Author Topic: Should you hold your child accountable?  (Read 8054 times)

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Offline Oscar

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Should you hold your child accountable?
« on: February 11, 2014, 02:34:37 AM »
After a teenager escaped prison because he was suffering from affluenza the question for many parents is: Should I hold my child accountable for his or hers actions?

I saw a blog why it could be more damaging for the child to use accountability as parenting tool:

Quote from: Rotsne's Blog
Raising affluenza teenager is way better than raising a teenager with consequence.

In Greene County it is better to ignore crime than stopping it.

Right now a young woman will have to serve about a year in jail for social profiling. Fact is that there was no alternative to the path she went down at; mostly because she has been held accountable from day one. Every time she acted out like most teenagers do she suffered consequences. Is that better than the destiny Ethan Couch suffered when he was sentenced to a five star rehab for killing 4 people and injuring even more as result of a traffic accident where he drove under influence? Is that the only thing positive that none has died as result of the young woman’s actions?

She has been sentenced for 5 felonies. To understand why she was hit so many charges let us look at her background.
She was born into a marriage which since has dissolved. She has half-siblings on both her side and father’s side. When the parents broke up she was used as a tool in the divorce; Claims of abuse from one of her step-fathers is also to be found on the Internet. It is not to say whether these claims were real or not. They could just as well be a part of the divorce process.

She lost a little sister when she was around 10 years old. Her mother died aged very young in her mid-thirties. Was both tragedies ever handled with therapy or was she just pushed on in life? A lot speaks for the argument that she wasn’t allowed to grieve or deal with the losses in a professional environment.

She started to distance herself from her stepmother and father when she was 13 or 14. The stepmother steadily provoked her so she could open up. Unfortunately not in a professional way, so the attempts ended one day when the daughter hit back. She ended up in juvenile detention.

From that point the relationship in the family went downhill. She was sent to private foster care, she was sent to a treatment home. When one of the therapists came close to finding a diagnose her father and step-mother redrew her from the therapy at this therapist and found another where they could so to say purchase a name for the problems of the daughter they liked.

The treatment center couldn’t find out what the problems were and she passed through a very strict program in record time. We have to question whether they could have solved the problems if they were informed of the diagnose the therapist the parents fired had found out.

The daughter started to live a double life. She knew that she had to stick it out until she was 18. Unfortunately a teenage thing hit her. She fell in love.

The police arrested her for hanging out in the wrong place. In some cultures the authorities conduct a war on youth. Where civilized countries allow teenagers to drink alcohol when they are about 16 the country where the girl lives demands that young adults have to be 21. It is an obscene limit only seen in the darkest cultures in the Middle East. Here in Denmark most parents would be proud to pay a fine for their children when they make false papers so they can enter night clubs. I just paid one for my son. I understand that it is a felony in the United States to falsify papers. I only have to say that it sound like you lost the war on terrorism when such a childish crime is counting as a felony. I was her first felony.

Now where she was in the focus of the police the choices made by the boyfriend dragged her even deeper down towards a full life behind bars. The parole officer decided to arrest her based on reports from her home destroying her work career just before she could have used it as an opportunity to make it a more permanent line of work.

When she was released from prison she finally had reached the age of 18 and could leave her home. Unfortunately she went to live with her boyfriend who was busy creating a street name for him. A choice which bears the cost of being put in jail in order to increase respect and street credit. It is kind of sad that the boyfriend didn’t have the decency to inform her that she should keep her distance while he was working on his goal in life.

As result she has been unfairly targeted by the authorities. Let us look at the charges brought against her.

First there is the charge of receiving stolen property. She was out for dinner in town with her boyfriend. When they were about to pay the boyfriend robbed the restaurant they ate in. Without masks and easy to recognize because they had been customers at the restaurant for an hour she protested. Not only did she protest! She went after her boyfriend and took the money back to the restaurant after telling her boyfriend to F… off. When the police came she believed that he had been so smart to run as far away from town as possible. She wasn’t aware that he had hit in the garden. The police charged her of obstruction of justice despite the fact that she did everything in her power to stop the crime and reclaim the money the boyfriend stole. That was Felony number 2.

Later he brought her things earned at work. It turns out that the items were stolen as his work was crime. Another felony was added.

Obstruction of justice one year in jail and because she is not Lindsay Lohan with expensive lawyers she made the one mistake she properly could have undone. She went to Florida with her boyfriend trying to establish a new life down there. That was Felony number 4.

For that purpose she borrowed her grandmother’s old car. Because she couldn’t drive with license the boyfriend drove for her. The car went missing. Stealing from an elderly lady was Felony number 5.

She understood that she had to lay low. She also worked hard to repay her grandmother who had put up the bond for her. Unfortunately the boyfriend wasn’t so smart. The local police found both her and the boyfriend. While the local police knew that she was on the most wanted list back home they didn’t care to take her too. She had to make the choice to turn herself in or remain on the run. She made the choice to return where she could have moved on to a new life. Maybe she regrets this now.

She was booked in august and remained in prison until November where another county wanted her for some old misdemeanors from when she was a minor. Without legal assistance nothing was done to consolidate the charges from no less than 3 counties.

The boyfriend had been sentenced to two years in jail. She was out on probation and started to rebuild her life. She got her hard earned high school diploma, tried to find work but it was not easy because her old probation officer had done the best to destroy it. She approached the local career center. It was then she was hit with one last incident with the police. An old friend – a so-called recovered alcoholic – invited her to a bar. Because her genetics is not like young Danes who have Viking roots her system wasn’t prepared to a normal intake of alcohol. She fell asleep and the friend found a man who offered them transport home in a snowplow. For unknown reasons the former addict decided that it was time to commit a DUI and as result she was hit with new charges because she participated in a crime while she was sleeping. But most seriously she violated probation in sleep.

Because she violated probation in sleep she was sentenced for all 5 felonies and will have to remain in state prison until February 2015.

That is the result when you hold your child accountable could one conclusion be. Another conclusion could be that your child is sentenced according to the amount of money you spend on legal assistance. Believing that Texas is a democracy with justice for everyone I don’t buy that. I will use the lessons learned by both the young woman and Ethan Couch raising my own children. I will stop putting my foot down and prevent them from traveling to Prague next year when the students have their annual binge drinking holiday.


Sources:
Ethan Couch
EPOD NEWS – June 2013 (Police report mentioning the incident where she got the cash her boyfriend stole)
Women Attempt Slow-Speed Getaway in Snow Plow (Yahoo news)

« Last Edit: February 11, 2014, 02:39:17 AM by Oscar »