Fed up with her teen's lack of effort, one mom makes her son stand on a busy corner wearing a sign advertising his 1.22 GPA. Tough love, or bad parenting?
By Jennifer Langston
When a Tampa mother found no consequences were strong enough to compel her son to do schoolwork, she took the fight to the street. She wrote his grade point average (1.22) on a posterboard, strung it around his neck and forced him to stand on a busy corner for four hours.
“Honk if I need education,” the sign said, according to the St. Petersburg Times. “People honked,” the paper reported. “Lots of people.”
How did her eighth grader react? He said it made him feel crazy and embarrassed. On the other hand, he admitted he should have been working harder in school.
It’s tempting to dismiss this as just another footnote in the annals of horrible parenting (like the mom who sold her tearful sons’ toys on eBay because they ruined her bathtub). But in this example, the mom isn’t angry at a toddler for crayoning up the furniture or some minor indiscretion.
She seems genuinely scared for her child, and apparently feels like she has no other options, which makes it a different kind of story.
Ronda Holder, a hair stylist and mother of six, never finished high school. She clearly recognizes the importance of an education. Yet her son James Mond III refused to do homework, failed to apply himself in history and math and couldn’t be bothered to pass gym. To her, the equivalent of sticking a dunce cap on her kid and forcing him to wear it in traffic was a tough-love alternative to the kind of life he’d lead without an education or basic skills.
"I don't want any of my kids to stand by the side of the road asking for change," Holder told a reporter.
Shaming a child into changing their behavior is generally considered a poor parenting strategy, rattling around in the bottom of the barrel with bribing and throwing things. The public display of ill-considered parenting raised the eyebrows of Florida child welfare advocates. Fortunately, it also got the attention of school officials, who signed the 15-year-old up for tutoring.
Holder felt drastic measures were required to jolt her son out of his academic stupor. Maybe it’ll work, or maybe he’ll just wind up hating her for it. What do you think?