His stepdaughter did not "adequately clean her room." So he kidnapped his family?
South Carolina stepfather James Kevin Moss is giving new meaning to the term anal retentive. Unhappy with the clutter in his 14-year-old stepdaughter's room, Moss locked the family inside their trailer. That's right. He apparently said, "Gee whiz, Kid, it's such a mess in here, we might as well all stick around in the middle of the filth." Whatever happened to good old fashioned grounding? Or parking yourself at the bedroom door with a Hefty bag and a pair of plastic gloves to protect yourself from the biohazard that is a teenager's room?
I do feel a little pang of sympathy for the guy - some teenagers' rooms seem to have more in common with Baghdad than they do a bedroom. A video by a South Carolina news crew shows the Mosses live in a small house, and who knows how far into the rest of the house the mess was overflowing. I guess I can even see how locking a teenager up with the rest of her family could be construed as punishment. How many 14-year-olds do you know who are just aching to spend extra quality time with Mom, Dad and the rest of the fam?
But there's a difference between grounding your kid and grounding the whole family. When other people ask to be let out of the house and you throw a remote control and a pad of paper at them, you're not teaching your child how to do much more than be a bully. And when the cops show up because your stepdaughter called them in, the common approach is to walk calmly to the door and tell them you're disciplining your kid - you don't force them to break down the door.
I'm tempted to point to the rebel flag flapping in the breeze outside the Mosses' trailer, but I know I'll earn a ration of "heritage, not hate" comments (I married a Southerner, I've heard it all). Instead I have to tell you, if it's all about heritage, wouldn't you say this guy comes from the shallow end of the gene pool?
Image: Boston Globe
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