Remind me to stay the hell out of the Carolinas, both North and South.

...noting that she hoped his arrest would serve as a corrective to disorderly behavior at school and home.

It's a non-story. From the looks of things she didn't call 911, she just called the local law, explained that her son was out of control and asked them to give him a bit of a short, sharp shock. From the sounds of it, he is a bit out of control. This was just a reminder to stay within the confines of reasonable behaviour.

"Community helps out single mother trying to bring her kid up right." News at 11.

"Mother wastes taxpayer dollars instead of bringing her kid up right." News at 11.

"Mother should have made better choices when she was 15". News at 11.
She's practically his older sister, fer Pete's sake.

Quick - Call the Daily Mail.

- "Mother should have made better choices when she was 15"
- "Mother wastes taxpayer dollars"

...

Thanks item, go ahead and judge two whole states by the actions of one dirt poor teenage mother in a small rural town that's already been immortalized by REM anyway. Or that's how we used to sing it, back in the day, when I was living in South Carolina and somehow restraining myself from calling the cops on my kids. Now that I'm in North Carolina and they're older, I tell you, it's a daily struggle not to turn their rebellious asses in. Meanwhile, in other news, I'm sure that this kind of thing certainly never happens in any other state in the union, because in the other 48 there is no rural poverty and there are no slightly out of control ADD kids who have been raised by semi illiterates on a diet of corn syrup and cable TV.

/cranky
/quitting smoking
/Carolinian

yeah... I think in a case like this you have to ask yourself how well you would have done raising a child alone at 15. She apparently isn't someone who just throws up her hands and lets the kid do whatever he pleases. She's trying to do whatever it takes, even if it's extreme, to keep him from going completely off the rails - she just doesn't know what to do.

(also, I don't know how much help great grandma is being here - why put a coveted gift for a kid with poor impulse control under the tree weeks early? It's like he was being purposely tempted to be bad.)

"noting that she hoped his arrest would serve as a corrective to disorderly behavior" I would not be surprised if it makes him whole lot worse.

If not worse, I'm not sure how it could help to make things better. From the article:

She said the boy likes attention and has a history of bad behavior. He has shoplifted from stores and stolen money from her, she said. The boy has also been inching toward expulsion from school, she added, and even punched a police officer last month. He was arrested for disorderly conduct in that incident.

So, now, at the ripe old age of 12, he has two arrests behind him; I would be more afraid that he would just become accustomed to this as regular event than hopeful that it might teach him a lesson.

Heh. The police report called it a "Play station Gameboy"

Parents all across the country will print up that arrest record and post it on the fridge as a warning.

Any mother who would say that to a reporter about her kid . . .

* Loses temper, cries. *

Well, there you have it. Another disaster and it's such a good thing that kids can't get birth control or abortions because they make such stellar parents.

I'm with ya, mgl, on the Carolina generalization. But where do you get the 'poor' part?

seanyboy - if it was the Daily Mail, it would be:

Illegal immigrants cause cancer and house prices to rise, resulting in poor parenting and social standing leading to kids stealing stuff. Also: Diana murder conspiracy: driver suspected of being Russian agent high on polunium 210.

Oh I'm purely extrapolating based on the following facts:
1. The majority of women who have kids at 15 aren't wealthy.
2. Rock Hill isn't particularly wealthy in general.
3. Parents who get this worked up about a Gameboy (and the kid is 12, which is kind of old for a gameboy these days and this is the $85 version of a gameboy which I am pretty sure is not even the new shiny kind) are generally not all that wealthy.

And then, I'm being classist because I tend to think behavior like calling the cops because your kid opened his present early correlate highly with lower education and lower income. But on rereading the link I must say I do seem to be making all that up out of whole cloth.

Although if you google map & satellite it, they're apparently living in the woods. ;-)

I agree that it was a poor decision to put gifts under the tree at all, given his impulses. But hey, my kids' going to be 14 and he still likes his Gameboy. And for $85.00, well, she overpaid if she got the new version of Gameboy Advance, which flips open. But that's still new and shiny. She probably wanted it to be his "big" gift. Heck, it's part of my 9 year old's "big" gift.

/(and my son better not read this.....or else I'm calling the cops!)