Humiliation Helps

Work is really doing a number on my blogging time!

I saw a whole lot of articles yesterday that caught my eye. Did I save them? No.

There were two stories in particular that were in the same vein. One woman had an ex-boyfriend set a mattress on fire against her apartment door, because she was seeing another man. In the time since the fire, she and the arsonist got married. She figured he must have really loved her to do something that drastic.

The other story was about a woman who married a man who had beat the carp out of her earlier.

Loser women with a death wish. Ugh! Don't get me started.

But one story I saw yesterday, and didn't save, popped up this morning on AOL News when I booted up. It's about a girl whose mother humiliated her. Great story, but boy oh boy, does it show how far the psychological professionals have strayed from good old common sense. (Truth-in-Blogging Note: I have a Bachelors degree in Psychology.)

The AP reported yesterday:

Tasha Henderson got tired of her 14-year-old daughter's poor grades, her chronic lateness to class and her talking back to her teachers, so she decided to teach the girl a lesson.

She made Coretha stand at a busy Oklahoma City intersection Nov. 4 with a cardboard sign that read: "I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food."

The result?

Tasha Henderson said her daughter's attendance has been perfect and her behavior has been better since the incident.

Coretha, a soft-spoken girl, acknowledged the punishment was humiliating but said it got her attention. "I won't talk back," she said quietly, hanging her head.

She already has been forced by her parents to give up basketball and track because of slipping grades, and said she hopes to improve in school so she can play next year.

The other result? Psychologists and psycho-wannabe's running amok.

One letter to the editor of The Oklahoman warned that Coretha's parents could be "kill[ing] their daughter psychologically."

A passing motorist called the police to report the incident as psychological abuse, but the police said there was no crime. They turned it over to the Department of Human Services, in case DHS wanted to follow up, but a DHS spokesman said it wouldn't get high priority.

Finally--and this is the one that takes the cake for me--Donald Wertlieb, a professor of child development at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University, warned that such punishment could do extreme emotional damage. He said rewarding positive behavior is more effective.

"The trick is to catch them being good," he said. "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."

Oh please! Raising children in this culture is a war. Parents have to fight against the entertainment, fashion, music culture and all the peer pressure that comes with it. There is a time and place for Quiet Diplomacy, and there's a time for Shock and Awe.

These critics of Tasha Henderson's successful attempt to bring her daughter around seem to believe that Tasha hadn't already tried all the rest of the options. They think that a parent can reward good behavior while letting the child keep on going to heck in a handbasket, and everything will be fine. That's psychobabble at its worst.

Tasha's Shock and Awe campaign did the trick in only an hour and a half, and now Coretha is on the road to responsibility and success in life. Way to go, Tasha!