Father teaches daughter lesson on Facebook

[Guest shiloh357]

Yes I disapprove of the action and you approve of it. We are both permitted to have an opinion on the issue and you attacked mine so I am now defending it.

Being a good parent requires us to make difficult and very important decisions which have a huge influence on how our kids turn out. Kids usually carry some the traits of their parents ,good and bad , long into adult hood and therefore we need to be very careful what lessons we teach them. The dad in question did well to be strong and forceful in his discipline but failed in maturity just as you have failed when rebutting my opinions by suggesting my attitude is"holier than thou". This speaks volumes of your lack of maturity and explains why you vehemently support the dad in question. So please don't pester me with ignorant and uninformed comments.

You presented a very good way to handle the situation and I fully agree.

The fact remains that the dad in question handled the situation immaturely and ,for the girl to have shown such consistant disrepect ,she has long been lacking good parental discipline.

The man needs councelling on good parenting before it's too late.

The ultimate rebuke of your view is that the dad's actions worked. The girl was not hurt and now even she agrees with what her dad did and sees error of her actions.

The punishment fit the crime. The girl has learned her lesson and the behavior is not going to be repeated. The action he took opened up a dialogue between he and her over what she posts on the Internet. Namely, how that what she posts today may adversel affect her ability to find a good job later, something she had not previously considered.

The charge that he was "immature" is without foudation. Had he responded to her profanily-laced rant by posting his own profanity-laced against her, then you would have a case for saying he was being immature with a tit-for-tat back and forth.

She was using a laptop that HE provided for her. In fact, her actions came on the heels of at $130 of repairs to her laptop that had he had to pay for. She was calling her parents profane names because they made her do some chores. She was a very ungrateful little brat and what he did was within the boundaries of not only good parenting, but took a lot of nerve that most parents would never have.

The fact remains that the dad in question handled the situation immaturely and ,for the girl to have shown such consistant disrepect ,she has long been lacking good parental discipline.

There are no "facts" that he was immature. That is your opinion. There is NOTHING in his actions that demonstrate immaturity. And most good parents disagree with you anyway.

His approach was unorthodox but it was not immature. He had tried other approaches and nothing worked.

The truth here is that you have him in a no win situation. He tried other approaches and when they don't work, you claim she was lacking in good parental discipline, but when he provides discipline that works you call it immature. There is clearly a lot of information you are ignoring, which was made available by the father. AS stated earlier, what he did worked and that is the final and ultimate rebuke of your faulty assessmet of his actions.

[nebula]

I've had some thoughts about this:

Nah. The whole facebook "punishment" was immature.

He said he did that for the sake of her friend "who thought her rebellious [tirade?] was cute," to teach them that words had consequences.

And also to inform parents of what may be going on behind their backs.

I know Americans love their guns

LOL! Not all of us.

If this had occurred in Massachusetts rather than North Carolina, there would likely be a different story.

and if he shot the computer in his back yard at home while the girl was waqtching I would have no problem.

This is what I've been pondering the most.

If it was me, I would much, much rather have a calmed-down father approach me with a shot-up computer and explain what happened rather than a father in the hurt-angered state he was in during the taping of the video and watching him do this. That would leave me with nightmares.

Sledge hammer would have done the trick as well although the method, and lesson taught, of destroying property isn't one I would use.

And that's fine. But I bet there are parents who would have jumped on your case for taking your daughter to the police.

It's easy to be an armchair critic. But you really do not know the girl, the relationship she has with her parents, past troubles, nor how he dealt with those.

Now he did mention how "last time" he used that soft approach, as you originally advocated, and as I pointed out before. And as Refuge pointed out, he did tell her what would happen if she did it again. So, he believed it was necessary for him to do as he said he would.

[nebula]

Kids usually carry some the traits of their parents ,good and bad , long into adult hood and therefore we need to be very careful what lessons we teach them. The dad in question did well to be strong and forceful in his discipline but failed in maturity just as you have failed when rebutting my opinions by suggesting my attitude is"holier than thou". This speaks volumes of your lack of maturity and explains why you vehemently support the dad in question. So please don't pester me with ignorant and uninformed comments.

