tough love, another father has taken to Reddit after his teenage daughter stayed out past her curfew.
He posted a photo of his daughter wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a photo of his scowling face and captioned ‘Try Me’, which he made her wear to school every day for a week.
Reddit users called his actions ‘illogical’ and suggested that posts like his are ‘more about the parent getting attention than a well thought through attempt to alter a child’s behaviour’.
Whether you believe these measures are tame, controversial or just plain abusive, experts say that shaming children into obedience is counterproductive and greatly increases their chance of developing low self-esteem.
Parenting and resilience specialist Maggie Dent says this new trend in parental discipline makes her feel ‘physically sick’ as she knows the kind of damage it can do.
‘Any one of us has a moment of shame that we can recall from childhood,’ she says.
We tend to hold onto that moment as adults and it can become ‘life crippling’.
Which begs the question — would you want your moment to be immortalised on the internet, readily accessible to anyone via a search engine?
Forget everything I’ve said about my training being difficult up to this point. I clearly had no idea. Pete was right… now we are really starting to work hard.
The easy days of lifting heavy weights with long recovery rest periods are over. Now he’s programmed us up to do several different exercises with heavy weights back to back with little or no rest between sets.
One particularly hellish session looked like this…
A1: 5 x 15 calories on Airdyne bicycle (this only takes about 30 secs but every second feels like an hour when your quads are on fire)
A2: 5 x 16 DB walking lunges (despite my increased strength I still hate these)
A3: 5 x 12-16 renegade rows (think of yourself in plank position with your hands holding 10 kilo weights … while trying to keep your hips level alternate arms lifting the weight up to your chest – so not easy)
A4: 5 x BB push press
A5: 5 x kb swings rest 60 secs (what only 1 minute of rest – you have to be joking)
B: back extensions 3 x 12 (I’ve already explained these gems)
B2: GHD sit ups 3 x 12 rest 90 secs (Similar to the back extension but reversed, so you have to lower your torso backwards through space and then use every bit of abdominal strength you’ve got to crunch yourself back up to your strapped in legs. Definitely not for the faint hearted.)
As a Christmas present to myself I bought a heart rate monitor so I could track my progress and make sure I was pushing myself hard enough… as if there was any question of that. To start, I could see that on the average night of training I was now burning over 750 calories in the hour plus of activity. My maximum heart rate was consistently hitting 183 bpm.
I tried to convince Pete that if my heart rate reached 200 it would entitle me to at least a minute rest… he just laughed and it has yet to happen. Check out the video of me trying my hardest to get my heart rate up there.
The workout was…
**Warm up on rower or bike
A: back squats 4 x 6-8 20×0 rest 2 mins
B1: 4 X 12 weighted step ups
B2: 4 x amrap push-ups on bar
B3: 60 seconds row (split time 2 mins)
5 rounds rest 1:1
C: tabata sit up test 5-8 rounds
**
The video is me going through B1, B2 and B3. If it looks easy, remember I had to do it 5 times.
She's strutted down catwalks in New York, Paris and Milan and Miranda Kerr made Sydney look every bit as glamorous last night, as she launched David Jones' autumn/winter 2013 collection.
She’s strutted down catwalks in New York, Paris and Milan and Miranda Kerr made Sydney look every bit as glamorous last night, as she launched David Jones’ autumn/winter 2013 collection.
Miranda led a bevy of leggy beauties down the runway at the brand’s flagship Elizabeth Street store.
The action onstage was watched by a star-studded crowd, including Megan Gale, Jesinta Campbell, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, Lisa Wilkinson and Kate Waterhouse. Thirty-seven designers showcased their newest looks, which will be on sale at David Jones in the coming months.
Child pageant star Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson’s mum June Shannon has slimmed down, losing 46kg without a diet or exercise!
So what’s the secret to her weight loss success? June says that since her daughter’s TV show Here comes Honey Boo Boo aired she has been so busy the weight has just fallen off.
“I haven’t done any surgeries … no diet pills … never went to the gym,” June told TMZ. “But with the show I’ve been more active.”
June, who is referred to as mama June on the show, said when taping first started in 2011 she weighed 165kg. She has revealed she now weighs 119kg thanks to her new busy schedule.
“They have me running around and going different places … I guess it’s paying off,” she said.
June has been quizzed about her family’s usually unhealthy lifestyle before, explaining to American talk show host Dr Drew how she feels about being accused of causing her daughters to be obese.
“The childhood obesity, you know, I’m not saying that Alana’s not a little chunky herself, but I love Alana. I love all my kids, ya know what I mean? Not everyone fits in a size zero,” she said on the show in December 2012.
Warwick Fuller, Sue Wild, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall.
In the technological age we have found ourselves living in, not many people spare a thought for the old-fashioned art of painting.
