Dad Makes His Bullying Son Run To School In The Rain: Not Everybody Loves This

There are endless questions and differing opinions about how to parent. What makes a good parent? Is it better to be more of a parent or more of a friend? How do you keep your kids safe? Engaged? Out of trouble? One father in Virginia has demonstrated to the world exactly how he’s chosen to tackle that last question.

“My son has finally gotten in enough trouble on the bus where he got kicked off the bus for three days because he was being a little bully, which I do not tolerate, I cannot stand, and therefore, he has to run to school,” Brian Thornhill says in a Facebook video that he is shooting from his car as he follows his 10-year-old son, Haden, running a mile to school in the rain.

Full story here.

Anyone who is criticizing this hasn’t seen any of Friday Night Lights, and therefore is not to be trusted. This is Coach Taylor 101. How do you get Riggins back onboard with the team? You make him walk home in the rain, that’s how. Was it a bit of a crazy move to follow along with this kid videotaping and spewing nonsense about kids taking .45’s out of his unsafe? Yes. Sure. Definitely. But when it comes down to it, and we have to remind people of it a lot, kids are little shits.

When your kid steps out of line, you’ve got to do something. I feel like, unfortunately for the most part, being punished for that isn’t supposed to feel nice. I’ll only speak for my own experience. When I was a young dick, my mom made me do things I found unbearable at the time. I called someone fat on the bus, and one apology and one in-person visit to their home later, I was no longer in the dog house. One time, in the middle of a vermont blizzard, I took a long time getting out of the locker room after basketball practice, and my mom just left. I had to walk five miles home in a fucking blizzard. I didn’t like any of this at all, but I also didn’t do any of those things ever again.

I’m not saying that works for everybody, but there is an element of this which is like fighting a war. We’re not talking the Napoleonic Wars where everybody just stood in lines and shot at each other; we’re talking Vietnam: tunnels, napalm, booby trapped mules and shit. No rules. Do what you got to do to win. If making your kid run a mile to school in the rain while you drive behind him ranting into a camera about gun control and bad parenting is what it takes to turn your kid into not-a-psychopath, then that’s what you gotta do.

Unless your kid has ADHD, in which case forget everything you just read and maybe help them out with some meds.