Father teaches daughter a lesson about facebook...

[Yo_Mama]

272. There's the love of not letting this kid foul herself up!

Apparently there has been a divorce. He may not have had the kid all the time, and there may be other problems relating to that.

There surely is love and concern in his updating of the laptop, isn't there? Note that he is referring to this being a second offense.

Playing the parental heavy at this stage of teen development is not generally easy. If he is trying to be a father, he can't let this girl work herself into a self-referential emotion-fueled ongoing hysteria of victimization that justifies her lack of empathy toward others plus her refusal to take any responsibility, and he is right to be concerned that this kid is developing an online persona, based on lies, that is going to fuel that through supportive comments through others.

What concerns me about what the girl wrote is that it is based on lies (she doesn't do all the housework - very, very far from it) and that she is displaying a lack of empathy and respect. And that lack of empathy and respect isn't demonstrated just toward the current malefactor - the dad. No, it's even to Linda, the lady who comes in and does the heavy cleaning.

To be honest I would never have responded this way. It's entirely antithetical to my personality. But when I was lying in bed last night waiting to go to sleep, I suddenly realized why the dad felt he had to make this video and upload this video to the girl's Facebook page. Because this is a second offense, he doesn't want to let it WORK. See, the kid will have plenty of access to the internet elsewhere. Killing the laptop isn't going to change that. And if the kid is getting all these supportive responses to her plaints of dire abuse online, it's going to support her mindset. And that mindset isn't a healthy one at this age.

Look how many people on this thread accepted the girl's claims at face value, even though there were obvious contextual clues within the girl's "To My Parents" screed that her claims were false.

He probably wants her to get a job so badly because she is money-motivated, and if she gets a job, she's going to have to cope with another decidedly unromantic world in which she will be confronted with reality and will have to conform to expectations to get what she wants.

At this stage in teen development they have to develop their own personality, their own identity, and their own drives. That's all necessary. It is imperative that adult personality which begins to form at this stage has contact with reality. That's his fundamental concern. I think the concern is well-based. He did this to merge the two worlds and teach the kid that this stuff doesn't WORK.

In a year or two, the girl will be through this stage and much happier.