Public shaming should not be discipline tool

So there’s a disturbing new parenting trend floating around the Internet that has me side-eyeing hundreds of parents worldwide — using public humiliation as a punishment for when a child misbehaves.

Wait, what?

I thought the whole point of parental discipline was teaching your child what acceptable behavior is in a manner that is productive and makes them a better human being, not emotionally scarring them for life.

But maybe I’ve been doing this whole parenting thing wrong for nearly seven years.

So like any good reporter with an inquiring mind and Internet access I took to my computer to see what this new fangled form of discipline was all about.

After about 15 minutes of browsing, I discovered a mom in Florida who sent her junior high student to school in a white t-shirt that had a hand written message on in detailing the fact that the girl had failing grades and would no longer be allowed to have friends or a boyfriend until her grades were brought up.

I then found the story of an Atlanta father whose 12-year-old son was failing a class. The father’s solution was to shave the top of the boy’s head leaving him looking like a senior citizen, and then posting the pictures to Facebook, along with the reason why the boy received the embarrassing haircut.

After reading that story, I was ready to turn away from my computer in disgust, but like a good reporter, I soldiered on and came across this next gem.

A mom in Tampa made her 15-year-old son stand on a busy street corner wearing a large sign detailing his academic failures and encouraging passing motorists to honk if the boy needed an education.

And that, my friends, is when I threw my hands up in the air and said, “Oh come on!”

Granted, my child isn’t a teenager yet, but dang, I don’t think this is the way to go about raising bad grades. A tutor probably would have been the better way to go.

I know I’m not a perfect parent. I’ll admit that in my daughter’s few short years of life mistakes have been made.

And I know my child isn’t perfect. She is going to make mistakes and misbehave.

I also know that I won’t be a parent who posts pictures of my child being punished on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, or make her walk the streets wearing an embarrassing sign.

Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t need validation or approval from millions of Internet strangers that I’m parenting my child correctly and I most certainly refuse to be my child’s bully.

And that’s really what these parents are doing — they are bullying their children in an effort to improve their behavior, and then posting it online to add to the child’s humiliation and grab attention for themselves.

Parents who use public humiliation as discipline are hurting the relationship they have with their children, and they’re teaching their children to distrust them, when parents are supposed to be the people a child can count on, no matter what.

They’re also teaching their children to handle problems in a very immature way, without even really teaching anything of value, except the fact that they, as parents, are ready and willing to publicly shame their children whenever they are less than perfect.