Tell me I am not the only one who thinks these parents need some serious detention (or a sound horse-whipping, whichever you'd prefer):
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ABC News (Jan. 4) -- At a high school in McKinney, Texas, officials say a group of five cheerleaders recently got out of control. Dubbed the "Fab Five," they acted like they could get away with almost anything and refused to bend to authority. They repeatedly skipped class, insulted their instructors, and terrorized their coach, their fourth coach in just one year. The Fab Five even posted sexually suggestive pictures of themselves on MySpace, but that still wasn't enough for the school to take their pompoms away.
In an exclusive interview with "Good Morning America," Michaela Ward, the coach that the Fab Five drove out, said the girls were beyond discipline. "Unfortunately these girls were given power that any teenager would have completely abused. They were untouchable. They were invincible. The rules did not apply to them," Ward said. "There was no accountability. They knew that I had absolutely no power to discipline." The school finally took action. Now, two questions are being asked: What took so long? And who is to blame?
Some are pointing fingers at the mother of the clique's ringleader, who was also the school's principal. "This culture developed where the principal's daughter and her friends were above consequences," said attorney Harold Jones, who was hired by the school district to look into complaints about the cheerleaders. In his report, Jones found the girls' influence at their high school was pervasive. There seemed to be no limits to their shenanigans. "They took my cell phone and sent dirty text messages to my husband and to another coach," Ward said. Though Ward was the cheerleading coach, she felt incapable of disciplining the girls. "Everything I did, I was undermined by the principal and the administration. I was never kept in the loop," she said.
"Right after some risque photos are placed on MySpace in their cheerleader uniforms and they're on probation, it takes a whole week to decide that they won't be kicked off the squad," Jones said.
In December, the principal resigned as part of a settlement in which she received $75,000 and a letter of recommendation for her next job. The former principal's attorney says she denies shielding her daughter from punishment. But Jones says it wasn't just the principal who was at fault. He says the entire school administration and parents who didn't enforce the rules are also to blame. "Kids are going to be kids. They're going to figure out ways to push your limits," Jones said. "Adults have to be adults." Rosalind Wiseman, an educator on teens and parenting, and author of the book "Queen Bees and Wannabee's," sees the Texas cheerleading debacle as part of a wider problem with kids and power. "This is about kids having more power than adults, and them getting away with things no matter how old they are," she said. Wiseman said that if parents wanted to prevent their kids from running amok, they couldn't be afraid to punish them. "Some parents today feel that their No. 1 job is to protect their child, and it's not," she said. "Their job is to raise an ethical child, which means holding them accountable for bad behavior."
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Oh, my stars. I have zero trouble believing that these accusations against the cheerleaders and probably the mother/principal are true. Kids will do whatever they're allowed to do. This has been the same throughout many generations. Lots of older folks today complain that the kids these days are running wild and are much worse than kids of their own era. I'll tell you from experience and observation that it's VERY rarely the kid who's at fault. Kids have not changed one bit. It's the PARENTS who have changed. Parents went from expecting their children to act right (and producing consequences when they didn't), to wanting their kids to FEEL good, no matter what the consequences would be for their child's future or society as a whole. You would not believe the crap I would hear from teenagers and grown-ups alike (sometimes I still hear it from my current youth, but less so) when I was teaching junior and high school. I was expected to place zero obligations on these students, and to ignore repeated flaunting of my rules and school rules. I, too, was undermined and ignored by the school administration and the parents. Students told me constantly that they'd only respect me if I respected them. Unfortunately, their version of "respecting them" consisted of not marking them tardy, not caring if they brought homework in, passing them despite consistent test failure and lack of class participation, and ignoring their in-class conversations. If I called them on any of that, I was "disrespecting" them. Seriously.
So do any of you have experiences with this? I'm expected in my current job as a youth pastor (and also the fact that God has directed me to) to do right by teenagers - to show them God's love and a consistent adult presence who cares about their lives. It makes me crazy to see some of their parents not doing the same: allowing them to run all over the neighborhood, not giving them intelligent consequences when they mess up. And at home: Don't worry, if for some reason you ever have to discipline my son or other potential future children - I will NEVER be that mom who says, "No way... not
MY son. He'd never do that." It takes a village, people. And that, my friends, is just about the only point I'll concede to
Hillary Clinton on.
******THIS JUST IN******
After I posted this, I took a look at the main blog page (what you're seeing now) and the Jack Handy Deep Thought at the time was this: "A man doesn't automatically get my respect. He has to get down in the dirt and beg for it."
Those are words to live by.
