THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 26, 1995 TAG: 9502260036
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
There's a tremor in the 44-year-old father's voice.
One moment it comes from anger. Then frustration. Then pain over a son gone wrong.
He's just read a story about a proposal to fine parents up to $500 if they fail to help schools discipline unruly children. ``It tore me up,'' he said, his voice shaking.
Why? Because Frank Cannon Jr. has been on the wrong side of the law. Five months ago, he hit his 16-year-old son so hard it bruised his ribs.
Cannon called it discipline. His son called the cops. The cops called it child abuse. And Cannon spent the night in jail.
As extreme as his story is, a hell of a lot of frustrated parents out there can relate to it.
I know because I have talked with scores of them. They are parents who have lost control of their teenagers.
Often, they try to get the kids back. They seek help from the schools, but the teachers' hands are tied. They look for some kind of organization to step in, and find nothing. They sign up counselors. The kids won't go.
They look with hope to the court system when their children break the law. The offenders get 20 hours of community service, and the parents go home to cry.
``He had to wash cop cars,'' says Cannon. ``What kind of punishment is that?''
No detention time. No counseling. No fear of God or law or cosmic justice or whatever glue holds a civil society together.
The children go on fearlessly; the parents go on with fear in their guts.
And then, one night, parents like Frank Cannon take matters into their own hands. They try to instill fear in a soul that doesn't know the meaning of the word.
And fall short.
Stories like Cannon's put the fear of God in me.
They do because I have two children of my own. They're only 4 and 2, but already I wonder who they will be when they're teenagers.
I already have seen the flash of anger in my 4-year-old's eyes.
There are times - after a long day at work, a moment of weakness, a time when I'd rather make peace than war - when I let ``the look'' slide.
But stories like Cannon's pull me back. Because I know discipline has to start long before a kid's in school.
So I put her in ``time out,'' I lecture her on the difference between a lie and the truth, remind her continually that listening means more than just hearing what I say. Sometimes the words sound hollow - weak against the temptations that she'll face as a teenager - but these are the things they tell a parent to do.
Deep down, I wonder.
Will all these warnings and lectures and timeouts and drawing of boundaries be enough to fend off the wrong crowd? Will they carry over during all the times I'm not there? Will they ward off bad ex-periences, the wayward friend, the lure of the fast life?
Will they be strong and constant enough?
There are no guarantees. It doesn't take Frank Cannon's story to tell me that.
I do know this. It all starts when children are barely able to talk, not when they're throwing punches in high school.
A proposal to fine parents $500 for their unruly children is not just misguided.
It's too little, far, far too late. by CNB