Shame the Children
In the fatherly fashion do — and don’t — taking social media by storm, Utah dad Scott Mackintosh turned a pair of his own jeans into short-shorts to demonstrate his unhappiness with his teenaged daughter’s skimpy wardrobe.
“I heard my wife ask our daughter if she would please change into some longer shorts before leaving [for dinner]. She said NO!” Mackintosh wrote on his wife’s blog, Becky Mack’s Blog of Mild Chaos.
“Instead of turning her response and disrespectful attitude into a major battle, I decided to make a ‘small’ statement on how her short-shorts maybe aren’t as ‘cute’ as she thinks!”
Mom of 30-Year-Old Man Spends All Day Staring at iPhone to Shame Son Into Realizing He Has Lost All Natural Curiosity
Martha Andrews, 58, admits it may have been a pipe dream to imagine that her son might grow up into a man who was marginally interested in other people and capable of holding a conversation.
Which is why, during a recent visit from Travis Andrews, 30, she decided to bring her phone along to a family dinner and look at it the whole time. “I literally just stared at my phone the whole time. The waitress asked what I wanted. I just stared at my phone. Friends of the family approached our table. I stared at my phone. I stared at it all night no matter what even when I was driving.”
Andrews knows some people might find what she did extreme, but insists she did it out of love.
“Obviously, your worst nightmare as a parent would be your daughter showing off her body in inappropriate clothing, so I am very grateful that what I’m coping with — my son’s complete, chronic and yet borderline socially acceptable lack of even basic social skills, empathy and engagement with the world — is not in that realm. That said, my son is the light of my life. And I tried to show him in the most loving way my concern about who he has become.”
Andrews says she was willing to risk Travis’ being angry and embarrassed about her behavior to make her point. Ironically, Travis did not notice his mother’s odd behavior, as he was staring at his phone throughout the entire night as well.
“We got home that night. I went to bed, and I got a text from him: ‘Mom. Thanks for a great night. Oh also thanks for not dressing like a whore, because I would have had to call you out on Facebook and Twitter and maybe even Vine. Love Travis.’”
Photo via shareski/flickr.
Sarah Miller is the author of Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn and The Other Girl. She lives in Nevada City, CA.