The way you are judging this father speaks volumes of your character as well.

You presented a very good way to handle the situation and I fully agree.

Armchair criticism is a lot easier to think through than being in the middle of a situation.

The fact remains that the dad in question handled the situation immaturely

This is your opinion. Please do not treat it as fact.

and ,for the girl to have shown such consistant disrepect ,she has long been lacking good parental discipline.

The way you are judging this father speaks volumes of your character.

The man needs councelling on good parenting before it's too late.

He's already been grilled by child protective services. Last I could tell they let him go.

That should tell you something. (Note, child protective services here show no mercy.)

[Guest ninhao]

[The ultimate rebuke of your view is that the dad's actions worked. The girl was not hurt and now even she agrees with what her dad did and sees error of her actions.

The punishment fit the crime. The girl has learned her lesson and the behavior is not going to be repeated. The action he took opened up a dialogue between he and her over what she posts on the Internet. Namely, how that what she posts today may adversel affect her ability to find a good job later, something she had not previously considered.

The charge that he was "immature" is without foudation. Had he responded to her profanily-laced rant by posting his own profanity-laced against her, then you would have a case for saying he was being immature with a tit-for-tat back and forth.

She was using a laptop that HE provided for her. In fact, her actions came on the heels of at $130 of repairs to her laptop that had he had to pay for. She was calling her parents profane names because they made her do some chores. She was a very ungrateful little brat and what he did was within the boundaries of not only good parenting, but took a lot of nerve that most parents would never have.

The fact remains that the dad in question handled the situation immaturely and ,for the girl to have shown such consistant disrepect ,she has long been lacking good parental discipline.

There are no "facts" that he was immature. That is your opinion. There is NOTHING in his actions that demonstrate immaturity. And most good parents disagree with you anyway.

His approach was unorthodox but it was not immature. He had tried other approaches and nothing worked.

The truth here is that you have him in a no win situation. He tried other approaches and when they don't work, you claim she was lacking in good parental discipline, but when he provides discipline that works you call it immature. There is clearly a lot of information you are ignoring, which was made available by the father. AS stated earlier, what he did worked and that is the final and ultimate rebuke of your faulty assessmet of his actions.

You'are making a very presuptuous call saying that the dad's actions worked and I suggest you wait and see how this story pans out some more. If the dad's parenting methods have long term success I'll reconsider my position but up to now we can be sure his parenting hasn't been successful. The proof's in the pudding. Mr Jordan has stated that his daughter saw the reason and accepted her punishment well which is good; however this doesn't mean the punishment or the lesson delivered was good. He could easily have removed her computer and priviledges and obtained the same result but because he had committed to shooting it he needed to follow through. Of course following through with a threat/promise should be tempered with wisdom on whether it was sensible to begin with but I understand in America guns are a normality.

His approach was definitely immature and the fact that he tried other things that hadn't worked doesn't change this. He could easily have kept his word without the facebook scene and his message would have been received loud and clear by his daughter AND everyone she told. It is the parents duty not to take offense and maturely deliver sound and profitable punishment which will yeild good fruit.

I haven't put him in a no win situation at all because he hadn't tried removing priviledghes before as he said himself the amount of media the girl had. You are putting him on a pedestal

simply because you agree with him. He had other options which he chose not to use and you are dismissing this why ?

[Matthitjah]

Here's a quote from the father, Tommy Jordan, after child protective services cleared him because folks thought his approach unwise and called the police on him;

“The kids today ARE self entitled, spoiled, adverse to working, and basically have NO usable skills taught to them in schools,” he opines. “Yes some of you out there excel. If you’ve graduated high school and at least pay some of your own bills, then I’m not talking to you. If you however are 25 and live with your parents because you’re too lazy to get a job, then yes, I’m talking to you. Half of that is the parent’s fault for thinking that the school system is supposed to raise their kids. The other half is a parent’s fault for letting our school systems get to the utterly pathetic state they are in. It’s your kid.. so no matter what it’s ALWAYS your fault.. get it?”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/dad-who-shot-up-daughters-laptop-with-a-45-says-cops-paid-him-a-visit/

[Guest shiloh357]

You'are making a very presuptuous call saying that the dad's actions worked and I suggest you wait and see how this story pans out some more.

