Do you believe that this is good parenting?

Mom says she is a little soft lately. A taxidermist could take care of that.

First, I don’t know why they even mention that the parents are body builders.

Second, knee jerk reaction was that it was mean, but I don’t know what led up to it. Was it after weeks and months of continuously defiant behavior? And it’s not like she was out of ear shot.

I saw a program once about boot camps for rebellious teenagers.
I had a sister who was rebellious to the nth degree. She would have benefited from such a boot camp, I think. She thought she could always get her way and everything would be fine. She tromped on other people, their feelings, stole their personal things, lied….she was (and still is, IMO) a mess.

@Dutchess_III: “First, I don’t know why they even mention that the parents are body builders.”

This type of writing always reminds me of this great Onion article.

Not parenting as I would do it.
Losing custody? No way.

Oh, I do love the Onion! “Lassally, heading home after visiting with other homosexuals,”

@josie I agree with not losing custody. The kid was 14, not 4. And she was within earshot. And again, who knows what all led up to it? Why did the parents feel they needed to teach her a lesson about homelessness?

Oh please! .”...he collapsed on the lawn, exhausted and gay.“_ PLEASE! I need a new keyboard!

If you’ve never experienced a rebellious teenager to the ^100th power….well, all I can compare it to is standing on the edge of Dante’s Hell, and looking down into the burning caldron, wondering if she’s going to jump, or she’d going to push you or….

“Parents” is right. I’ll leave question of custody to professionals, but no, this is nowhere near good parenting.

Nobody could really say what the punishment should be without knowing all the details, and it’s not likely the article’s author knows all the details, either, as it’s not public information.

I’ve seen parents do way, way worse things and not lose custody. Parents used to say to me, when faced with their court order or marching orders from DSS, “My friend did such and such and they didn’t have to do this.” I used to tell them that their friend was not likely to tell them all the details, so it’s comparing apples to oranges.

I don’t agree with those tactics at all. What’s wrong with banishing/grounding the kid to their own bedroom for a few days, or even a week, but a tent in the woods, no.
Pretty extreme.
I wonder if they send her there when she has her periods too. lol

Stealing a Pop tart, so the teen can’t even decide to have a harmless snack without clearing it with the parents either? What, is she only allowed to eat Kale chips and carrot sticks because they pass muster with her control freak body builder parents?
Pffft!
They need to let go and get a handle on their control issues , they have no business mandating what a teen child can eat unless the kid is eating extremely unhealthy all the time.

We don’t know all the background, @Coloma. After days and weeks of an issue building up, it can explode over nothing. I mean, you know that.

Also, from my experience, had my parents banned my sister to her bedroom, she would have snuck out and run away. Then we’d all be worried we were going to find her in a ditch (which we actually did a few times. Passed out drunk and thrown out of some guy’s car into a ditch. She was 13.) At that age, you can’t make them do what you want them to do if they don’t want to do it.

I’m not saying I agree with it, but we just don’t know the back ground.

@Dutchess_III True, but it is still extreme. I don’t think they should lose custody but some family counseling might be in order. Leaving the kid in a tent out in the woods opens up all sorts of potential risks to her safety. It really sounds to me as if they are trying to bend her will to suit their agenda and teens need freedom to make their own choices.

When my daughter was being rebellious at age 15–16 I just sent her to her dads. lol

Yeah, we tried sending my sister to my Dad’s in California. Two weeks, they sent her back.

@Dutchess_III “After days and weeks of an issue building up, it can explode over nothing. I mean, you know that.”

The question is not whether these guys are bad parents, though. It is whether what they did is bad parenting – as in, a bad technique. Their actions could be called bad while still being understandable. We might all be tempted to send this kid to live in the woods. Some of us would do it – but none of us would be right in doing so. My take, not necessarily yours.

Pop Tart, sounds like rather appropriate nicknames for her Mom & Dad.

I agree it was over the top. And since she stayed there (my sister would have run and it would have been days before we found her) tells me it probably wasn’t the right thing to do.

It does depend where the woods are. Where I live, the kid would be in no danger. If she had been breaking house rules repeatedly perhaps her parents felt it was time to remove the privilege of living in said house. Or it could be a complete overreaction. We need more info.

Well, was it the last Pop Tart?

@cookieman and maybe she’d just scoffed the last of the cookies.

@Earthbound_Misfit: Oh no, for that she’d be banished for a month. ;^)

All articles I found said there were wild hogs (which can be extremely dangerous) in the woods, some articles say it was a ¼ mile from the house, all articles state that it was during a thunderstorm, all articles state that it was because the girl simply snacked on a pop tart without permission. Bad parenting? Yes, no question.

Must of been one hell of a pop tart. Maybe it was a special home made steroid enhanced pop tart. Or maybe the family is on a strict body building diet.

Okay, let’s look at the facts.
**The girl was banished to a tent in the woods, not to the woods with a tent.
**She spent 2 days in the woods, meaning one night. Officers visited 2 days in a row, and weren’t alarmed enough the first day to take action. Possible that the parents only intended her to stay out one night.
**The child was fed (and not disgusting protein shakes!).
**Means of emergency communication was provided (whistle).
**Likely the story was overblown (taken national) to imply that, yes, South Carolinian’s are body builders neanderthals that murder blacks, fly the confederate flag, and feed their children to wild hogs.
**Driggers is a near homonym for Duggars.

Should the child be taken away from the parents? Only interviews with the family could determine that. If the parents feel they have lost control of the girl, or the girl feels abused, temporary state custody might be in order. Likely similar to finding out “how it would be to be homeless”?

I took a scientific poll. The neighbor girls said “Cool!” My cousin’s daughter said she’s going to eat a Pop Tart and see what happens. My daughter whined that I haven’t taken her camping in a long time. I couldn’t find any kids who thought it was a threatening scenario. Some of the kids were very little, some were grown.
My brother had to camp in sub freezing weather when he was about that age to get one of his scout badges. Maybe I was overly upset by this story at first.

@Here2_4 Nah, not necessarily. None of us have any idea how the parents treated her on a regular basis, so maybe the girl had every reason to be so upset by it. No idea if it’s true or not, but another article mentioned that about a month prior to that, they had punished the same child by implementing a “No entering the house between 8am and 8pm” rule.

I think taking her away was probably extreme – unless other evidence suggested it was a good idea – but I stand by the fact that I think it was a stupid punishment for eating a pop tart without permission.

They gave the girl a WHISTLE for emergency contact? LMAO, oh that whistle will come in handy right before the bear eats her little pop tart covered face off. Ridiculous, a whistle!

@DoNotKnow @Dutchess_III Lassally is a jerk.