Assaulting Your Child’s 14-Year-Old Classmate Is A New Low In Overprotective Parenting
The phrase “I don’t care who started it, I’m ending it” will be a familiar one to many parents. However, a mother in Perth, Australia took that old parenting maxim a step too far when she intervened in a brawl her daughter was involved in–by allegedly giving her daughter’s 14-year-old opponent an old-fashioned beatdown.
The victim of this alleged grizzly-mom-to-the-extreme assault is a Melville High School student named Savannah, who says that the root of the problem was an argument between her and another student, where the other student had apparently been jabbing Savannah about her recently-deceased mother. Charming! Whatever else was said in the argument, Savannah and that classmate’s sister got into a fistfight at the bus stop later that day, only for the mother of the other two girls to intervene in a serious way.
The mother, who will (sadly) be playing the role of “the adult” in today’s story, separated the two students, and then allegedly shoved Savannah to the ground, held her there, and punched her in the face while picking up her child’s line of verbal abuse from the earlier argument. Some of the altercation was captured on video, including the 39-year-old woman on top of Savannah yelling, “Stay away from my fucking family or I’ll tear your fucking head off.” Parenting!
Charges have been filed against this woman, but in case you are confused, here are a few “do’s and don’ts” for parents whose children are having trouble with other students at school.
DO: Separate your child from a physical fight with his or her classmates.
DO NOT: Separate your child from a physical fight, and then pick up wherever he or she left off.
DO: Make the other child aware that you will not tolerate violence against your child, and that you are willing to involve his or her parents, the school administration, and the police as necessary.
DO NOT: Threaten to tear a 14-year-old’s head off.
DO: Ask around among other people in the vicinity for video evidence of the altercation between your child and his or her classmates.
DO NOT: Be captured on video beating the crap out of a teenager in the era of the omnipresent cell phone.
Have we got that pretty well straightened out? I understand the protective-mom instinct, but this has fallen way over the Cliff Of Helicopter Parenting into the terrifying depths of Psycho Mom Valley. As the adult, it’s your job to protect your child, but “protecting your child” does not and cannot mean “committing physical harm against another child”. Someone has to be the adult here, and if you signed up for a gig as “parent”? It’s probably supposed to be you.
(Image: 9News)
