Accountability

LZ Granderson makes a number of good points in an article he writes about parental responsibility and criminal behavior in children.

Accountability is in short supply.

When my daughter was in 8th grade, she and three friends were caught with a Burn Book (just like Mean Girls, I imagine). My daughter called me from school devastated and admitted reading and laughing at some of the crude entries. She said the principal would be calling me about the punishment.

I asked her what on God's good earth would possess her to take part in such a cruel demeaning act of bullying. How hurtful it was. How wrong it was.  Did she not remember how much trouble the girls in the movie got into when they were caught?

Sobbing, she acknowledged her mistake.

Then I told her I would fully support whatever punishment the principal wanted to give her. And that I expected not one word of complaint from her.

When the principal called me a short time later, I told her Liz had informed me about what happened..

The principal told me my daughter would have in school suspension for a week for her participation, just as would the other three girls. She explained that the suspension was basically day long detention, where she would work on her schoolwork in isolation.

I asked if she could have some math support, since it was a subject she struggled with. The principal assured me that would be arranged so that she didn't fall behind.

"Sounds good to me."

Now some argued that I should have fought for a lesser punishment- my daughter didn't write the burn book, she was only shown it...

I disagreed.

Because the moment she saw that someone wrote those mean things, she should have told her teacher. That bullying or supporting bullying was never okay.

She needed to be accountable for her actions. And what she did was wrong. I believe she is a better person for my harsh stand.