Parenting Horror Stories

Some years ago, an audience participant on our Talk About Parenting with Shirlee Smith Cable TV show proclaimed, “ You need a driver’s license to drive. You need a license to own a dog. . . “

Of course she went on to wonder why society doesn’t have some similiar regulation for those wanting to parent.

Was the woman actually suggesting government and municipalities regulate our God-given right to produce the wonderful little likenesses of ourselves?

Maybe?  Maybe not. Absurd?  Maybe we’d better think about this.

One of this week’s parenting headline horror stories (and there are several every week), is all about the mom who hired pole dancers for her son’s sixteenth birthday party.

South Glens Falls Police arrested Judy Viger, 33, a New York mother, and charged her with 5 counts of endangering the welfare of a child.

While the story is headlines now, the party was reported to have been held back in November at a local bowling center.

News reports say that Viger is accused of hiring two women to dance with – and on – teens at the party. Pictures emerged from the party on-line, some showing  a “scantily clad, tattooed, woman clinging upside down to a seated teen.”

In interviews with several witnesses and parents,  they’ve said that some of the partygoers (children) at the party were only 13.

Viger has been ordered to appear in court next month.  Will her long blond hair, fair skin and blue eyes make the charges filed against her seem somewhat lesser when she appears before the judiciary body ?

Reports don’t indicate whether this foolish mom had either a driver’s license or a dog that was licensed, but according to what’s been written about her, she definitely seems like a worthy candidate for some kind of governmental regulation that would require her to have training for an official certification allowing her to raise children.

Will Viger claim there was  no harm in the birthday surprise she provided?  Of course she will, and why shouldn’t she?  Who or what was in place to teach her that the strippers were both illegal and immoral?

When thinking about this mom’s lack of common sense and lack of being aware of the laws that govern parent-child responsibility, we all really need to examine ourselves and ask how we came to know that which we know.

Too many young people grow into their role of being a parent without the benefit of having been raised by parents who had a formula for delivering success.

Would life be better for our kids if there was an educational component required, maybe in high school, that provided basic parenting skills, rather than allowing people to become  parents who bungle the job but perhaps are doing the very best that they know?

Good parenting isn’t as precise a skill as being a good driver, and the requirements for owning a dog don’t at all cover what we need as parents.