I think the point in this case was that she had attempted to publicly humiliate him by flatout lying to people. He mainly seemed to be trying to set the record straight in terms of what he spent the majority of his time talking about. He also mentions that only the previous day, he had personally spent time and money to upgrade her computer, only to have her use it to try and humiliate him. He let her know how that felt. I've seen far worse parents in my time.

I applaud the guy. i see to many parents that do NOT raise their children, they just let them do whatever they want and there are terrible, disrespectful brats out there so finally a parent that at least tries.

I do not agree with the gun though. That's stupid and a waste but hey (and i don't want to be an ass here but) i guess it's USA? What i mean by that is the fact that he even has a gun and uses it for everything (i remeber that news message about the guy that actually accidentally shot his wife because he shot a hole in his wall with his gun because he wanted to plug in his tv but didn't have power where he hooked it up .... Where I live i know nobody who has a gun so...

(I hope this was coherent because i'm literally up for 5 min, it sounde right in my head though ;) )

1. You don't know who is telling the truth and who is lying.
2. That's what parents do, personally spend time and money for their kids.
3. Kid is 15, he is not. Act your age and set an example for your kid.
4. Far worse? Did he actually shoot the kid?

Also, Fuck Yeah AMARCA!

Indeed, we don't, but at least we heard two sides of the story and frankly, his sounded by far the more believable of the two. I don't like guns and it's not how I would punnish my kids if I had them (which I don't, because I don't consider myself to be ready), but I really don't think he did anything particularly wrong.

I think he's from Australia, actually. I can tell from the accent and from having met a few Australians in my time.

While I don't agree with the total destruction of the laptop, I do think he was in the right -- if what he states about the chores, etc., is correct and to be honest I have no real reason to doubt him. In the same situation I would have simply reformatted the harddisk as well as removing all removable components.

As I child I used to have to do a lot more chores than his daughter did (unpaid of course) and I certainly still had time for a life. So I most definitely consider her to be overreacting and damned ungrateful.

Still, perhaps she's finally learnt her lesson.

You don't think he did anything worng? Then I don't have anything more to say to you on this.


North Carolina. You made me check his facebook, I hope you are happy!

Wow, that's what i was afraid of. That's stereotyping for you. The first second i saw this video i thought: americans... damn, i apologise for that... Doesn't matter though my ideas stay the same: he is right but overreacted with the gun ( i would have taken it away)

The father did strike me as trying to set the record straight as well. It is nice to see a parent actually being a parent and correcting his child instead of letting her get away with it.

SO he is american.... damn funny how a video about parenting turns out a small discussion about nationality ;)

He got angry. So he shot his daughter's laptop. Then posted it on the Internet. Because solving your family disputes with a gun is such a sane and reasonable thing to do.

Yeah well, this probably could have happened in a few countries only and USofA is on the top of the list. Not prototyping really but being realistic.


This is not correcting his child, it's setting the score just like you said; not gonna help the kid in the long run. And when you think of it he raised the kid in the first place.

Funny, my gf talked to me about this psycho on the phone tonight.

I think he made some good point right up to the moment where he shot her laptop.

It went downhill from there.

From a parenting perspective, I think he screwed up in a big way on many levels.

1) Shows a lot of violence and aggressiveness. Not something you want to impart to your kids.

2) He destroyed her property (yes, he bought it, but then gave it to her so it is her property for all intents and purposes). This is NOT a good way to teach your child how to respect other people's boundaries. You cannot just go out and destroy other people's property when you are pissed at them.

3) If my parents had done that to me as a teenager, I would have hated their guts, not respected them more. Maybe she'll show more outward obedience to them, but deep inside, she'll hate them. I highly doubt this will make her more receptive to what they have to impart to her in the future.

4) It doesn't teach her good interpersonal skills. Sometimes, you won't agree with other people and most of the time, you won't be able to bully them into submission (not that it's a desirable course of action even when you can).

Ah, I see what you mean. Okay, I'll try to explain myself a bit better. :)

I agree with your last sentence. I also agree that the dad appears to operate on the basis that equity is achieved (or at least improved) when the kid contributes something to the family (at least doing some household chores) and he gives the kid a laptop upgrade. However, I strongly doubt that the dad made this "deal" explicit. If he had, then he probably would have addressed that fact at some point during his long speech - he _was_ clearly trying to give a complete account of the issue. Further, if the "doing chores" were an explicit task to earn the upgrade, then there wouldn't be a history of having a list of these tasks, the daughter forgetting them, parents writing a list for her because of that, daughter still not doing them, parents grounding her as punishment, etc.

So, in the dad's mind, there may very well have been a connection between the chores and the laptop upgrade - but not in the mind of the daughter. And that's the problem. The dad operates on an assumption of equity that simply isn't present in the girl's perspective. As long as that's the case, the teen will _never_ behave the way that the dad wants her to, because they have totally different perspective of what's "fair". So the girl needs to realize that she doesn't do "forced labor" (and doing it only to prevent grounding), but that she contributes a bit to the family and in return gets many things back, including a laptop upgrade that she wants. The easiest way to make this fairness visible to her is to make this deal explicit - e.g. setting a clear, fixed goal like "if you do this task reliably for x amount of time, you will get a laptop upgrade".

I hope I explained myself better now ... though I'm not sure i did, I'm quite tired right now. ;)

One more thing: We don't know when the daughter posted the message to her facebook wall. We know that the dad saw the message the day after he fixed the laptop, but we don't know how long the message was posted there before. I don't assume that the dad spies on the facebook account of his daughter (who explicitly locked him out) on a daily basis. I agree that it would be extra bratty from the daughter to complain about slave work the day after her dad upgraded her laptop, but I think that the sequence of events was different.

Sure you have some valid points, but there's more then what the video shows. He's clearly frustrated. He tried it in a better way, clearly it did not have any effect on her. The gun thing was wrong, i would have taken the laptop away. At least he tries. You know all those stupid shows with kids whose parents are rich (kardashians, sweet 16, ...) All of them show disrespectfull children and father who are unhappy about it, clearly dissappointed and have clearly given up. You can see it in their faces. The mothers love it because they are the same. The fathers think: damn i have worked damn hard all my live to let my money get wasted by a spoiled brat. BUT they are the ones who let it come this far. This father at least tries...