Do you really think we are going to hear anymore about this? I am not being presumptuous at all. I htink you meant to say that I was being premature. Presumptuous and premature don't mean the same thing.

The proof's in the pudding. Mr Jordan has stated that his daughter saw the reason and accepted her punishment well which is good; however this doesn't mean the punishment or the lesson delivered was good. He could easily have removed her computer and priviledges and obtained the same result but because he had committed to shooting it he needed to follow through.

Yeah, he had tried the soft method with her, but her actions on FB crossed a line.

Of course following through with a threat/promise should be tempered with wisdom on whether it was sensible to begin with but I understand in America guns are a normality.

Yeah we have guns. But that has nothing to do with it. There was nothing about shooting up the computer that was less than sensible.

His approach was definitely immature and the fact that he tried other things that hadn't worked doesn't change this.

Yoiu are calling his actions immature as if that is a stastement of fact. The problem is that yoiu cannot demonstrate why it is immature. The REAL fact is that it is nothing but your opinion and the overwhelming majority of parental feedback he is getting is positive. You pretty much sit in the minority. You are free have your opinon, but most everyone agrees with what the father did.

He could easily have kept his word without the facebook scene and his message would have been received loud and clear by his daughter AND everyone she told. It is the parents duty not to take offense and maturely deliver sound and profitable punishment which will yeild good fruit.

The offense was public. It is fitting that the punishment be just as public. The punishment fit her act of disoebedience.

I haven't put him in a no win situation at all because he hadn't tried removing priviledghes before as he said himself the amount of media the girl had.

That is wrong. He had previously used taking away privileges including the computer. Here are his exact comments:

"She apparently didn’t remember being talked to about previous incidents, nor did she seem to remember the effects of having it taken away, nor did the eventual long-term grounding seem to get through to her. I think she thought “Well, I’ll just wait it out and I’ll get it back eventually.” Her behavior corrected for a short time, and then it went back to what it was before and worse."

Read more: http://www.litefm.com/pages/news-story.html?feed=421220&article=9744152#ixzz1mMMPP2si

You are putting him on a pedestal simply because you agree with him. He had other options which he chose not to use and you are dismissing this why ?

I am not putting him on a pedastal. The fact is that most parents agree with what he did. He tried other things and they didn't work, as he himself said. You don't have a good grasp on the story.

[Fez]

I think he was wrong to just shoot the computer!

After he shot up the computer, he should have smashed it into a thousand pieces and then made a nice mosaic out of it for the living room wall.

He got his message across, and no one got hurt.

The only danger might be "copycat" parents wanting to cash in on facebook fame. There are some crazies out there.

I just don't think he is one of them.

[winsomebulldog]

[The ultimate rebuke of your view is that the dad's actions worked. The girl was not hurt and now even she agrees with what her dad did and sees error of her actions.

The punishment fit the crime. The girl has learned her lesson and the behavior is not going to be repeated. The action he took opened up a dialogue between he and her over what she posts on the Internet. Namely, how that what she posts today may adversel affect her ability to find a good job later, something she had not previously considered.

The charge that he was "immature" is without foudation. Had he responded to her profanily-laced rant by posting his own profanity-laced against her, then you would have a case for saying he was being immature with a tit-for-tat back and forth.

She was using a laptop that HE provided for her. In fact, her actions came on the heels of at $130 of repairs to her laptop that had he had to pay for. She was calling her parents profane names because they made her do some chores. She was a very ungrateful little brat and what he did was within the boundaries of not only good parenting, but took a lot of nerve that most parents would never have.

The fact remains that the dad in question handled the situation immaturely and ,for the girl to have shown such consistant disrepect ,she has long been lacking good parental discipline.

There are no "facts" that he was immature. That is your opinion. There is NOTHING in his actions that demonstrate immaturity. And most good parents disagree with you anyway.

