Grown Ups Don't Shoot Laptops [View all]

[McCamy Taylor]

For over a week I have resisted watching Tommy Jordan’s You Tube rant about his daughter. From the descriptions I read, I figured this guy got about 15 minutes more fame than he deserved. Today, however, an editorial writer in the local paper had this to say….

I understand exactly how Tommy Jordan feels, how desperate, how angry, how helpless. As a parent, I've questioned my role, my methods of discipline, my children's disobedience and defiance -- my very ability to guide them. I've been known to pinch, to yank, to holler, to tear through drawers and closets, and read diary entries.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/02/22/3755173/ana-veciana-suarez-you-tube-parenting.html#storylink=cpy

Oh my! “Read diary entries”? Anyone who reads someone else’s diary entry without permission deserves every ounce of hurt they get. Because people---especially young women---use their diaries as therapy, to express the anger that society does not give them leave to express in real life. Oh, and by the way, ever wonder why girls get eating disorders and cut themselves and attempt suicide? It is because they are not allowed to express their negative emotions in this fucked up “Boys can’t cry and girls can’t get mad” society we live in. And when you deny anyone the right to express their emotions, you are telling that (usually young) person, “You are not good enough the way you are.” Which leads to self hatred, self abuse and years of psychotherapy as an adult.

Speaking of money, I hope that the Ms. Jordan sends her dad a bill for her shrink when she has to spend a couple of years figuring out why it was ok for her dad to curse her on YouTube, but it was not ok for her to curse her dad on Facebook. And before you say “That’s different, he’s he grownup” I want to add this:

When a parent acts one way and expects his child to act another, that parent is trying to be the child and trying to force his kid to be the adult.

Yeah, yeah. Bitch and moan about how much you have sacrificed for the kids, about how hard you work, about the six hours you wasted and the loss of $130. Tell us that you are deserving of unconditional love from your child, because of all the things you have done for her. Get it off your chest. But for Christ’s sake, do it in private or in the company of like-minded adults. Because here is a little secret. Your (still minor) child does not owe you a damn thing. When you decided to become a parent, you made a contract with that baby to love it, care for it, support it financially as well as emotionally. You did not sign on for a cruise on the “I love you daddy” Boat. We owe our kids unconditional love. If we do not get the kids we thought we deserved, we make do with the ones we have. And we love them for all the things they are---the pissed as hell as well as the sugar and spice, the tears and wails as well as the puppy dogs tails.

I decided I had to see for myself why a grown woman was proudly telling the world that she sneaks and reads her kid’s diary. So, I checked out Tommy Jordan’s rant. Here are the highlights:

First, bonus points for waving a cigarette around as he tells his daughter how she ought to act. Yes, in real life he probably cusses out his girl while smoking. But what kind of parent does it on YouTube? Answer: a parent who is proud of his faults. A parent who is telling the world (in its face) this is how I am, love it or leave me alone. Which raises the question, what kind of kid writes a Facebook entry about how mad she is at her family? Answer: a kid who is trying to tell the world this is how I am, love it or leave me alone. Hmm. A chip off the old block. You’d think the father would be proud that his daughter is following in his footsteps.

Double bonus points for doing exactly what the daughter is accused of doing---telling the public how angry he is at his family’s failure to communicate. When a girl child does it, she is unnatural. When the “grown up” dad does it, he is cool. A cult figure. Gotta admire a man who is not afraid to act like a whiny brat in public!

Triple bonus points for telling us that he grounded his daughter for three months---no computer, no Facebook, no cell phone---for telling the world how mad she was. As a writer, I hate---no, despise censorship in any form. As a mother and a doctor, alarms go off in my head whenever someone brags about how they placed their steel toed boot squarely on their child’s negative emotions, nipping those dangerous things right in the bud.

Quadruple bonus points for starting off his rant with the assurance that he must love his daughter and supply all her needs, because he spent six hours on her computer yesterday and 130 bucks. At this point, I can already see the problem. Dad here does not think he owes his daughter six hours or $130. He thinks he made a deposit in the Bank of “I love you daddy”, and he expects a return on his investment. So, when the daughter does not pay up, he figures he needs to Occupy YouTube, in order to let the public know that he has been ripped off---

Good lord, man! You’re supposed to be happy if your daughter is healthy, reasonably well balanced and not sniffing glue. Good parents do not keep a ledger. Good parents expect only one thing of their children---that they treat other people with the same degree of love and respect that their parents have shown to them.

Ok, on to the “tough love.” I won’t recap the whole thing, just the highlights.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“You won’t get off your lazy ass to look for a job.”

“I blew half my day upgrading your laptop.”

“I don’t know how to say how disappointed I am with you…”

This one deserves special comment. Obviously this dad is not a fool. He knows that his family has serious communication problems. That is why his daughter is telling her Facebook friends about her problems rather than sitting down with the family to work them out. And guess what. If there is a communication problem, it is not the kid’s fault. Because she is not the parent, no matter how much her parent may wish that his daughter could be the perfect mother-surrogate that he thinks he deserves. Yes, he does think he deserves it. The rant about how bad he had it as a kid and how he had to leave home and work and put himself through college is supposed to prove to the world that he deserves a chance to be a child finally. But, in order for him to be the kid, his child has to be the parent. What kind of unnatural daughter objects to being told to drop what she is doing and get Dad some coffee? June Cleaver had orgasms when Ward asked her to do the same. She felt fulfilled when she could bake cookies with a big smile plastered across her carefully made up face. I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that Tommy Jordan’s parents were not the Cleavers. And he still has not forgiven them for that sin.
OK, back to the video.

“You got it easy…” More self pity. We know you suffered, dude. You want to make someone pay, and your daughter is the easiest target. Man, you look like you are having some fun as you tell viewers to “Put a boot up their own kid’s ass”---right before you complain about her use of “curse words.”Note to everyone. If you cuss, your kids will cuss. Cussing is not a sin. It is natural language. If you want your child to develop the ability to express emotions with accurately---like saying “I feel that you have belittled me with that comment. I have value too” rather than snapping back with “Fuck you, ass hole”, you need to teach them those words.

The rest is history. “This right here is my 45.” And “These are exploding hollow point rounds. You have to pay me back for them…” And, most disturbing of all, (because I am a bit sexist, I admit it. Even when the dad insists upon playing the role of the child, I expect the mother to make an effort to be a parent) “Your mom said to put one in from her…”

Since no story is complete without the back story, here is my own back story. My dad was much too young to be a parent. He wanted my mother to be the perfect mother he never had. He did not want to share her with needy little kids. He came home drunk and waved a gun around and scared the kids(me) half to death and his wife, very sensibly, left him. Good for her. It was one of the best things she ever did for me (her child) and I am grateful as hell, even if he did continue to bitch and moan to his dying day about how much he loved and missed my mother. Another thing I am grateful for---when I was a kid crying in the backseat of the car and my father yelled back at me to shut up, my mother said “She has a right to cry. Leave her alone.” Now, that is good parenting.