Thumper Thinks Out Loud

Your twelve year old son is arrested for engaging in a little act of vandalism; he's caught in the act of drawing (or spray painting) stick figures on a drainage ditch. The police cuff him, confiscate his bicycle, and take him to the police station where he's fingerprinted, photographed, and then made to wait while you are contacted about his arrest.

Do you:

a) Whine that your 12 year old son doesn't even know what tagging is, and besides it was just a stick figure with boobs, and one with a penis.

b) Whine that the boy pleaded to be taken home but was still taken to the police station, and when you get there they make you wait to see him for "what seems like hours" and then when you see him he's sitting there, whimpering. The poor baby.

c) Declare that even though he was released without being charged, including releasing his bike,that the whole thing was "absurd."

d) Praise the police for potentially nipping any criminal impulses your son might have in the bud, possibly saving him from deeper trouble later on in life, teaching him that there are consequences to actions, and that you have to suck it up and pay the price if you do harm to other peoples' property?

You get three choices, and none of them are D.

At least, that seems to be the case for one mother in Texas. Her precious baby boy was caught red handed defacing property that was not his own, and apparently breaking the law was not reason enough for him to be cuffed and taken to the police station. She's letting the whole mess be known because, "I feel like I’m standing up for something important by putting this out there."

Really?

Based on the article, what I see is a kid who now knows that he can break the law and Mommy will come rushing in to defend her precious progeny. I see an opportunity to really ingrain in a kid that you don't do something stupid without expecting to pay the price for it thrown away. I see a parent blinded to the obvious...she was gifted a wake up call and refused to pick up the phone. Her son broke the law, but walked out of that station without being charged and without a record to follow him around. And she's complaining.

The Boy was 12 once. I can be pretty sure that if a cop showed up at the door and said he'd been picked up for graffiti and was being held at the station, I would have let him stew there for a bit. I wouldn't have been especially sympathetic to his whimpering when I got there, and I would have embraced the justness of how the lesson he was learning had been imparted, not whining to the world about how my precious snowflake had his feelings hurt because he was actually put in cuffs and detained for, gosh, breaking the law.

Oh, and lady...your son is twelve. He knows what tagging is, by evidence of his actions. You need to pull your head out of your ass before he decides to try something worse, because he's going to expect you to come running, but next time it might not be so easy.

And we wonder why kids seem to be more immature these days...