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?
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