Protecting Our Daughters: How Far Is Too Far? *UPDATED*

Tonight I read an article that had my blood boiling so much I had to drink 3 gallons of Gatorade G2 just to replace the water I lost. I read this post here which was the catalyst for my post here on DadsTalking. The short of it from Sue Scheff’s article is this:

“…an 13 year-old girl has been constantly teased, bullied, hazed, taunted by a group of bullies on the school bus.  This young girl also suffers with cerebral palsy and has been the victim of having her ears twisted and actual open condoms placed on her head.

Her father, James Jones, understandably, had had enough.  He goes into a tirade as he enters the bus and makes disturbing threats to harm the perpetrators.”

Check out the video of the tirade below:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pvsVHdepsw&feature=related

I’m really interested to hear some other dads’ opinions on this. While I can’t rationally condone the fact that he threatened those children on that bus, emotionally I support him and my instincts would have been to do the same darn thing. I’ve had my daughter bullied in school and the teacher really didn’t do anything about it. We talked to the teacher about the bullying and because schools are so afraid of getting sued these days, some teachers are seemingly ineffectual when it comes to dealing with problem children. Maybe it’s just because so few parents are parenting these days and they just have so much babysitting to do rather than being able to focus on teaching. Whatever the case,  AFTER I followed protocol AND had my daughter follow proper protocol – she told the “yard lady” what was going on, then the teacher and when nothing was done, my wife came in and talked to the teacher – being a martial artist for much of my life I set about the task of teaching my daughter how to give a bully the proper incentive to ensure said bully never touch her again. That is what I did and the next time the bully put her hands on my daughter, that is exactly what my daughter did. The bullying stopped that very day.

Back to the dad in the video, how far is too far? Is it ok to approach a child and threaten him after you’ve dotted all the “i’s” and crossed all the “t’s” and still nothing has been done to protect your child? Obviously, threatening to kill everyone on the bus is too much, but does a firm “if any of you bully my daughter further, you and your parents will be dealing with me personally” cross the line as well. How about saying on the bus, “if you bully her further you WILL be dealing with me!” In a culture where there are so many angry youths and seemingly so many ineffectual parents, how do we defend our daughters (and our sons for that matter) when no one else who is supposed to will?

Thoughts?

UPDATE: I couldn’t find this anywhere else but on one site. Interesting huh? Here’s the video of what happened that precipitated the father “losing it.”  http://www.clickorlando.com/video/25044636/

About Tshaka Armstrong

Tshaka Armstrong is the husband to one awesome wife, dad to three awesome children. On any given day you may find him posting internet & tech family safety info here and on his personal blog www.digitalshepherds.com, or chatting with his tweeps when he's not dadvocating here. Join in the conversation, drop a line, share a joke and join him in encouraging each other to be awesome!