Remember when Good Morning America featured a mother who had her 6-year-old son arrested for a tantrum after he kicked her?
“I have to make him realize he can’t do this,” said Mattie Ashley, the boy’s mother. “I’m going to do what it takes to stop him and to let him realize that what he’s doing is very serious and he can get into a lot of trouble.”
Did he pick his nose too? Maybe she should call the sanitation department.
Crazy as it sounds, having your little kids arrested is part of a growing parental trend that is showing no sign of abating. The Department of Juvenile Justice reported that over 100 children under the age of seven have been arrested in Florida alone over the past year.
If you ask me, calling the cops on your rowdy tots is not only a waste of resources, but also dangerous. You might think it’s cute to scare your kid straight with the police, but look what can happen when the police are called for help with dealing with the problems of children.
Teenager Tyler Comstock’s dad tried to teach him a lesson about stealing the family truck, but when police arrived and he still refused to turn off the idling engine, they fired six rounds on the unarmed kid and killed him. The family of a mentally ill teenager, Keith Vidal, was having a hard time controlling an outburst when they sought help from the police. Guess what happened 70 seconds after officers arrived on the scene? The police executed their child.
So while parents like the mom in Bismark, ND thinks it’s a rad idea to involve police in minor discipline (her 7-year-old took money from her purse), it’s an unpredictable and potentially deadly path to take. Don’t even threaten your kids with police because they might call your bluff.
Would you have your kid arrested? I used to think I would, but living in the world today, I’d sooner help hide a body than call the cops on my child.
