Parents: Pushed to the Edge

[Amenhotep7]

Two Florida Parents Go on Strike
In Battle With the Kids, They Move Into the Front Yard
By MIKE SCHNEIDER, AP

ENTERPRISE, Fla. (Dec. 9) - The dishes, garbage and dirty laundry would pile up for days when Cat and Harlan Barnard's teenage children refused to do their chores. So the Barnards went on strike, moving out of their house and into a domed tent set up in their front driveway. The parents refuse to cook, clean or drive for their children - Benjamin, 17, and Kit, 12 - until they shape up.

"We've tried reverse psychology, upside down psychology, spiral psychology and nothing has motivated them for any length of time," said Cat Barnard, 45, as she sat in a lawn chair at an umbrella-covered table.

The strike took Benjamin and Kit by surprise. They came home from school Monday to find their mother outside with handwritten signs that read "Parents on Strike" and "Seeking Cooperation and Respect!"

Cat Barnard, a stay-at-home mom, and her 56-year-old husband, a government social services worker, decided their children needed to learn about empathy and responsibility.

The Barnards unsuccessfully tried smiley-face charts and withholding allowances to get their children to do chores. They even sought help from a psychologist.

The tipping point may have been when Benjamin didn't offer to help his sweating, struggling mother work on the lawn Sunday, even though she should have been recovering from oral surgery.

"I had absolutely no motherly guilt after that," Cat Bernard said.

The Barnards have slept on air mattresses in the tent and have barbecued while their children fended for themselves with frozen TV dinners. The parents only go inside to shower and use the bathroom.

The strike seems to have struck a nerve. The phone has been ringing incessantly with requests for media interviews from around the country.

Passers-by from this bedroom community between Orlando and Daytona Beach have shouted out words of encouragement. One woman driving past the Barnards' house rolled down her car window Wednesday and shouted "Good for you! You should put the kids outside!"

Benjamin returned from school on Wednesday to find a dozen reporters in his parents' front lawn. He refused to say anything to them and went into the house followed by his mother, who tried to console him.

A well-intentioned neighbor reported the Barnards to sheriff's deputies, who checked up on the family three times Tuesday. They were satisfied that the children were safe.

One of Kit's teachers also stopped by the house, thinking she had been abandoned, after the teenager said that her parents had moved out of the house.

Cat Barnard said she and her husband will keep up the strike until they see some changes.

"If we have to stick it out here until Christmas, then ho, ho, ho, we're out here," she said.

Cat Barnard sits in her driveway in Enterprise, Fla., near the tent where and she and her husband slept.



I have never heard of such a thing, but I am glad that the parents have taken whatever actions necessary to teach their kids that truancy is not tolerable.

 

[Samoht_Okpoh]

No. No. No. No.

 

[SeleucusNicator]

Bad move. The children will learn to live without parents and will thereby strengthen their own argument for independence.

 

[Mathilda]

Irresponsible would be if they'd kicked the kids out or left them completely to their own devices. That's not what's happened. I'm pretty sure mum would still go and show how to operate the washing machine if the little darlings would think of asking.

Better would have been to start taking responsibility of parenting a bit earlier, teach them from EARLY on that house work is part of life.

 

[Bigfoot]

An amusing story, but I don't agree with the parents here. They obviously are not running their own household -- maybe its the kids who should be living in a tent in the front yard!

It reminds me of a classic song/poem by Shel Silverstein:

Sahra Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out!
She'd scour the pots and scrape the pans,
Candy the yams and spice the hams,
And though her daddy would scream and shout,
She simply would not take the garbage out.
And so it piled up to the ceilings:
Coffee grounds, potato peelings,
Brown bananas, rotten peas,
Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
It filled the can, it covered the floor,
It cracked the window and blocked the door
With bacon rinds and chicken bones,
Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel,
Gloopy glumps of cold oatmeal,
Pizza crusts and withered greens,
Soggy beans and tangerines,
Crusts of black burned buttered toast,
Gristly bits of beefy roasts...
The garbage rolled on down the hall,
It raised the roof, it broke the wall...
Greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,
Globs of gooey bubble gum,
Cellophane from green baloney,
Rubbery blubbery macaroni,
Peanut butter, caked and dry,
Curdled milk and crusts of pie,
Moldy melons, dried-up mustard,
Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
Cold French fries and rancid meat,
yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.
At last the garbage reached so high
That finally it touched the sky.
And all the neighbors moved away,
And none of her friends would come to play.
And finally Sahra Cynthia Stout said,
"OK, I'll take the garbage out!"
But then, of course, it was too late...
The garbage reached across the state,
From New York to the Golden Gate.
And there, in the garbage she did hate,
Poor Sahra met an awful fate,
That I cannot right now relate
Because the hour is much too late.
But children, remember Sahra Stout
And always take the garbage out!

 

[GEChallenger]

Right or wrong, it's pretty funny.

 

[Zardnaar]

Good for em. The little monster need a good kick up the backside. Won't be to long before the do-gooders start bleating about bad parenting etc.

 

[zeon252]

amusing and creative, but bad parenting.

