Doing what must be done

You may have heard recently about a mother in Edmond, Okla., who made her daughter stand on a busy street corner holding a sign. Here's a little background in case you didn't.

Meet Tasha Henderson. She has a 14-year-old daughter who is a freshman at Edmond Memorial High, one of the top high schools in Oklahoma.

Coretha, the daughter, has been bringing home C's and D's in all her classes. She is constantly late to class and has a habit of backtalking her teachers.

At her wit's end, Tasha decided that desperate times call for desperate measures. She took her daughter to a busy intersection in Oklahoma City and made her stand on the corner with a cardboard sign that read, "I don't do my homework and I act up on school, so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food."

Way to go Tasha! It's about time parents out there decided to become active in their children's lives and work to make something good out of them.

Let me point out that not once did Tasha leave her daughter unattended at the street corner. She stood there the whole time with her. Since that time, Tasha has been quoted as saying that she has seen a major improvement in her daughter's attitude.

But you can imagine that there were people out there who spoke out, calling radio talk shows and sending letters to local newspapers saying how horrible this woman is for having publicly humiliated her daughter.

Now, let me ask you, what better alternative was there for this situation? I imagine that Tasha had tried grounding and taking away privileges. They made Coretha give up basketball and track because of her grades. Tasha seems like a mother who truly cares about her child and her child's future.

I say making the girl stand on a corner and get a dose of what reality will be like for her if she doesn't straighten up was a very ingenious thing to do. It certainly made more of an impact than say, corporal punishment. I mean, your rear end only stings for a little while, while I'm sure that being forced to hold that sign will remain in that young girl's mind for quite a while.

"The parents of that girl need more education than she does if they can't see that the worst scenario in this case is to kill their daughter psychologically," Suzanne Ball said in a letter to the Oklahoman newspaper.

Are you kidding? Don't you think "kill their daughter psychologically" is taking things a little too seriously? Since when did a little embarrassment turn into psychological murder?

I can think of several times when I have been embarrassed in my life. And do you know what happened during those times? I learned a valuable lesson. You can bet I never did what had embarrassed me again.

So why is this mother receiving such grief? Some really misguided people even called the police with a report of psychological abuse against the mother and the police made the mother-daughter team go home. Then the report was forwarded to the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.

I find that just crazy. This woman is trying to improve her daughter's future, and some people, who probably don't even have children of their own, decide that they don't approve of her parenting skills.

What was this woman to do? Just keep letting her daughter do whatever she wants and completely destroy any chance of a successful future she might have? You can't even get a job at McDonald's without a high school diploma, and the way this girl was headed as a freshman, she wasn't going to graduate.

Enter Donald Wertlieb, a professor of child development at the Eliot-Person Department of Child Development at Tufts University. He says that this type of punishment can "do extreme emotional damage" and that parents should concentrate more on rewarding positive behavior.

"The trick is to catch them being good," he says. "It sounds like this mother has not had a chance to catch her child being good or is so upset over seeing her be bad, that's where the focus is."

That's pretty obvious isn't it? Do you honestly think that we as parents just sit around waiting for our kids to mess up? No.

But when you are watching your child crap her future down the drain because she is too darn stubborn to listen to you or to heed the punishments you have already given her, what are parents supposed to do then, professor? Sit back and let it happen so we won't "embarrass" our kids.

That's all it is: an embarrassment. It's not psychological murder or emotional trauma. Maybe the professors and psychologists should get together and discover that it wasn't until you guys started telling parents that corporal punishment was bad and that we have to make sure that we don't "emotionally" traumatize our children and must respect their right to privacy that tragedies began happening in schools.

Emotionally traumatize? Get a life. If that were the case, I should be locked up in an institution, because, believe me, my parents weren't nice when I did something wrong. But, guess what? I turned out all right.

Right to privacy? This is probably the biggest load of bull I've ever heard. Children have no privacy. That is an unwritten law somewhere. Did I suffer later in life because I had no privacy as a child? Heck no.

I also didn't get the chance to make pipe bombs in my bedroom or plan to take a gun to school and shoot all my classmates without my parents noticing, either. How does that fit into your equation, professor?

Tasha, I think that you did a very good thing for your daughter. One day, she will see that what you did, you did out of love. And she may even have a successful life to attribute to the day that you took an active role in your daughter's life.

Would I want to do that to my daughter? No. But would I if I became desperate enough to make her see she was heading down the wrong path? You bet That's my job.

I want my daughter to have the best life possible and I will achieve that by any means necessary. And I have raised her with enough love in her life that I am 100 percent positive that something like that would NOT damage her for life.

So parents, do what you have to. And let the professor and those like him sit back in their own little bubble world and keep dreaming. Because it's up to us to make our children into successful, productive members of society -- not little whiny babies afraid of getting their feelings hurt.

Sacha Champion may be reached via e-mail at schampion@dailystatesman.com