THE 'WHO'S TO BLAME?' THREAD

[Donovan]

I know that at some point before this event, that kid got the idea from a prior experience that a middle of the road tantrum was an effective way to deal with mom. And that's mom's fault. Unless the kid was a total psychotic she was being treated way too leniently and was at least one assbeating short of her lifetime supply. Probably if she had kicked the kid's ass a couple times the kid might still be alive and she wouldn't be burying her. If my kid tried that even one goddamn time I'd have whooped his little ass all the way home for it, because some things you just do not fuck around with, and playing in the road is one of them.

Now that's if the kid wasn't a psychotic bi-polar little shit. But in THAT case, the kid had no business being shepherded around to 4-H meetings. You lock them little fuckers down until they learn and practice respect. It isn't rocket science, and you aren't their goddamn buddy you're their parent. Too many forget that these days. And now that kid is dead because momma dropped the ball and the kid was an idiot.

Well, that's an about-face, Donovan. Wasn't it you who said that clearly punishing kids for bad behavior was ineffective and that jedi mind tricks as a form of behavior modification was the way to go?

I'm not assuming the girl was psychotic or bipolar, nor that her mom was somehow unfit or too lenient. That might be the case, but that's not what teachers, friends and family are saying about her/them. In any event, Trinity obviously should not have been planted in the middle of road and her mom is devastated.

As for how the girl and her mom could not have seen the car coming, we don't know yet if the driver came around a corner suddenly, or was simply going too fast for the mom and child to get out of the road in time, or if the driver had her lights on... People get run over by cars, sometimes they see them coming and sometimes they don't. Witnesses are being interviewed and the investigation is expected to be completed in two months, according to police.

No, my opinion and the associated skillset hasn't changed, and the proactive "jedi mindtrick" approach is almost always best. But that means exactly what I said above...there are some situations so immediately life-threatening and dangerous they require immediate and decisive action. You do not fucking argue with a child who is sitting in the road. You get them off the road and whale the shit out of them while you are doing it, because the alternative is scraping bits of her out of some poor half-drunk woman's grill.

Sally is arguing silly shit like who gets front seats and whatnot and trying to defend an idiot who now has one dead kid, and there is no excuse for that. That mother failed in her one fucking job, to keep the kid alive until the kid knew enough to do the job on her own. She failed to teach the kid not to sit in the fucking highway, she failed to teach the kid that tantrums are unacceptable at age 13, she failed to keep her daughter safe from the drunken fools of the world.

And now she gets to bury her. The world is a horrible and violent place. Tragedies happen, and sometimes kids die. But our job as parents is to make that as unlikely as we possibly can.