While the jury's still out on whether playing video games lead to violence, one thing is clear: some people deserve to have their video games taken away from them. Here's the story of one 19-year-old teen who attacked his mom with a taco when she unplugged his Xbox:
Dena Moir, 54, told deputy sheriffs she called her 19-year-old son Zachary several times to come downstairs for dinner Tuesday. When he didn't respond, she went upstairs and unplugged his Xbox. She told deputies her son pushed her, called her names and ordered her out of his room.
The woman said she was cleaning the kitchen when her son came down to eat and that she pushed him to the side because he was in her way. At that point, deputies said, the man smacked his mother on the left arm, called her more offensive names and threw his taco in her face.
"I don't think he believed I'll call," the woman told a 911 dispatcher when she called the Sheriff's Office. "He's done this plenty of times before and I've never called."
The unruly teen is now in jail: Link - via Arbroath | Side discussion: Do video games cause violent behavior?
(Photo: Volusia County Sheriff's Office)
I'd have smashed the little bastards Xbox to be quite honest.
But seriously, a mom using the police to correct her failed raising of her own son? She gets the kids she deserves.
I say throw her in the cell next door.
And yes, Woogie, I would have backed over that Xbox with my car several times to make a point.
that aside, that's a very surreal headline.
I think her calling the law was more than justified.
She should have told the law to give him a boot camp haircut while in the lockup.
Ali S. - You got that right! Mine wouldn't have killed me. After I dug the hole I'd have to pull all the dirt back on top of myself. GGGGGGGGG
EB - I'd make the jerk watch as I drove over it! Then I'd make him put all the pieces in the trash.
And you're right. He's 19 and big enough and ugly enough to stop leeching off his parents and acting like the entitled little jerk that he is.
I'm so glad I am not a parent. In today's wishy washy soft society, I would be pinned as the mean mother on the block. I wonder when people will get tired of raising a bunch of soft, entitled, whining little crotchfruit and start actually disciplining their kids.
I was amazed at this show I watched the other day about a British family considering a move to Australia, and the little girl said she would make her parents' life miserable if they moved. Since when do children have the right to be a part of those sorts of decisions. If I'd said that I would have been in so much trouble that now at 35, I would have still been grounded.
I don't know why it's such a popular notion that children be seen and not heard, or preferably neither seen nor heard. Teach a person from the get-go that their opinions and feelings are subordinate to the whim of others, teach them to be powerless and accept it as normalcy and you will reap one of two results: they will grow into a weak and fearful adult (and we already have millions of those), or they will rebel to assert themselves as an independent human being.
The more knee-jerky, B&W-insistent of you will assert this means I fall into the "children are angels" camp, but you'd be mistaken... I merely believe many people don't have a clue how to be responsible human beings, and though this particular kid is old enough to be making some effort to take care of himself (I'll cut him some slack given the economy), I can't find fault with him without finding even greater fault with the mother. I don't advocate boot camps, either, which are only institutions for force-feeding the belief in personal powerlessness.
"Discipline" isn't a synonym for "punishment." It means to encourage orderly conduct for instruction. If you aren't getting the results you want, try something different, not more of the same.
My brother and I made my mother cry by just being mean little nasties once (and only once) when we were young teenagers. After two hours of being yelled at by my father, we went to the house and apologized profusely. My father's voice was so booming there were jokes about how he could shake the urine from bladders by focusing the sound-waves.
I got up the next day at 5 am to go to my martial arts instructors house for training. He too had found out about it, and when I got there, he was standing outside with his head gear on. 2 hours of full-contact sparring. His punches and kicks rained down especially hard that day. The next day was Wednesday... youth group. Pastor lectured my brother and I for an hour... and the list goes on.
They deserve each other.
The key, I have found, is that once you have issued an ultimatum, you never, ever, EVER go back on it. If they were being little idiots in the back seat on the way to a movie when they were younger, and I told them to quit or I would turn the car around and go home, that is exactly what I did, even though it made me feel like a complete creep at the time, because it made them so sad. I knew it was for the best. And, it usually took only one lesson lesson of that magnitude. People don't seem to understand that it is all about trust. My children trust my decisions, and kids need the security of parental authority. What could be scarier to a small child than to find itself in power over the ones that they perceive as ultimate protective giants?
Parenthood is not easy, and I think too many take the seemingly easy way out with their kids, because who wants to see your kid miserable? Who wants to be the 'bad guy' to your children? So, they give in. And later, they pay and pay and pay for it.
The idea that she would have been better off having hit, beaten and/or terrorized him as a child to create a better, more respectful son is baloney. I never hit either of my kids and they treat me, others and the world with great respect (and my son is 23, so his personality is pretty well proved I think.)
Not in any way to defend this jerky kid but weren't you ever in the middle of a game at an 'unsaveable' spot that you'd worked hard toward winning? I think I'd be pretty annoyed if someone just turned off my computer/game whatever...and then shoved me!
And to call the police over a tossed taco? How much you want to be this family ends up on Cops.
Like others have noted, I am really discouraged by the way teens and kids treat adults nowadays. If not respect, there at least used to be a healthy fear that seems totally absent now.
I don't believe in smacking kids around for respect, but neither am I against spanking when it isn't taken to the level of abuse. A lot of kids and teens have lost all respect for their elders this past generation since the 80's, and it's disgusting to see. Quite frankly, taco boy needs a smack in the mouth and a shove out the door. His mom is entirely at fault for creating the problem by being a crap mother to begin with, but that doesn't mean I have any sympathy for him either.
The woman behaved as abhorrently as the son. This is just cause and effect people. You beat a dog, starve it and teach it to be aggressive don't complain when it gets off the chain and bites you.
He's 19 if she calls him to eat and doesn't show up he should get no free food. if he complains about it later then he gets to cook for himself.
This made me laugh. It is a turn of phrase that is both grotesque and incredibly apt. This is the point I keep trying to make to my husband about the 21-year-old who still lives with us: opted out of college (and honestly isn't really college material); minimum-wage job; only expense is his car payment (lemon from a tote-the-note dealership); spends all of his time and money chauffering three little high-school-age girlfriends (not in the romantic sense) around wherever they want to go, taking them out to eat all the time; doesn't do a lick of housework; doesn't contribute to household expenses or groceries (but has the appetite of a baby werewolf)...in short, consumes without contributing. Doesn't make enough money to get his own place. Husband is seemingly unconcerned. Noelegy is pulling her hair out. He's a nice enough kid, but he's dead weight.
Then she deserves everything she gets.
If I was 19 and lived in that kind of environment, regardless of who was the source of the problem (which IMO they both are), I'd want to get out of there as fast as I could. But I guess it's easier to be lazy and pissed off all the time.
Man do I want tacos now though.
That this has made national news and is considered neat enough to blog.
or,
That this woman wants the nanny state to do her job and either teach her son some manners or throw him out.
Now our already scarce tax dollars get spent because she's offended by the results of her crappy parenting skills.
And points for reading Dlisted. The guy that writes for them is hilarious. ;)
I've loved violent video games ever since i was little but never have I ever applied them to real life... not even in the slightest, never have I though about hurting someone else physically. I don't think video games are the problem behind aggression like this...