His approach was unorthodox but it was not immature. He had tried other approaches and nothing worked.

The truth here is that you have him in a no win situation. He tried other approaches and when they don't work, you claim she was lacking in good parental discipline, but when he provides discipline that works you call it immature. There is clearly a lot of information you are ignoring, which was made available by the father. AS stated earlier, what he did worked and that is the final and ultimate rebuke of your faulty assessmet of his actions.

You'are making a very presuptuous call saying that the dad's actions worked and I suggest you wait and see how this story pans out some more. If the dad's parenting methods have long term success I'll reconsider my position but up to now we can be sure his parenting hasn't been successful. The proof's in the pudding. Mr Jordan has stated that his daughter saw the reason and accepted her punishment well which is good; however this doesn't mean the punishment or the lesson delivered was good. He could easily have removed her computer and priviledges and obtained the same result but because he had committed to shooting it he needed to follow through. Of course following through with a threat/promise should be tempered with wisdom on whether it was sensible to begin with but I understand in America guns are a normality.

His approach was definitely immature and the fact that he tried other things that hadn't worked doesn't change this. He could easily have kept his word without the facebook scene and his message would have been received loud and clear by his daughter AND everyone she told. It is the parents duty not to take offense and maturely deliver sound and profitable punishment which will yeild good fruit.

I haven't put him in a no win situation at all because he hadn't tried removing priviledghes before as he said himself the amount of media the girl had. You are putting him on a pedestal

simply because you agree with him. He had other options which he chose not to use and you are dismissing this why ?

This is all the proof anyone who actually watched the video or who has bothered to follow the father's subsequent posts on Facebook needs to read to know that you have not bothered to get the facts of the situation before posting your replies. The father DID try removing her computer before. Another poster provided his words about that. You might want to read them. In fact, you may want to actually do some research before you reply further.

As to your repeated assertions that the fact that she remained rebellious somehow proves that he is a poor parent in need of parenting classes or counseling. You're really going to try to suggest that any parent who has a rebellious and stubborn child is necessarily a bad parent? I find that not only absurd, but insulting to the countless good parents out there who have defiant children in spite of all their efforts to change that attitude.

I should add here that I don't have children. I know that in some minds, that fact immediately nullifies any opinion that I might have. However, I WAS a teen at one time and I remember those years just fine. I also remember how and what my mother taught me and how she reacted in the times that I myself tried to defy her in some way.

I was not a rebellious child. Ever. In my teens, I was just as obedient as I was when a toddler. I loved my mother dearly and respected her more than I can ever say. HOWEVER, I did not grow up in the era of social media. I was still in middle school when personal computers started appearing on the scene. The first computer I ever laid my hands on was a Commodore 64 at school. I was grown and out of the house before I ever actually owned a computer of my own. So Facebook and all the other social sites hadn't even been dreamed up during my teen years. There were no cell phones, either. Not even cordless phones! LOL So, if I was mad at my mom about something - which did happen from time to time because I was a hormonal teen, not a robot - my only real way to vent about it was in a diary or possibly over the phone with a friend. Generally speaking, my temper is the sort that flares quick and hot and burns out within a very short time. Meaning that by the time I would have gotten around to seeing a friend so that I could rant about whatever was bothering me, I'd already gotten over it.

Today, kids have instant and constant access to the internet. They are more connected than I could have even dreamed of being when I was a teen. This means that all the things that often go wrong with teen social behavior can be and are magnified on an unimaginable scale. What might have been one case of someone calling another child an unflattering name at school is now an endless social bombardment of often cruel and terribly hurtful words on Facebook, Twitter, text messages, blogs, YouTube, etc. It can spread like wildfire through a shockingly large number of teens in the blink of an eye. And teens, being who and what they are, often join in simply because they're following a trend.