 

[emzie]

I'd've just confiscated all their possessions. One day, when they were at school, removed all the furniture from their rooms (except for a matress and bedding), their clothing (except for two days worth of sweatpants and too-big t-shirts), take away the computer and cable, and if the son drove, take away his car. The kids obviously aren't mature enough to deserve any rewards.

That's what one of mu uncles did to one of my cousins. Works well.

 

[Keirador]

If the situation got that bad in the first place, these can't be excellent parents. I agree with SN. Though it may not be wrong or reprehensible, its just bad strategy in the ongoing war between teenagers and parents. Once the kids learn to fend for themselves, the parents will eventually have to take a major defeat and move back in without an apology, thereby destroying any respect their children still had for them. Once teenagers learn to take care of themselves and that their parents are fallible fools, its Game Over for parents.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Reminds me of Dr Fill (?)(Hey I dont watch him but i saw the clip on dailshow)

When he asked Bush if He believes in spanking.
Bush replied that he would use "harsh rhectotic" (Blah). lololol
and then of that didnt work he would bomb her. lololol

 

[TrailblazingScot]

These parents simply want to be on TV, the radio, in the newspapers and obviously have failed to teach their children how to look after themselves. Whilst I agree, that parents get a raw deal and do have to chase after kids some of their complaints are plain stupid:

1. Driving kids around - do want to? Don't do it.
2. Kids don't clean up dishes, get a dishwasher.
3. They don't cook? You'll need to teach them and you may count yourselves lucky!
4. They don't clean their rooms or cleanup around them...put THEM in a tent on the lawn rather than giving them a room to abuse

The parents brought up these children, inflict them on the rest of the World and us poor teachers and then complain...GRRR!!!!

 

[Renata]

Hmmm, I think some of the commenters are missing the point: if the kids learn to take care of themselves, the parents haven't lost, they've won. The whole point was that the kids weren't taking care of themselves to the extent they should have.

I'm not going to make any real judgment, though; I don't know enough about the situation. I'll just sit over here and giggle.

Renata

 

[emzie]

Actually, the whole point was they refused to contribute to the household. While they might learn how to do theirown laundry, or cook theirown meals, they're going to be much more scornful towards their parents once this is over.

And the mother lost the minute she followd her son into the house to console him.

 

[stratego]

-Damn, those kids are irresponsible. They're 12 and 17!!! Mom shouldn't even have to cook or clean for them[drive, maybe]. Mom should be able to come home from work expecting dinner to be cooked and the house to be clean.
-Damn stupid kids, especially that 17 year old for not setting a good example.
-The parents should've kicked the kids out.
-Stupid irresponsible children
-I sympathize with the parent
-

The tipping point may have been when Benjamin didn't offer to help his sweating, struggling mother work on the lawn Sunday, even though she should have been recovering from oral surgery.

If my arms were long enough, I'd smack Benjamin.

 

[Keirador]

Hmmm, I think some of the commenters are missing the point: if the kids learn to take care of themselves, the parents haven't lost, they've won. The whole point was that the kids weren't taking care of themselves to the extent they should have.

I'm not going to make any real judgment, though; I don't know enough about the situation. I'll just sit over here and giggle.

Renata

I disagree. There is very fine line between having helpful kids and having completely independant kids. Eventually, of course, you want them to be independant- but not like this. They learn independance like this, they're doing it to spite their parents. Its a gamble- if the kids actually can't take care of themselves, its a major victory for the parents. If they can, eventually the parents will have to break strike, and the children will never respect them again; and armed with their new-armed domestic skills, will never need to.

 

[M37]

this is just dumb. the kids get a holidy while the parents suffer.
- I don't know wich way they voted but they should definlty learn that they should be in controll not the kids.

 

[Sanaz]

I blame the parents 100% for letting it get this far. These problems started years earlier. Parenting is one area in life where you can be fairly certain that if your kids have problems, you are at least partially, if not mostly, to blame. I'm not sure if I could think of a worse way to handle a situation like this. And for anyone who still thinks physically abusing children is a good solution, please read a few basic (and modern) parenting books. Spanking and hitting children is a bad idea, as is "kicking them out". If this is a "game", the minute you need to do one of those you have already lost. And like most games, you lost during practice before you ever stepped onto the field on game day. If you didn't practice enough, all the complaining and whinging on game day isn't going to help you win (or make your kids "behave" properly, to get back to the analogy). There are alternatives, and if a parent doesn't know what the alternatives are, they truly have no one to blame but themselves. There are a lot of people who make it their life work to help parents be better parents. All they need to do is ask for a little help, or some suggestions, from someone who can help. Too many parents want to absolve themselves from the responsibility of their children's actions, which is what these parents are doing. They have both physically and figuratively separated themselves from the "bad behavior", in effect saying "it's not my problem, they need to figure out the solution". Without knowing any more (and I doubt it would change my opinion), I think these people are idiots. Parenting is hard; bad parenting is even harder.

 

[Immortal]

Shel Silverstein:

Shel Silverstein is my favourite poet

 

[Oruc]

why dont they just smack them about