It’s a parent’s job to keep their kids out of trouble.
You start teaching your kids right from wrong at a young age and hope that they will remember all the things they learned as they get older. Still, thousands of kids end up in juvenile court and even jail.
Montgomery County Precinct 1 Justice of the Peace Wayne Mack sees a lot of troubled children, and he always wonders how they end up in the courtroom.
He said:
“I just thought, ‘There is no way your mom or dad knew where you were. The majority of juvenile cases I deal with have to do with inattentive parenting.”
He said that some parents call in and can’t even believe that their children are in trouble. They have no idea the things their kids have been doing. It’s not because they are bad parents, but because they don’t pay close enough attention to their kids.
He decided he would send out some tips to parents to tell them how to keep their kids out of jail.
He realizes that some parents don’t see this as hard, but for those who do, his tips might help. He made a video and shared it on Facebook. In it, he says:
“If you do these three things, I can guarantee you your child will go to jail.
“No. 1: Don’t hold your child accountable. Don’t know where they’re at, don’t know who they’re hanging out with. Don’t know where they’re going. Just let them go anywhere they want to (go) do anything they want to do.”
“No. 2: Don’t teach them the greatest ability of responsibility. They don’t have to be responsible for what they say. They don’t have to be responsible for what they do. They don’t have to go to school. They don’t have to do chores around your house. If they whine and complain enough, you just do it yourself, so you don’t have to worry about it.”
“No. 3: Let them lie to you. Every time they tell you a lie, and you know they’re telling you a lie, do the easiest thing, is just to ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen.”
He figured a few people would watch it and maybe even argue with him about it.
He had no idea that it would go viral. The video was viewed thousands of times and shared hundreds of times. To his surprise, most people actually agreed with his video and shared with their friends in hopes of helping other families.
He said:
“I did not anticipate the response that we’ve had. I hope it encourages people to keep doing the right thing.”
There will always be kids that get in trouble, but the advice in his video might help some parents wake up and check in on their kids more often.
Sometimes all it takes is for the parents to start asking questions and get a little sterner to make kids stay on the straight and narrow path. Mack is hoping to see a decline in the number of juveniles he sees in court. He hopes that his video will reach enough parents to make a difference.
It might take a while, but it could end up changing the way some kids and parents think.
Most parents will agree that when it comes to raising kids, they will take all the help and advice they can get. Nobody ever thinks their kid will go up to cause trouble. Even parents that think they are doing right by their kids could be missing something. This video might help change that.
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