I cannot face-palm hard enough to deal with what I have just read.
Well that makes two of us. At least.
It is beyond obvious that I'm neither defending the abuse or neglect of children, nor making the patently false claim that such is legally or morally acceptable. Maybe that's why I said almost unlimited discretion. Why, it's almost as if I made that clear from the start. And why would I claim that it's ok for parents to be capricious or cruel? That is obviously not my point, either.
Didn't say you were. Actually, kinda' said you weren't, at least impliedly.
My point was that it's not "almost unlimited discretion" it's "almost unlimited discretion within the context of parenting the child."
But other than that, yes BR and MB, you are correct. Parents do not tell children when to sleep and when to wake up. Or what to eat or not eat. Or what to wear. Or where they can go, or how long they can sit in their room using the MP3 player they just bought or received as a gift.
What part of "in their capacity as parents" was unclear?
Seriously, though, I could see the moral issue with destroying something that a child has earned or been given as a gift. But merely taking the item away doesn't qualify as stealing. Maybe if the item were destroyed, or sold for the parent's profit, or for the parent's selfish use.
Yeah, I kind of said that.
Also, not everything a parent provides to a child is given as a gift. Assuming so muddies the waters a bit.
I said that too.
I get that you've your little Zomg! Micro's a loony civil-rights-for-extremist! thing going on here, but I'm not sure why you're including me in this, considering how in attempting to refute what you appear to think I said, you've pretty much repeated everything I said.
PS: I actually do agree with Micro re teens and property ownership, albeit in perhaps a less clear-cut way. Stylistic difference there; I don't like hard lines much of anywhere. But that opinion is not what I expressed earlier. I was stating a simply, generally accepted test for distinguishing between acceptable parental actions re kids' property and unacceptable, non-parenting-related actions re kids'. Where one comes down in this discussion depends on parenting philosophy, on which reasonable minds can differ.
