Reddit and Parents

I joined Reddit a few months ago, quickly becoming aware of what a spectacular timewaster it can be. Especially if you register, filter what you see and start to comment on the stories. And I'm slightly ashamed to say that I really enjoy it. I've enjoyed reading some very intelligent comments from some of the users (although I have to say that there seem to be an equally large contingent of idiots, whose sole aim seems to be to downmod the noobz, and belittle anyone asking questions). In fact, most of my time is not spent on the actual "news" stories (after all, lolcats is hardly newsworthy, now, is it?) but on reading the, sometimes caustic, comments the items generate.

But today there was an article I enjoyed just for the story itself. It concerned a parent who sold her son's XBox after he'd deliberately broken her vacuum cleaner in order to avoid having to do any chores. So I quickly clicked the link for the comments attached to this story, only to find that while there were a number of replies of the "That'll larn him!" type, there were an equal amount of replies stating that this was a complete over reaction on the part of the mother, and she hadn't "won" the battle at all, in addition to which, this was just going to make her surly offspring even more surly. There were even some vague almost-threats, suggesting that the kid would come back with something more dreadful, and if she woke up to find that he'd knifed her in the night, it would be her fault.

OK - this is the question. And I'm not going to pose it on Reddit, where I'd get rude comments for being "dum" (sic).

Why is it considered unacceptable to punish a teenager for willful destructiveness? This kid broke an expensive piece of kit, just so that he wouldn't have to use it to help around the house. The comment about someone whose friend's mum had made her vacuum the house 3 times a day is probably not relevent here - possible, but not really likely. After all, if she were that anal, she probably wouldn't have let him have an XBox in the first place.

I don't believe that smacking a child of this age would work. Few mums can smack hard enough to make a difference, and anyway, there's a whole world of possible complications involving the law, and whether you're allowed to smack children anyway. And don't get me started on how much it hurts to be smacked with a Dr Scholl sandall - remember those wooden ones? Therefore, some punishment which shows the child the cost (I wont say value) of items would seem to be appropriate. I'd say that an XBox for a Vacuum cleaner is a pretty equitable exchange. OK, it would have to have been a fairly pricey vacuum cleaner...

I think that one of the difficulties faced by parents, specifically of this current generation of young louts (and I do speak as a parent, you know), is teaching them not to waste money. When I was growing up I felt the lack of "things" - one year for my birthday I'd requested a Sony casette player so that I could listen to my stuff. I got a cheap alternative, and I can't even remember what make it was. Another year I'd requested a Braun curling tong , and received the very much cheaper model from Boots. You get the drift. I suspect that I'm not alone amongst my peers in feeling this lack. Pennies were tight, and my parents were tighter. In those days, just paying the mortgate and feeding children were sufficient to take pretty much all the earned cash. So, here I am, with consumables cheap enough to deny my children little, the memory of those "cheaper" alternatives still strong in my mind, and I don't WANT to deny them the things that they say they want. But how am I to teach them to value the things I have bought for them?

A few weeks ago my youngest broke something of mine (not so much deliberately, as without thought), and when questioned, suggested that it was "OK - you can just buy a new one!"

And here's the big problem - I don't want to lose my rag, especially if the item in question is a not-very-valuable trinket. But sometimes even a not-very-valuable-trinket can have some senitmental value. Or a rarity, because you don't know where to get another one, and you REALLY liked the one you had.

While I suspect that I, and my parent peers, are in the large part responsible for this kind of behaviour, I'm pretty convinced that we also hold the key to its solution. Where smacking no longer works, maybe hawking our childrens' goodies on online auctions could be the way to go.