The best part of the Facebook Laptop Dad is his defense of the housekeeper.

[ohheckyeah]

172. Father's response to Fox News coverage of the incident and other comments made on Facebook about it:

Tommy Jordan
My response to the Dallas Fox affiliate on their news headline. You can read the headline by clicking the link below:




I've made it a point of not responding to news or media thus far, but I'm going to reply to a few specific issues mentioned from the news anchors:

First, let me say Thanks for not making me out as a TOTAL villain, though you cut-together enough footage sequences to make it seem that way in segments...


It was an emotional response: Yes ma’am it was an emotional response. I raised my children to never use that kind of language, especially in a public place like that. There were so many vulgarities… I don’t even know where to start. She was mad and I get that, but there are way to talk about things without resorting to that kind of language.

Secondly, and I’ve said this on Facebook as well, but I’m sure it will get lost in the flotsam of comments out there; I shouldn’t have said the word “ass.” I’ll agree that wasn’t a good example of me as a father. I had been reading that post again and again for about an hour, sometimes in tears, other times so mad my hands were shaking and I was trying very hard to be civil in my message. I slipped in that and said a word I shouldn’t have. I deserve a little backlash for that, no doubt.

In response to Dr Fletcher’s comments:
Fifteen year olds don’t the social maturity to know what the consequence might be? I learned at about age 3 what good words were.. and what bad word were. I learned what I should say, and what I shouldn’t say. Those lessons were reinforced throughout my life as a pre-teen, teenager, and later into adulthood. I think it’s safe to assume we’ve attempted to instill in her the values that should make it obvious to ANY 15-year old that neither the content, nor its publication to the world at large was acceptable for any child, or even any adult for that matter.

The punishment wasn’t natural or logical?
She’s known the rules for Facebook ever since she was allowed to have an account. She’s broken them from time to time, sometimes by accident, sometimes as a way of stretching her boundaries to see just how firm the boundaries were. This was neither. Her post was WAY over the top.

The Dr mentioned she “doesn’t really know what my daughter will learn from this consequence.” I hoped that would be self-explanatory, but I guess you can’t see that without knowing the rest of the story. The last time she did something completely inappropriate, she was grounded from the Internet for three months. The very day she got it back we had a nice long amicable talk about what was and was not acceptable and that I wanted her to have a chance to prove she was responsible enough to utilize the internet unsupervised… by exercising her renewed freedom in a responsible way. The point of this being that proving you can be trusted to be responsible in one venue can lead to increased freedoms in other venues. I ended that conversation with a warning. I told her if no uncertain terms that we had already taken it away from her once. The next time, there wouldn’t be the same chance. If it happened again, “I’ll put a bullet through it.”

The "This one's from your mom" comment:
Before I made the video this week, I called my wife at her office, mostly in tears. The first words out of my mouth were “Please convince me not to put a bullet through Hannah’s laptop.” She knew something was wrong and asked me to be sensible and tell her what happened. Instead I began reading her the Facebook post our daughter made. She let me get to the end of the post, said “I’m sorry honey” and then said “put one in it for me while you’re at it”… so I did.

Contradiction in Terms?
No I don’t think so. Yes I told my daughter not to air that kind of material on Facebook because it was hurtful to other people. It embarrassed them. It caused them to feel humiliated, especially our very very good friend, who is NOT a cleaning lady by any stretch of the imagination!

Instead, I simply turned the tables and let her be on the receiving end of something and see how it made her feel. You mentioned not embellishing it, not sensationalizing it. I didn’t. I read exactly what she put out there for the world to see, in her own words. Then I added a few of my own words to it.

And then, yes, I shot it full of holes. Would I have received the same viral attention if I’d used it as a dog toy, hit it with a hammer, drove over it with the truck, or simply thrown it away? I’m not sure. But the point is that her parents told her “If it happens again, I’ll put a bullet through it.”
So, rather than let her push that particular boundary any further, I did absolutely no more and no less than I promised I’d do. Do I regret doing it? No. Do I regret keeping it on Facebook long enough to cause this stir? Yes. However at this time I feel that if I took the post or the video down, I'd just make it appear that we're running in shame from it, and we're not.

Truthfully though the social attention has helped her and I both deal with it. We had our discussion about it after she returned home from school. We set the ground rules for her punishment, and then I let her read some of the comments on Facebook with me at my computer. At first it was upsetting. Then as we read it became less so, eventually funny to both of us. At the end, she was amazed that other people had such amazingly strong reactions. Some said she’d grow up to be a stripper. Others that she’d get pregnant and become drug addicted because of the emotional damage. She actually asked me to go on Facebook and ask if there was anything else the victim of a laptop-homicide could do besides stripping because all the posts seem to mention that particular job and she wasn’t so keen on that one.

So in the end, she’s fine. My Facebook wall will never be the same again, and we’ll be OK as a family and she’ll grow up happy, healthy, and have everything she needs, but not everything she wants. And I absolutely guarantee she’ll never doubt my resolve to follow-through on a consequence again.
https://www.facebook.com/tommyjordaniii/posts/105495699574209


Fox News coverage: http://www.myfoxdfw.com/dpp/news/unusual/video%3A-angry-dad-shoots-daughter%E2%80%99s-laptop-020912