Fortunately, Prince Charles — himself an avid water-colourist — is one of those rare people for whom art and artists are never far from mind.
As such, he pays — from his own pocket — for official artists to join him on every tour he undertakes.
Last year, Australian artist Warwick Fuller and New Zealander Sue Wild had the great honour of travelling with Charles and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, on their tour of Australia and New Zealand.
Warwick was thrilled to be chosen as a tour artist, but found the pace — and the weather conditions — challenging at times.
“It was a whirlwind tour moving at a relentless pace, with military precision, planning and timing,” he wrote on the Prince of Wales’ website.
“I was able to paint at locations planned ahead of time and fortunately, mostly found good subject material. On a showery day at a sheep stud out of Hobart I only just won a race by seconds against a great pelting storm.
“At the Icebergs Club at Bondi, Sydney, a monstrous deluge beat me! I was drenched through with an unsalvageable painting roughed up by the sudden driving rain.”
Warwick found a kindred spirit in Charles, admiring the prince’s appreciation of art and finding time to chat with him about places they’d both visited in Victoria.
Sue Wild was similarly thrilled to be chosen to accompany the royal couple on their tour.
“[When I received the phone call] I mumbled in astonishment about ‘privilege and honour’ and thought ‘How crazy amazing!’ What a huge privilege and a huge challenge,” Sue wrote.
Shortly after that phone call, the preparation began. Sue spent months honing her techniques and brushing up on her knowledge of British history and etiquette.
“I practised daily, working particularly on speed sketching,” she said. “I pre-visited the venues on the tour programme, I refined my kit.
“I sewed a splendid ‘mobile sketcher’s pinny’, with pockets for small palette, brushes, pens, pencils, camera and even water. I planned my clothing, learned the correct form of address, perused The Prince’s website and read the history of England! And finally, there I was, in the welcoming party at the airport.”
Waipiko Farm House, by Sue Wild.
The tour went spectacularly, and Sue is very happy with the paintings she produced. She loved being a part of the trip and has nothing but praise for the royals and their team.
“The Royal Tour Party was a wonderful group,” she said. “Every member, from Prince and Duchess to valet and logistics team, moved with impressive speed and efficiency, while finding the time to care for each other and everyone around them with warmth and lively British wit!
“They were a ‘mean machine’, an honour and a joy to join.”
The Middleton sisters are fiercely protective of their public image so we can’t imagine they’d be too thrilled with Romania’s latest tourism ad.
The poster, pictured above, tries to encourage Britons to visit Romania by claiming that all the country’s women look like the Duchess of Cambridge and her sister.
“Half our women look like Kate,” the ad reads. “The other half look like her sister.”
Astonishingly it was only last week that France finally repealed a law dating from 1799 which banned women from wearing pants in public.
The original law, introduced just after the Revolution by Paris’s then police chief, was intended to prevent women from dressing like men, lest they be mistaken for revolutionaries.
The law was later amended on several occasions, once in 1909 to allow women to wear trousers while riding a bicycle.
This quaint law stayed in place despite numerous attempts to have it stricken from the books.
In 2010 Green Party members tried to have it repealed but officials at the Paris police Headquarters refused noting that it meant “removing a piece of judicial archaeology”.
Presumably, there are many examples of fusty and anachronistic laws to be found in the French archives but it took Najat Valluad-Belkacem, France’s Minister for Women’s Rights to have the law null and voided.
As she tartly said: “It belongs in a museum. The ordinance is incompatible with the principles of equality between men and women.”
Clearly famed fashion designer Coco Chanel was ignorant of the law when she liberated women in the 1920s and 30s by introducing trousers as a chic fashion statement.
So too Yves Saint Laurent who introduced his ultra-sexy tuxedo for women “Le Smoking” in the 70s.
It would have been interesting indeed to witness authorities actually apply the law during a Paris Fashion Week.
The royal couple have rented at luxury five-bedroom $30,000-a-week mansion, one of the most opulent houses on the island.
“Their villa is the height of luxury and the perfect place to relax before the endless round of feeds and nappies begins,” a source told the UK’s Daily Mail.
Michael and Carole Middleton are also on holiday on the island, but have rented a different house to give the parents-to-be some privacy.
Those hoping to catch another glimpse of Kate’s chest will be disappointed — Mustique is privately-owned and incredibly exclusive.
It has been a secluded safe haven for the rich and famous for decades, with Princess Diana, Princess Margaret and Mick Jagger all enjoying regular holidays there away from the paparazzi’s prying eyes.
William and Kate are frequent visitors too, having holidayed in Mustique six times previously.
It is not known how long the couple will stay in the Caribbean this time, but they will be back in London by February 19, when Kate is due to carry out her first official engagement for 2012, a visit to an addiction treatment centre in south-west London.
The royal couple are expecting their first baby in July.
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