VIRAL CHRISTMAS TANTRUM VIDEO PROOF THAT BAD PARENTS PRODUCE BAD KIDS, as spotted by Bethany Mandel at the PJ Parenting section, who writes, “We shouldn’t hold back in our condemnation of the Internet Shame Machine. The same goes for Internet-shaming parents — we shouldn’t hold back in calling them what they are: terrible parents:”
The day after Christmas, a video of a kid having a temper tantrum went viral. On Christmas morning he found himself unhappy with his gifts and very clearly informed his parents of his displeasure. Immediately the headlines and tweets screamed about the child’s bratty nature. My first thought was, “Wow. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
If a child is so accustomed to getting what he wants and is unable to express any modicum of grace or gratitude, guess whose fault that is? If a parent is unable to show a child that his or her behavior is inappropriate without posting a video online, guess whose fault that is?
The video, posted on YouTube [and embedded in Mandel’s article — Ed], has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. As an average American you only get one “15 minutes” and this is it for this child. His parents and family have willingly put him in front of the Internet Shame Machine’s firing squad to let them do their dirty work.
To be clear: these parents intentionally triggered the tantrum by purposefully giving the wrong gift because the child had been “bad” all year, and after the tantrum, when the camera went off, the individual responsible for posting the video told a fellow tweeter that he was “whooped” for his behavior. That was clearly not enough punishment, and his online reputation is now sullied forever because the video was then uploaded online.
The original tweet was eventually deleted and the account it was sent from was quickly made private, but not before the video was posted on YouTube. The internet is forever and this child’s behavior, and the horrible parenting that led to it, will live on.
Victor Davis Hanson writes the obituary for gratitude today amongst a wide swatch of the adult population — which means it’s an outlook fewer and fewer parents will be passing down to their kids. Long before VDH’s newest column, Jonah Goldberg has been fond of quoting a passage apparently by Hannah Arendt that “every generation, Western civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them ‘children’” – but increasingly, their parents can be awfully barbaric themselves.
Related (especially since I’ve been meaning to link to this since last week, but I haven’t be able to find another hook until now): “Meaning in the Age of Selfie Sticks.”