Question

[velvetpage]

I came across this link twice in the space of five minutes yesterday, and most reactions to it were comments like, "This mom is my new hero."

Except for one, who claimed the mom was being abusive with her zero-proof attitude and willingness to publicly humiliate her son.

So, dear readers, which is it? Is she a reasonable mom enforcing a reasonable restriction on the use of a vehicle still in her name, or is she a tyrant and abusive parent?

Comments

[paka.livejournal.com]

Depends who owns the car. If she doesn't own the title she's totally out of bounds. If she does, then I think she should first negotiate with her son about this. I also think she probably shouldn't be snooping to this extent, although I'm not quite sure how to basically say no without doing so.

Selling the car is cool by me, and it's not an abusive action.

Publically humiliating the kid and bragging about what a badass person she is to do so is not cool. That borders on an abusive action and hints at a seriously abusive personality. Automatically I start thinking "person who's been a jerk to this kid for his entire life, and has justified it by telling herself how badassed she is," and "pushy adult who possibly needed to make a quick buck, and this was a convenient excuse."

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Most newspapers require you to prove ownership of a vehicle you try to list with them, so I suspect she bought the car for her son but retained ownership for exactly this reason.

It sounds like she did negotiate, in the sense that she set down two rules a little over a month ago, and at least one was broken. My kids get asked once (twice if I'm being lazy) and then they're expected to hop to it; I don't see the point in giving extra opportunities to screw up two simple rules.

As for the public humiliation - well, that's the point that's really questionable. As one person pointed out, his name's not in the ad, so it's not as public as it at first appears, but even so, his community would know. To give her the benefit of the doubt, I get the impression she was shocked at the positive feedback she received - she seemed to be expecting the opposite. I don't think she should have left up the ad, but I don't think the ad was a bid for attention at the beginning, and I doubt she's been pushing the kid around his whole life - if she had been, he would probably not have allowed his friend to break the rules. Pushy parents make pushover kids who toe the line.