Facebook Parenting

I'm sure most of you by now have seen the latest rage on YouTube known as Facebook Parenting for the Troubled Teen.  If you haven't seen it, it's a video response from a father whose daughter posted a letter to Facebook complaining about her parents but she blocked her parents thinking they wouldn't find out about it.  So his father reprimands her, posts it to her facebook page so her friends won't think she got away with anything and then proceeds to shoot her laptop.

The reviews on this are mixed, some people think it was too extreme, many people applaud it.  I would like to point out a few observations of my own on the video.
 

1. If you'll notice, this isn't the first time his daughter has done something like this on Facebook.  She was already grounded and had her laptop taken away and is now a repeat offender.  
2. The father's actual response as to why he posted this so publicly was because the offense was public.  She posted on her Facebook page so he posted his response of Facebook via YouTube so that her friends and their parents wouldn't think that he would let her get away with saying stuff like she said.  I can say that my stepdaughter has put me in a similar situation.  She had posted something, our friend who is a pastor posted a response as a comment and one of her friends posted something very rude and inappropriate in response to him.  My husband posted a comment in response saying that was unacceptable and then immediately talked to my stepdaughter and she was cut off from communication with that particular friend.
3. A lot of people think that this is extreme because he shoots the laptop with a gun.. Would they have been so shocked if he had hit it with a sledgehammer?  That's a weapon too.  Just saying....
4. He bought the laptop for her so it was his to do with as he pleased.  I probably would have sold it but obviously taking it away wasn't working for her so this may have been the best way to get through to her.
5. Another point raised is her refusal to get a job to pay for the stuff that she wants.  I got an allowance for chores when I was littler but when I was a teenager, I did go out and get a job to pay for stuff that I wanted and I didn't get an allowance for stuff anymore.  I applaud his refusal to get free handouts.  My stepdaughter spilled coffee on her netbook and now it's dead.  We may buy her a cheap computer as a birthday present but if she had a job, she would be the one buying it.  She's still a little young to have a job.  She's already drowned one cell phone, fortunately it was cheap.  Since I work for a cell phone company, she has a nice android smartphone.  If she drowns that...I do have insurance but she will be paying or working off the $130 replacement cost.
6. The man is refusing media contact and says he doesn't want to teach his daughter that she can profit from something like this.  I applaud that.
7. A lot of the commenters are saying a lot of negative stuff about her daughter being traumatized because of  this and that she'll go out and be a stripper or get pregnant or become a drug addict or something.  I say parents that don't reprimand their children when they do something like this and the child feels they can get away with anything end up with the stripper pregnant drug addicted teens.