*Parent versus State - Raising Kids Shouldn't be this Hard*

As New Zealand parents rage about the two rowers from St Bede’s School being allowed to row at Karapiro, I’m left feeling somewhat confused about what the real issue is here. The media has literally had a field day, fuelling a fire which already stokes itself perfectly adequately behind the cover of most front doors in our nation.

How do we bring up our own children, when the state seems intent on undermining us at every turn?

Was the incident in which two silly boys rode an airport carousel serious enough to warrant their being dropped from a rowing team in a prestigious national secondary school event?

The answer has to be: who cares? The school rector said it was and that should be the end of it. He is after all, the man in whom the parents of St Bede’s put their trust and leave their precious darlings with on a daily basis, happy for him to perform the role in loco parentis (in place of the parent) for most of the year. So why not this day? The boys broke the terms of their contract and brought the school into disrepute. End of. All those people in the airport who had their baggage trampled by the two idiots showing off, saw the St Bede’s school uniform and turned their nose up at the kind of behaviour nice families discourage in their own children. You can imagine the scene. Decent kids from decent homes who happen to share that same uniform as those two boys, had their institution judged by anyone who saw the incident. Nice. And staff at St Bede’s who work hard to provide a wholesome education in a changing world were damned by association. Fantastic. Not!

Does it matter whether his decision was fair or reflected the punishment fitting the crime?

Again, who cares? The board of trustees believe his judgement to be sound and the parents paying the fees for their child to attend, clearly must do or they would have voted with their feet long ago. So the issue of his fairness or ability to make snap decisions is irrelevant. In fact, most of us had never heard of the poor man before last week. Now he’s the subject of a media storm in which everyone has an opinion. Yes, including me.

Now there are reports that one of the fathers misrepresented the facts in order to influence the judge’s decision, but the mistake goes back further, to his perception of his son’s wrong doing. The boy made a stupid choice about his behaviour and has to face the consequences. Doesn’t he?

As parents, we’ve all experienced that awful moment when your child runs to you ashen faced and tells you the headmaster wants to see you. We’ve all been there. Your blood runs cold as you walk back into school, going against the outward flow and clearly in trouble. My son did it to me numerous times and I would stare at the back of his head all the way up the corridor, hissing out of the side of my mouth, “What did you do?”

His version was never the same as the teacher’s. Never. There were shades of him having perhaps been at a similar event, but his take was entirely different. I wondered many times if staff might have got my child confused with another, when faced with his alternative version of events which put him nowhere near the scene. But no. We all knew he did it and he knew there would be consequences. He had to learn that when an annoying little girl in Year 4 gets in your face and refuses to stop nagging the ears off you, it’s not ok to bite her on the arm out of frustration. Life just ain’t like that, is it? It won’t wash with employers, wives or other members of your soccer team. In fact, the only people likely to accept that kind of behaviour are rugby players and my father still has the mark on his bum to prove it. Allegedly, you understand. I won’t be checking!

So how is this going to go?

The boys rowed and a nation sees they got away with it. But did they? Rowing New Zealand are now saying that selection to national teams was not based on a rower’s performance in this event, so the whole thing was a judgement based on miscommunication and supposition. It’s a mess.

What’s worse is the watching generation who now believe it doesn’t matter what those in charge decide for them. There will always be someone bigger who can turn a consequence, punishment, judgement or decision over. So do what you like and be damned.

New Zealand law dictates we can’t smack our children. It’s no longer within our jurisdiction. Some think that’s a good thing, others are left hamstringed by it. Have the statistics in child abuse changed? I don’t believe so from the reports I’ve seen. Child abusers abuse. They don’t administer a smack on the backside for running into the road. They abuse. It’s different. But the argument was fought and lost to the legislators and it’s been a done deal since my youngest daughter was ten.

So, in short, if you want to bring up decent, wholesome children, go and do it someplace else. The state says you can’t smack them when they’re little and the courts will overrule whatever disciplinary measures you put in place when they’re older.

Then all of a sudden when these same children are over the age of culpability, they’ll wind up in court and be given a prison sentence for an offence which they justified to themselves as fun, or harmless, or their given right to behave how they please.

No wonder the prisons are bursting with offenders and the courts are so overworked they can’t cope. Where does it end? Well, we all know, don’t we? But it starts with incidents like this, when someone in a position of leadership identifies a behaviour as unreasonable and administers a punishment - and the courts let them off.

As I sit shaking my head, I wish this next generation the very best of luck.

And they’re going to need it.

#parenting #itdoesntcount #teenagers