Sometimes being a parent takes guts

Especially when it comes to straightening your kid out and rejecting the "coddling" mentality of today's child development "experts." Case in point:

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."

"This may not work. I'm not a professional," said Henderson, a 34-year-old mother of three. "But I felt I owed it to my child to at least try."

In fact, Henderson has seen a turnaround in her daughter's behavior in the past week and a half.

Of course, such a tactic was met with some criticism:

"The parents of that girl need more education than she does if they can't see that the worst scenario in this case is to kill their daughter psychologically," Suzanne Ball said in a letter to The Oklahoman.

The fact of the matter is, though, that it's working:

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

An "expert" chimes in:

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."

"Catch them being good." Ugh! I think I'm going to barf. This "expert" apparently wants parents to ignore the bad behavior completely. That is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Yes, praise and reward your kids for being exceptionally good (doing so for every little good thing they do would not only be tedious, but damaging, too), but punish them when they are being bad, too. Children need boundries. They need to know that bad behavior results in punishment. That is, after all, the way the world works. For example, bad behavior at work results in disciplinary action (like getting fired). Employers aren't in the business of "catching employees being good." From the moment a person is hired, their employers expect nothing but good behavior from them. If someone grows up expecting praise and rewards for every little good thing they do, they will be unprepared for the world, where basic good behavior is expected without having to be praised or rewarded for it.

[Tip o' th' chapeau to Muzzy.]