AUTHORITARIAN PARENT? WHAT OTHER KIND IS THERE

 

 

A scene from the movie Vision Quest shows Louden Swain’s buddy Kuch at home with his dad. Instead of a bonding moment of shared struggle, the dad slaps Kuch around, telling him he’ll never be nothing.

 

Nothing. Wrestling might make him feel like a big shot, but he’ll still be nothing.

 

Since both boys were wrestlers, how did they respond? One takes the slapping and sh!t talk from their drunk daddy while the other stays out of it. The boys take a motorcycle ride to recover from the shock.

 

Real life it doesn’t always work out that way when the sport of wrestling is part of the authoritarian parent equation.

 

A non-wrestling, non-athletic dad who resents their kids’ success doesn’t always get the last authoritarian word, coming from the experience of a wrestling, athletic dad who didn’t get the last word. Instead of last word I got a hole in the wall, which is a fond reminder of a time that turned out for the best.

 

If a novice authoritarian parent flexes up the first time on an older kid, be sure the others are watching.

 

If an inexperienced authoritarian parent brings the ‘my way or the highway’ hammer down, and gets ignored, they’re bound to overreact because they don’t really mean ‘highway’ when they say highway. The best outcome is having a kid like Kuch stand and take it, but best for who?

 

At a social gathering of parents and high school kids, call it a wedding reception, a college kid was a little too complimentary to one husband’s wife. She laughed, blushed, and blinked a little too much for the husband’s mood.

 

Instead of getting a little buzzed and talking to new, interesting, people, she got strong armed to the car and taken home. Kuch and Louden followed. Louden’s job was punch the old man out while Kuch checked on his mom.

 

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In another home an authoritarian dad punished an older sibling who yelped and cried like a hyena. Younger siblings went outside and played with the dog.

 

“What was that noise?” one asked.

 

“A spanking?” another guessed.

 

“All the yelling?”

 

“I guess we get to yell now,” one said.

 

“I’m not yelling,” the other said.

 

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 Authoritarian parents feel pressure to keep a lid on their kids, your kids, every kid that steps up with an opinion or stand they disagree with.

 

Here’s an idea, agree or disagree, learn to stand with kids. Do the time before you tell them how wrong the are. There’s nothing easy about it.

 

Stand with the kids to show them how to stand right.

 

From Salon:

 

Leading right-wing media personalities such as Laura Ingraham and Alex Jones have engaged in a concerted campaign of character assassination, slurring the Parkland survivors and other young people protesting gun violence as “Nazis,” or suggesting they are “attention-seeking.”

Conservatives view the Parkland high school students and the other young people who marched against gun violence as disobedient and disrespectful. Hence they should be punished for their “insolence.”

 

This is the sort of talk authoritarian parents eat up?