Sitting in Judgment
A ten year old boy is asked by his mother to put breakfast on the table. He says no and continues listening to music and playing a game on his €800 phone. She insists, and he smashes the phone against the floor in her general direction. She slaps him. That same boy, a year later and now eleven, goes to the door, announcing he's leaving home. His mother grabs him by the neck, inadvertently scratching him. Who's in the wrong? The boy or the mother?
According to strict interpretation of Spanish law, the mother. Which is why the boy's father (separated from the mother) and the boy decided to denounce the mother for abuse. What the state attorney was asking for against the mother was thirty-five days social jobs, a year and a half prohibited from owning or carrying firearms, and a restraining order of fifty meters from her son for six months. The judge, however, absolved her of all wrongdoing. According to him, the child, in his testimony, was cold and calculating, and showed lack of empathy toward his mother. The judge decided the boy was suffering from "little emperor syndrome," a syndrome much more prevalent in single-parent homes, where the child receives all the material wealth the family can afford, but little moral teaching and quality time with either parent.
This judge understood that the mother was trying to correct her son's reactions, and sentenced that her actions were not indicative of abuse. Another judge who understands that some minors need correction, and understanding, deals in underage criminal law in Granada. His name is Emilio Calatayud and he even has a blog in Spanish (here) where he speaks about some of his more inventive sentences and about young people and their parents in general. A sentence that made national headlines involved a break-in to a hair salon, the robbery of €600 and a hair dryer, and a haircut. A teenager who had broken into a salon at night to steal those items declared he hadn't finished school, but had now decided to find the money to learn to be a hair stylist. So, the judge condemned him to a nine-month course, and the final exam was to be a haircut for the judge. If it was well-done and the judge liked it, the kid would have completed his sentence. If not, he would have to go to jail for the time the law specified for his crime. When the day came, the kid passed the final exam, and everyone was happy.
Other sentences involved drawing a fifteen page comic explaining why what the artistic kid had done was wrong, a teenager who had driven without a license to accompany local police during 100 hours to see the consequences of accidents and general wrongdoing, a hacker to give 100 hours of computer programming classes, someone who burned trash containers to work with the firefighters, someone who harassed an elderly lady to work in a rehab center, the kid who vandalized train cars to paint the train station, and a Moroccan immigrant to obtain a certificate of Arabic and to improve his Spanish so he could then act as an interpreter in the future.
The judge's view is that most of these kids' problems begin with the parents. Not always, but sometimes. He put up some examples of bad parenting, such as some parents who went to their children's college professors to get them to give their child a good, or passing, grade. Yes, some kids asked their mommy or daddy to go ask the professors for a better grade. He even mentioned a case where one of the parents went to the child's superior at work, to ask him to keep the child on a certain work shift, in a job where the employees changed from morning to afternoon to night shifts after a certain amount of time on each.
Sometimes, the children act up because the parents think their progeny is the most special thing in the universe and has to have a smooth path before them all through life. How about we show them what a thorn is before they have to deal with the real ones?
According to strict interpretation of Spanish law, the mother. Which is why the boy's father (separated from the mother) and the boy decided to denounce the mother for abuse. What the state attorney was asking for against the mother was thirty-five days social jobs, a year and a half prohibited from owning or carrying firearms, and a restraining order of fifty meters from her son for six months. The judge, however, absolved her of all wrongdoing. According to him, the child, in his testimony, was cold and calculating, and showed lack of empathy toward his mother. The judge decided the boy was suffering from "little emperor syndrome," a syndrome much more prevalent in single-parent homes, where the child receives all the material wealth the family can afford, but little moral teaching and quality time with either parent.
This judge understood that the mother was trying to correct her son's reactions, and sentenced that her actions were not indicative of abuse. Another judge who understands that some minors need correction, and understanding, deals in underage criminal law in Granada. His name is Emilio Calatayud and he even has a blog in Spanish (here) where he speaks about some of his more inventive sentences and about young people and their parents in general. A sentence that made national headlines involved a break-in to a hair salon, the robbery of €600 and a hair dryer, and a haircut. A teenager who had broken into a salon at night to steal those items declared he hadn't finished school, but had now decided to find the money to learn to be a hair stylist. So, the judge condemned him to a nine-month course, and the final exam was to be a haircut for the judge. If it was well-done and the judge liked it, the kid would have completed his sentence. If not, he would have to go to jail for the time the law specified for his crime. When the day came, the kid passed the final exam, and everyone was happy.
Other sentences involved drawing a fifteen page comic explaining why what the artistic kid had done was wrong, a teenager who had driven without a license to accompany local police during 100 hours to see the consequences of accidents and general wrongdoing, a hacker to give 100 hours of computer programming classes, someone who burned trash containers to work with the firefighters, someone who harassed an elderly lady to work in a rehab center, the kid who vandalized train cars to paint the train station, and a Moroccan immigrant to obtain a certificate of Arabic and to improve his Spanish so he could then act as an interpreter in the future.
The judge's view is that most of these kids' problems begin with the parents. Not always, but sometimes. He put up some examples of bad parenting, such as some parents who went to their children's college professors to get them to give their child a good, or passing, grade. Yes, some kids asked their mommy or daddy to go ask the professors for a better grade. He even mentioned a case where one of the parents went to the child's superior at work, to ask him to keep the child on a certain work shift, in a job where the employees changed from morning to afternoon to night shifts after a certain amount of time on each.
Sometimes, the children act up because the parents think their progeny is the most special thing in the universe and has to have a smooth path before them all through life. How about we show them what a thorn is before they have to deal with the real ones?
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