Thanks, mom, for not telling the world I pulled a knife on you
I’m not a mother, so I can only imagine how devastatingly painful it must be to wonder if your child suffers from mental illness or pathological violence. I suppose that these parents, frustrated by the lack of resources and institutional support that would help them deal with their situations, release that frustration in their blogs. It’s an understandable impulse.
But it is one thing to broadcast your own pain. It is quite another to broadcast your child’s. In this Internet age, children deserve to struggle into adulthood with some degree of privacy. If my mother had publicized that moment when I cut my arm, it could have devastated my future in incalculable ways. My college applications or job prospects might have been affected. New friends, classmates or colleagues could have judged me based on momentary mistakes that happened years earlier. The man who became my fiancé might not have kissed me that life-changing night on our college campus.
The Internet is written in pen, and a public reputation (or speculative diagnosis) that a child is saddled with online now could follow him for the rest of his life. We absolutely must have a national conversation about access to mental heath care, but we need to find a way to do it without sacrificing individual children as public examples.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
The Hell’s the big deal? I mean – who *hasn’t* pulled a weapon on a parent at some point? Wait – you mean it *is* just me..?
affenhauer on December 28, 2012 at 9:49 PM
And if you cut her, it was a mistake, it wasn’t you, because you’re not that kind of person. Because you’re such a good person that you can’t even eat a fish stick. You’re a vegetarian. Or maybe it’s not about “what kind of person you are”. Maybe it’s about what you do. Because who knows what kind of person anyone is.
Paul-Cincy on December 28, 2012 at 9:52 PM
There are isolated incidents and then there are habits.
kim roy on December 28, 2012 at 9:53 PM
Someone in the comments already said it…
sharrukin on December 28, 2012 at 10:01 PM
It’s not her fault… if she didn’t have access to the knife, she wouldn’t have pulled it.
Any knife with a military-type enhancement, like a sharp point or a serrated edge, should be banned.
malclave on December 28, 2012 at 10:02 PM
Not so funny now is it!
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/british-doctors-call-for-ban-on-long-kitchen-knives-to-end-stabbings/#.UN2Rfz_2Qjc.twitter
astonerii on December 28, 2012 at 10:13 PM
Speechless.
drewwerd on December 28, 2012 at 10:15 PM
Doesn’t go far enough.
malclave on December 28, 2012 at 10:20 PM
Mental case. Normal people do not pull knives on others or cut themselves in that manner.
In her effort to try to make everyone think she’s a sane, rational person that could have had their life thrown away due to a “minor transgression”, she has in fact shown everyone she has some mental problems that need to be addressed.
ButterflyDragon on December 28, 2012 at 10:31 PM
self dramatizing Special Snowflakes equating their teen grandiose emo hissy fits into the very real dialogue that has to be had in this country about severe, debilitating mental illness…
because every thing is all about Them.
mittens on December 28, 2012 at 10:34 PM
She really should have whacked her parents.
If you threaten to visit harm on someone you’d best mean it or accept your Omega-female status as a vapid facsimile of Matt Damon.
CorporatePiggy on December 28, 2012 at 11:03 PM
Well..yeah.
a capella on December 28, 2012 at 11:21 PM
Whoever came up with the phrase “you can’t make this stuff up”, was a prescient genius.
Our entire world is quickly moving beyond parody.
Scary.
I’m going to my back yard now to bury a couple of nail clippers; obviously, it’s only a matter of time before they are considered dangerous weapons that need to be confiscated by the government, and unfortunately I’m really a stickler for having short fingernails.
Dreadnought on December 29, 2012 at 12:46 AM
bullcrap. if people didn’t do it all the time there would be no need for laws against it. in fact it is human nature to attack others. Laws are made so that human nature impluses can be controled so a society can function.
unseen on December 29, 2012 at 6:54 AM
I will admit I didn’t read anything but the excerpt here. Based on that, there is an awful lot of judging going on. Maybe she is making herself into a victim in the article, but she is also right in this: parents often don’t understand (and some probably don’t care) that what they post on the internet is forever. And, it very likely will impact their child down the line somewhere. (This is also true for the kids – they don’t understand what they’re doing to their future with their Facebook/Flicker/Twitter posts, either.)
To those of you who are so shocked by something as terrible as pulling a knife on her mother, get off your high horses. Stupidity like this happens in perfectly normal homes. The key is that it gets taken care of within the family (in various ways) and it works itself out. Teens go through stages of depression – some worse than others. Teens act out – and are told by our society today that it’s OK to do so. What they need is their family there to guide them (whether with hard curbs or a gentle guiding hand) to the adult they should be.
Let’s be conservatives and remind everyone that the lowest unit of civilization – the family – is where most correction/training/education/etc. should take place. It’s why the traditional family unit (that includes multi-generational arrangements) is so important to preserve.
GWB on December 29, 2012 at 9:54 AM
You kid, but do you realize how insanely easy it would be to frantically clip away a persons skin until you reached an artery? Those things should only be used by licensed union public nail clipping professionals.
In NYC, I understand they’re going to have a nail-clipper buy-back program to get them off the streets.
hawkdriver on December 29, 2012 at 9:59 AM