Please read the following disclaimers before going any further:
1) I don’t condone violence against children. I don’t believe in leashing children.
2) I know nothing about this mother and her parenting capabilities (or lack thereof).
3) I am operating under the assumption that the child was not badly hurt and is not the victim of ongoing abuse.
The Georgia woman in this video was arrested and charged with a felony first degree cruelty to children.
You can go two ways with this: You can be horrified or somewhat amused. My initial reaction was the latter. And then I watched it another 100 times and prayed the child was not seriously harmed. If he is anything like my boys, once they were out of camera range he jumped up and yelled, “That was awesome Mom! Can you drag me again but this time FASTER?”
Assuming that he is OK and the Mom had a single, momentary lapse of sanity, it’s pretty funny.
Any parent who has had their kid pull a total Ghandi in a public place has fantasies about this video. That doesn’t mean we would actually follow through. (I have PLENTY of parenting fantasies that will forever remain buried within the safety of my mind but that’s another post). But after asking nicely, suggesting, begging, imploring that we leave a certain venue to no avail, I could easily find myself tempted to do the drag. Many of us have done some sort of the equivalent sans the leash. In fact, a leash may actually be safer than the arm drag. I always worried that I would pull one of the boy’s arms out of its socket. So I would let go, and we’d be right back where we started.
I’ll file this story in the same category with the mother who actually stopped the car, kicked her children out, and rode off to teach them a lesson. She was arrested too, but some of us secretly applauded her for following through on the empty threat we all make.
We all try to make the right decisions as parents; and we ALL lose it from time to time. This Mom clearly lost it, leaving me sorry for both her and her son. But a part of me still smiles and feels very thankful it wasn’t me.
