Parents are in uproar over the punishment a mother has handed out to her young son, making him wear a sign in public labelling him a thief.
‘Do not trust me. I will steal from you as I am a thief,’ the sign around his neck read as he stood in a park in Townsville in Queensland.
The boy, aged about 10, remained standing with his head lowered in shame while his family ate lunch nearby.
But his humiliation did not end there…he was made to wear Shrek ears and was also seen writing lines, believed to say repeatedly that he would not steal.
While his family may have deemed the public humiliation applicable, parents who saw the boy wearing the sign were appalled.
One woman, Diane Mayers, said she was so ‘horrified’ that she contacted the local child safety services. She said, ‘The boy just kept his head down and was staring at the ground. A lot of people walked past and were laughing at him.’
The punishment was also condemned by child psychologist Nicole Pierotti…herself a mother…who said she was shocked that this treatment was used.
‘Humiliation is not the best way to punish the child,’ she said.‘This gives the child the message that they should be sneakier. He’s learning, “don’t get caught”. It also makes you wonder what else goes on in the family. Parents are supposed to be the people a child can trust.’
Miss Pierotti said that if the child had stolen something from a shop, it would have been far more appropriate to make him go back to the premises and admit to what he had done.
‘That would be much better than humiliating him in public,’ she said.
But all this has done is let the thief win…crime wins again. I don’t know what the boy stole, but I’ll bet he won’t do it again. Or rather, he WOULDN’T do it again, if the stupid child safety services hadn’t have butted in. Why don’t they go and save some children who realy ARE in trouble. Kids that are being sexually and physically abused.
All I can do is applaude the mother for attempting to put the kid on the straight and narrow road to knowing right from wrong.
The trouble nowadays is ‘do-gooders’ and ‘yoghurt knitters’ let murderers and rapists have human rights…so they can literally go and do the same thing over and over again.
If this ‘forward thinking’ mum, could’ve have just been allowd to punish her child, she just might have prevented another crime statistic.
by Sel Hurst
