Weak Parent Sauce and the System That Slurps It Down

Like Whoa - Aly & AJ (mp3)
Who Will Comfort Me - Melody Gardot (mp3)

Please read the following very carefully:

     The girl’s parents, wild with outrage and fear, showed the principal the text messages: a dozen shocking, sexually explicit threats, sent to their daughter the previous Saturday night from the cellphone of a 12-year-old boy. Both children were sixth graders at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, N.J.
     Punish him, insisted the parents.
     “I said, ‘This occurred out of school, on a weekend,’ ” recalled the principal, Tony Orsini. “We can’t discipline him.”
     Had they contacted the boy’s family, he asked.
     Too awkward, they replied. The fathers coach sports together.

The New York Times article goes on to explain and explore the very delicate legal challenge facing (public) schools when it comes to cyberbullying, and it's a very good read. But I can't get past these first eight sentences, because they ultimately explain exactly why we're in this pickle to begin with.

Many parents, myself included, will literally go to the mat for our children during an intense sporting event. When we see them wronged, we get angry. When we see an act of intentional viciousness -- even if it's not directed at our child -- we will get vociferous, and sometimes arguments or worse will ensue.

But when we see that some young punk has been sending our daughter sexually-explicit and unwelcome text messages? We go crying to... well, I'd say "Mommy & Daddy," but we're s'posed to be Mommy and Daddy!

Even more pathetic is the excuse listed above. The father in question doesn't want to upset his coaching relationship with this other dad. The guy probably coaches a mean offensive line, or maybe he hits grounders like a mofo. Anyway, clearly the relationship on the athletic surface is far too important to risk by informing this other guy that his son is sending X-rated Buffalo Bill "it rubs the lotion on its skin" shit via cell phone to sixth-grade girls.

That these parents are pathetic, weak and utterly focused on the wrong things doesn't make the problem for schools easier. We can acknowledge the idiotic parenting strategies that explain away almost every problem we see in children, but none of that seems to let schools, teachers, or administrators off the hook for trying to solve these problems. Educators, whether we like it or not, spend more time with kids than most parents. Far too often, educators know kids better than parents. Many times, kids feel closer to and are more likely to heed the words of a teacher. None of this is right; none of it should be OK with us; but, as they say, it is what it is.

Every year, some dozen or so parents call our middle school administrators to complain about their own children's hair. "Please make my son get a haircut," these parents will say.

"But... you're his parent..." our Middle School head will say.

"Yes, but he might listen to you. If he knows he'll get in trouble at school, he might be willing to do it."

I'm not making this shit up. We have parents who have, apparently, castrated themselves without even knowing it. Parenta castrata.

How sad must it be, as a child, to grow up in a house where parents are so weak and pointless as to be incapable of serving as authority figures? How can kids learn about adult responsibilities, about the dangers and rewards of power, if they can't even witness the adults in their own homes wrestle with that responsibility. But today's parents aren't wrestling with the challenge. They're fish, flopping around on the mat, just waiting to be pinned so they can go sit back on the bench and keep drinking and playing golf.

As parents wimpily scurry farther away from being... well, parents, teachers and school administrators find themselves having to play detective, mediator and lawyer, all for bargain-basement pay.

Oh, and add one more role: armchair psychologist.

Not only are they under the gun to investigate thorny legal and disciplinary issues they can't even be sure they're allowed to investigate, they now find themselves deciding whether kids should have best friends.

Yes, there is now a debate amongst psychologists and educators whether it's healthy for kids to have best friends.

Far better, it seems, to have numerous shallow and marginally-meaningful relationships. You know, because the history of literature is rampant with kids who had best friends and were absolutely miserable.

Meanwhile, as schools get bogged down with having to play all these different roles, they are, far too often, failing to serve in their primary and original role: F#*KING TEACHING KIDS, LIKE, SCHOOL S*#T. It's not remotely fair for us to ask that of them, is it? When they're so busy doing so many other things that weren't ever supposed to be in the job description in the first place?

Teachers. Parents. Neither seem capable of focusing on the most important part of the jobs their titles imply.

The biggest difference: Teachers don't have much choice.