Ha. Good for her.

Under the front seat and he tried to claim it was someone else's? That's rich.

Ha! That's great! Good for her indeed.

He'll see it another way when he has kids.

Under the front seat and he tried to claim it was someone else's? That's rich.
Well, someone sitting behind him could have stashed it under there without him realizing. In theory. Still, good for her. Her rules were simple and reasonable. He broke them. She followed through. That's what good parents do.

Awesome.

Meh. I hate the way she worded the ad. Taking away the car (as promised for rule infraction) was punishment enough. No need to be a snarky, self-congratulatory, attention-seeking gloater in the ad. That's how she comes across to me. I don't see that as responsible parenting at all - rubbing your kids' noses in their mistakes and making fools of them.

That's a good point, iconomy. I hadn't really thought about it that way.

I think my comment got eaten.

This is exactly what my mom would have done, had I been in this situation, including the snarky add.

Interesting: semi-bitchy eBay auctions are posted all the time, but a newspaper ad suddenly garners criticism.

I kind of agree with you Ico. But even allowing passengers to have alcohol is huge, though it was, of course, his. In Maine, an open alcohol container in the car would be a big fine, and loss of license, esp. for a teen driver. Even the mom's ad isn't as bad as the arrest would have been. Although teens never think they'll get caught. I'll show this to my son, so her knows I'm only the 2nd meanest mom.

Yeah, I'm with iconomy. The rules & consequences were stated; he broke the rules; the car goes. That's fair and fine. I wouldn't have spread the reason why he had no more car around the whole community like that.

I have to agree with iconomy.

It's one thing to have rules and consequences. But all she is gonna do is embitter her kid. I suspect she was just looking for a way to get a quick sale-at her kid's expense.

In kinda related news:

Mass. Teenagers Feeling Sting of Tougher Driving Laws
"The number of license suspensions of drivers under 18 has soared over the past year because of a tough new law aimed at curbing bad driving habits by junior operators."

(from ericb's link):

" 'Even if I want to visit my friends for an hour, it is a big inconvenience,' said Colleen Blanchard, 17, of Shrewsbury, who lost her license for 90 days after getting a ticket for going 46 in a 30-mile-per-hour zone. Now, she needs parents or friends to drive her to and from school and her friends' homes."

boo fucking hoo. missy needs a whack upside the head with the Giant Sparkley Clue Stick of Doom.

I get the creeping suspicion that there's a whole generation out there who fail at the What Happens Next equation.

no opinion on the OP as a) I don't have kids (thus I am told my opinion is irrelevant to parents everywhere) and b) sounds like something my own parents would have done.

I agree with iconomy & co. Up to the ad, everything she did was great parenting: stated rules clearly, checked up, followed through with appropriate consequence. Excellent adult leadership. Right on.

Where it loses impact is that she added humiliation to the punishment. Humiliation has an incredible way of taking the focus off the wrongdoing and putting it on the person-to-person dynamic. Humiliated kids tend to look for opportunities to make a strike back and recover some of their own feelings of power. The ad belittles him, and she's taken away the power of her basic message, which before the ad, was simply: My rules are reasonable and firm and I'm serious about them. You break them, there will be a related consequence. He'd have nothing to object to there, whereas now he's got the entire community sneering at him, some guilty friends somewhere keeping mum, and a mom talking to the national media about what a funny bad-ass mom she is. It's not even about him anymore, so how can he learn from it? The theory he may be forming is "my mom's just vindictive, that's why she did this."

I'd even be fine with her mentioning the reason for the sale of the car: Car must be sold because teenager broke rules by carrying alcohol in it. But there's a lot of difference between stating facts with firmness and confidence and reveling in the status of her tough-love celebrity. There's just no need, and it obscures the real lesson for the kid.

I can see ico's point. I am not sure if I would go to those lengths.

But the flip side of this is to embolden other parents into having a clear line about what's acceptable and what is not acceptable in terms of safety behavior. That is a good thing.

I think that there is a fair number of parents who are afraid of "losing" their kids, in terms of the kids liking them, if they have these boundaries and stick to them.

Plenty of kids ride around drinking. A number of them get killed around graduation time like this. The "cautionary tale" aspect for other families is real I think. But ico's original point is, also.

I'm just thinking out loud here. I'll stop now.

To clarify (even though Miko put it much more succinctly, as usual!) - I think sticking to your guns and showing your children that you mean business is fantastic, and kudos to any parent who has the strength to back up their words with action. He definitely deserved to have the car taken away. My objection here is the way she's holding her son up to ridicule while at the same time patting herself on the back for being so clever and fabulous. She doesn't show any respect to her son, which is inconceivable to me.

I will quote my post to Fark:

"What's missing in the story is the part about how the kid didn't talk to his mom about how and why his friends had booze in his car, and his mom underscoring that point.

Also reminds me of a friend of mine who is a cop. One of the excuses that she loved to hear when they found a dimebag in the pocket of a perp was, "these aren't my pants."

What I don't like is she kept the ad up for another week for "feedback" (pron. Ego-trip.)

Car away for drinking? Good.

Humiliation above-and-beyond? Skeevy.