Do parents want the best for their kids or just for themselves?

Sometimes, while I am in the midst of screaming and shouting or threatening some major punishment, I wonder how much of what I am saying is going to be repeated by Little Pencil when he grows up and takes himself off to therapy. There are some arguments I remember with a clarity all too bright, I hope he never mentions those ones, in fact I really hope he doesn’t even remember them. But we are lucky, on the whole there are more good days, more happy days where I try to use positive reinforcement to model the behaviour I expect. There are even more days where I just succumb to his every wish. Or resort to bribery.

But for every minute that I wonder if I am inflicting damage on my child by taking away his electronics when he is rude or losing my shit with him when he doesn’t listen, he knows I love him. I give him (very small, teeny tiny) boundaries because I care and even though that sounds trite and ridiculous to a teenager, he knows that I am coming from a place of love and respect.

I get that parenting is hard and I am well aware that I don’t know all the answers, I only walk in my own shoes and I have created as functional a family as I can (quite different to the one I came from I may add). But what the hell is it with all the hideous discipline stories turning up lately?

An article in The Washington Post gives the details of a hairdresser in suburban Atlanta that will give your child a “shame” cut.

Three days a week, parents can take their misbehaving kids to A-1 Kutz in Snellville and ask for the “Benjamin Button Special,” which Russell Fredrick and his team of barbers are offering — free of charge — to parents who want to try a novel form of discipline.

The cut involves shaving hair off the child’s crown until he begins to resemble a balding senior citizen, inviting that unique brand of adolescent humiliation that can only come from teasing classmates and unwanted attention.

Supporters say it’s the perfect punishment for misbehaving kids who want to “act grown.”

And then this, possibly the most deranged story you could imagine, when a 6-year-old boy in Missouri endured a four-hour staged kidnapping because his family thought he was being too nice to strangers. Yes, you read that right. But it gets worse.

The boy was lured into a pickup after getting off his school bus, tied up, threatened with a gun, taken to a basement where his pants were removed, and told he could be sold into sex slavery.
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CNN reports

The boy was told in the truck by Nathan Wynn Firoved, the aunt’s co-worker, that he would never “see his mommy again,” and he would be “nailed to the wall of a shed,” the sheriff’s statement said.

The boy started to cry, police said, and Firoved, 23, showed the child a gun and said he would be harmed if he didn’t stop bawling. Firoved used plastic bags to tie the child’s hands and feet, police said. He took his jacket and covered the boy’s head so he couldn’t see.

He guided the boy, still unable to see, into the basement of the mother’s home, where his 38-year-old aunt took off the boy’s pants, according to the sheriff’s statement.

“The victim remained in the basement for some time before he was unbound and told to go upstairs, where the victim’s family lectured him about stranger danger,” the statement said.

Thankfully all four adults have been charged with kidnapping and other felonies even though they told investigators their primary intent was to educate the victim and felt they did nothing wrong. Ugh.

Clearly these cases are not the norm, one would hope that no sane parent would willfully torture their own child. One would hope that no parent would ever willingly ridicule their child or subject them to derision at the hand of others. One would hope most parents want the best for their kids not just for themselves.

Because really it is all about the kids, our choice to have them, to keep them to raise and support them. Parenting is not about fulfilling an adult’s needs, it’s about nurturing children. It’s not about balancing your life to fit in career and family, it’s more about putting the kids you chose to have first, even while you work.  It’s only 18 years of your life that those kids are there depending on you in some way. Only 18 years. It’s not a power struggle or a competition or even a game.  How hard is it to remember that one day soon our kids will be adults, that once we were kids that, that the way we are treated as children shapes the way we live our life as adults?

Whenever I think about any of the big parenting decisions I have to make I am reminded how lucky I am to have the opportunity to play such an important part in someone else’s life, how privileged I am to be the person that sets up this child for life and how short my time of influence really is. How much I hope my parenting is always perceived with love .

Of course all of this stands true only for me but I would love to hear your point of view – do most parents want the best for their kids or just for themselves?