Is Common Sense Parenting A Thing Of The Past?

Remember being 14 and refusing to go to bed when told? Remember begging your parents to let you stay up?: "Not yet! Another half-hour! Please!" And remember your mother saying something like, "Now means NOW, not five minutes from now," and you replying, "Oh, c'mon, Mom! Just one commercial?"

And then remember your mother calling 911 because you wouldn't listen to her?

No? Me neither.

But that's exactly what a Boston woman recently did when she couldn't get her 14-year-old to stop playing Grand Theft Auto and go to sleep. From the Huffington Post:

Police spokesman Officer Joe Zanoli said Monday the mother called for help around 2:30 a.m. Saturday to say that the teenager also walked around the house and turned on all the lights.

Two officers who responded to the house persuaded the child to obey his mother.

Zanoli says the mother's 911 call over video game obsession "was a little unusual, but by no means is it surprising – especially in today's day and age when these kids play video games and computer games."

Wait. Let me get this straight: She's not the first woman to ever call 911 in an effort to get her kid to go to bed? Her call wasn't "surprising ... in today's day and age"?

Granted, since I don't have kids, I might be a little out of the loop when it comes to modern-day parenting. But I'm pretty sure that even the most frustrated moms with the most devilish kids don't routinely call the cops when they need help with discipline. Besides, what the heck happened to common sense and the ability of an angry parent to deprive his kids of what those kids love the most?

Let me tell you what would have happened if I tried to pull that crap in my house when I was 14:

(NOTE: Since video games hadn't yet been invented, and since I was no angel, let's pretend I was cleaning my bong — a three-foot-tall tubular device that my parents thought was a fancy incense burner.)

Mom: "Kim, stop polishing that thing and go to bed. It's late."

Me: "No."

Mom: "I'm only telling you once more: Get in bed. Now!"

Me: "Yeah... No."

Mom: "FIne. Deal with your father."

(Mom leaves. Dad enters.)

Dad: "Get in bed, or I"m going to throw that tower of stink across the room."

Me: "But I'm almost ready to bur..."

Dad: "I don't care if you're on the verge of curing cancer..."

Me: "Just one more min ..."

Dad: "You heard me."

Me: "I ..."

[CRASH! BANG! CRACK!]

Dad: "That's the end of that!"

Yep, sure was.

Comments

[Tracy]

My brother and I used to fight over who got more ice cream if we had some for a treat.

My dad constantly told us to stop.

One night when we were bickering he comes in the kitchen and says sternly, "Give me your bowl!" Down the drain goes my brother's. "Give me YOUR bowl!" Down the drain goes mine. "Get the ice cream out of the fridge." "No, daddy!" "Get the god-damn ice cream out of the fridge!" Down the drain goes the rest.

"There, now you both have the same amount. None." And he walked out of the kitchen.

My dad rocks.

I wish I were that good.

[Tammi L. Coles]

I couldn't agree with you more, Kim. Some taxpayers paid to raise that woman's child using a dispatch center, cop cars and peace officers when a well-applied "don't make me tell you again" with *The Eye* should have done the trick.