This girl was not bullying another person, but she was demonstrating a flash of childish whining and complaining that essentially amounts to an online temper tantrum. Only instead of just stomping her feet and screaming, she said hurtful and deliberately insulting and vulgar words about her parents and a close family friend. Again, in typical teen fashion, all her friends "liked" her rant because that's what teens do. They always side with each other in situations like this. This father was not only personally hurt by his daughter's words. His wife was hurt. The family friend was hurt. The girl's mother was hurt. She was beyond inconsiderate. Never mind how whiny and petty she was. And when it came down to it, the father did what he felt was best at the time. I don't think it was immature. I think it was emotional. And I'm not saying that he lashed out at her in an out of control way, either. I simply believe that he was very hurt by her words and reacted in what he felt was the best manner. She'd made a very public mockery of her parents and so he responded in the same public manner. He had plenty of reason to do so. All those friends of hers on Facebook needed to get a reminder of the fact that Facebook is public and that things said there can never truly be taken back.

He never once expected this thing to turn into what it has become. He wasn't seeking public recognition when he posted that video. He just wanted all his daughter's friends to see that actions have consequences. The whole shooting the laptop thing was merely him standing behind his words to her after the last time she'd done something similar. To call him a bad parent simply because his daughter didn't turn into a model child after one instance of disobedience and rebellion is the epitome of arrogance. I am sensible enough to look back at my teen years and know that things might have been very different if I'd had the kind of access to the instant gratification the internet provides. Frankly, as an adult, I still find that I constantly have to censor myself when it comes to what I say publicly online. Sadly, I've just found myself in an instance where I did not do so and someone's feelings got hurt. Teens simply tend to lack that kind of self control. I was very good kid, well behaved, and respectful. But even I would probably have had more than one instance of lashing out in an inappropriate manner if I'd had a computer and access to the internet. That in no way means my mother was a bad parent. It just means that teens are still children and still in need of guidance and correction.

It's all fine and well for some to sit in your chairs behind your computers and talk about how you would have done it all so very differently. It's easy to call this man a bad father when you don't know him or his daughter or their family. And it's incredibly easy - judging from all the responses that have done so - to make a wild range of predictions about how "traumatized" his daughter will be by his "violent" and "uncontrolled" actions. As he himself said, he and his daughter spent a lot of time laughing at the numbers of people who predicted that she'd have no other prospect for the future other than sinking into a degrading job as a stripper, and all because of how horrible a parent her father is.

The fact is, the daughter is just fine. He even offered her the opportunity to respond via Facebook but she declined. She was disrespectful and rebellious, yes, but she isn't some wildly out of control monster any more than her father is. They are merely a typical family that has had one single moment of their lives thrust into global focus. I defy anyone to look back through their entire lives and say that there is no single incident or moment that would have elicited most of the same responses if it were suddenly yanked out of context and displayed on a global stage. Not one time in your life have you ever lost your cool for even a moment and said or done something that would have perfect strangers calling you all sorts of bad things if that's the ONLY thing they knew of you? Not one time has your child EVER done the exact same thing they've done before? Meaning they have only ever done a wrong thing one time before "learning their lesson" and thus NEVER repeating that same behavior in any way, shape or form? Because according to some of you, if your child has ever committed the same bad behavior more than once, that means you are a bad parent in need of parenting counseling.

Basically, I don't know this man any more than anyone else outside of his family and/or close circle of friends knows him. I do know that from everything I've read that he's said, he seems to be just a normal guy with a decent head on his shoulders and a strong love for his family. He's got strong convictions and isn't afraid to stand behind them. He regrets the media firestorm his video caused and freely admits that there are a couple of things he would change if he could go back and do so. Posting it isn't one of them, though. In spite of how uncomfortable he is with how this whole mess has impacted his family. (Incessant phone calls, harassing reporters, creepy internet stalkers and unknown numbers of weirdos who are now pretending to be him and/or his family all across the internet.) He didn't ask for or expect any of that. And he doesn't deserve it any more than he deserves the countless numbers of "armchair parents" out there who are judging him based on a handful of highly emotional minutes taken out of his entire life.

[nebula]

Bravo, Winsomebulldog!

[winsomebulldog]

Bravo, Winsomebulldog!

Thanks. I've put away my soap box.