There is a huge difference between abuse and discipline. Huge. There’s another (I say another because this trend is getting out of hand) viral video floating around the internet of a father, beating his 13-year-old daughter after he thought she was missing for three days.The little girl showed up after disappearing, wearing a skimpy little black dress. The video was titled: Pops Wrong Or Needs To Be More Dads Like This? Father Whoops On His 13-Year-Old Daughter Dressed Like Beyonce After Missing For 3 Days…Thought She Was Off In The Woods Dead Somewhere!
There’s a few issues here.
I’m not here for public videos, showcasing fed up parents, beating their children, no matter their offense. I don’t think bad social media behavior gets solved by worse social media behavior, especially if you’re going to use corporal punishment. For a kid to understand the effectiveness of a beating, there has to be a level of trust with the parent. In order for your parents to be effective in their disciplining, after you’ve gotten hit, you have to understand what you’ve done wrong. And that involved having a chat with your kid about their wrong-doings. Once the punishment becomes public social fodder, that trust has been broken.
Broken trust shakes our lives and follows us around forever. This 13-year-old girl, no matter what she did while she was away for three days, has trust issues with her father. Wherever she was, she felt like she wasn’t able to talk to her father. Many teenagers feel this way about their parents. It’s these pivotal adolescent years that change us. We go from bright-eyed bushy tailed optimists to angry know-it-alls who finally see that our parents aren’t perfect. This realization manifests in different ways for different teens.
Many of them act out. It’s fair to say that this 13-year-old girl was indeed acting out. She needs her father. She needs guidance. She needs support. She needs love.
Writer, Demetria Lucas says, “No one’s self-esteem or confidence—two real issues here—ever got higher after being beaten.” While I agree, I don’t think that this is not about this little girl’s confidence or self-esteem. This is about this girl’s disrespect and nonchalance towards her family. They thought she was missing for three days! She’s 13! That’s enough to make any parent who cares about their child snap–especially when that child shows up at home dressed like a poor man’s Beyonce.
I realize that this child’s self-esteem is very important and her father’s public beating (and let’s not forget the very vocal heckling during the beating) will not ever solve anything, In fact, it creates more problems. This child might just call up whoever it is that she was with for those three days, just to feel like she has someone who cares about her.
If your 13-year-old disappeared for three days and reappeared in a skimp outfit–what would you do? I polled three fathers, each of them have daughters. Here’s what they had to say:
A 40-something father of two daughters:
“She was missing for three days. I would probably think about doing this, but I wouldn’t do it. I’d break a table, not her. It doesn’t help. It just pushes her away again. Beating her with a belt doesn’t help. She would never leave the house again. She’d be on lockdown.A 40-something father of one daughter and one son:
He was trying to embarrass her. There’s a pattern of that happening now.”
“I thought the beating was excessive. If my daughter was missing for three days, I’d be angry, but I’d be more relieved she was alive. Clearly, if she felt she could leave for three days at that age, there’s something going on at home. He needs to beat himself because he lost control a long time ago.
I understand the whole public shaming now, but you’re really exposing yourself as a parent more than anything when you do that. As a father, I wouldn’t want people to see that my daughter was dressed like that. So you want to shame her and beat her, but what does that say about you? My first instinct is like, ‘Ok, she’s alive.’ I want to cover her up, bring her into the house and then I don’t know what I might do. Her mom might beat her ass, but he was too much.
That was disrespectful. She had no business being out of her house for three days. I’m not in the camp of don’t hit your kids, but you have to understand that once you do it, the less effective it is. I’ve hit my son once in 11 years and he knew when he got it that one time, he deserved it and he’s never done it again. Multiples times and it’s like, ‘Dad’s gonna beat me again.’”
Now it’s your turn to answer. What would you do if your 13-year-old reappeared in a skimpy outfit after being missing for three days?
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