In a video he posted to Youtube and Facebook, he set a camera up in the yard, and read his daughter’s post aloud to the camera. He then announced her grounding and loss of her laptop. Then, he shot the laptop.

Shot the laptop. With hollow-point exploding bullets.

As of this writing, the video has been viewed 1.4 million times. The Facebook entry from which it came has 13,500 likes, 6,200 shares and 7,000 comments. Phrases like “father of the year” are being tossed around. Sure, there are some who do not approve of his techniques, his use of a firearm, his destroying a laptop, etc. But, he seems to have far more thumbs up than down.

The sources of the info in this graphic are a Bullguard Internet Security Survey and Parents, Children & Social Networking Consumer Reports.

“There is a lot you can tell about a person by reading their Facebook profile,” says Loreal Lynch at OnlineSchools.com. “From incriminating photos to friendship insights, Facebook tells all. That’s one of the reasons so may parents are joining Facebook, according to a recent study. As it turns out, more than half of parents use the popular social network to spy on their kids’ Internet activity–and 11 percent of parents joined Facebook for the sole purpose of snooping on their kids! But with the growing number of underage Facebook users, are parents snooping, or safeguarding? Find out the stats on parents and Facebook in the below infographic.”

Here’s the infographic:

Courtesy of: OnlineSchools.com

Jackie Cohen at AllFacebook, who gets a hat tip for pointing out this infographic, says, “Half of all parents have been keeping tabs on their teenage kids via Facebook. If anything, we’re surprised that the percentage isn’t higher.”

I guess the last question stated in the infographic is the real question: invasion of privacy or good parenting? What do you think?

Mom said that about the changing attitudes of children not too long after a student—a classmate of mine—dropped a little chalkboard cleaner in her coffee when she wasn’t looking. Local politics kept the boy out of trouble (his dad was sheriff), but not out of the path of my clenched teenage fists.

If camera phones and YouTube were around then, I imagine you would have seen it online or on the news already. You may have seen on the news, just a couple of years before the chalkboard cleaner incident, that a student shot a teacher and a janitor in the neighboring county. Instances like these were rare enough then that you may not have heard about them on the scale that you would later hear about Columbine or Paducah, again in my home state.

I thought still that those were just isolated incidents of temporary insanity, that my parents were provoked into their viewpoint that kids were different by age and by unfortunate pranks. (More than once the car had to be taken in to remedy the bumper-to-bumper key-scratch down the side of it after sitting in the high school parking lot. Teenagers were just punks, I concluded, even if I was one.)

It’s hard not take their viewpoint that kids are different, though, when you discover an assault on a Baltimore teacher was posted on MySpace, and a cheerleader ambush posted on YouTube not even a week earlier. It’s hard not to remember and appreciate my parents’ warnings when I told them, at the uber-idealistic age of 18, that I wanted to teach high school and make a real impact on the youth where I could.

I don’t know whether to be comforted or disturbed that it happens in other countries and not just in the States. This report of ten year-olds in Britain posing as online pedophiles to bully the other kids is most certainly disturbing and not comforting.

I can’t answer the question definitively of whether kids are really different, these days, or whether we just have more exposure to it. It’s possible that kids having their very own media to use both encourages behavior and provides a new, wider, and multi-angled lens from which to view it. The effect of seeing it more often, as we would discuss in a mass media class in college, is that it appears it happens more often.

But we did have bullies when I grew up and they were vicious. I think it’s harder to watch as an adult. When we were kids it never occurred to us we might do permanent damage to someone. And usually we didn’t.

In the 9th grade, in gym class on a mat, I perfectly executed a pile driver I had seen the Hulkster do. It was perfectly executed because I didn’t break the kid’s neck. We were both lucky.

Point is: Monkey see, monkey do. You have to wonder if kids are different these days because they see more than they used to. YouTube’s good for that. I see those videos and have to protect myself from the thought that 2 percent of being human means awesome technological developments and endless possibilities, and 98 percent of being human is being a chimp.   

Maybe you’ve seen online or on TV how chimps treat each other, especially outsider-type others.

I’m not going to blame the Internet, or video games or TV. These are positive human developments. Besides, I played Mortal Combat and never finished anyone. I’m not going to blame a loss of moral fabric in society, either; a century ago we packed a picnic and the kids along to public hangings. Before that, there were worse things people did.

I look at my 14-year-old stepson who loves his Xbox 360 shoot-em-up games and his YouTube and his Gaia and his WOW and wonder if I should be somehow afraid. But then I see a lot of myself in him, even if he’s someone else’s son, and note that he is a kind and gentle and bright soul without any violent tendencies. He’s a lot like I was, actually, generally a peacemaker in a world of bullies.

Unless it involved my mother, obviously.

Point is: He’s not so different, and that makes me feel better.

Who do I blame? Parents are easy scapegoats and I sure had good ones to keep me in line (and teachers to pull out scary, holey paddles). But that’s hard to say definitively. Most parents I know are doing the best they can and aren’t near the level of some abusive jerks I knew growing up in the previous generation. Then, just like now, there were good parents and bad parents. Then, just like now, there are good kids and bad kids. I don’t blame parents. I blame chimp-ness.

What should we do about it? I don’t know, but we can’t go censoring the Internet. Seems that could have worse consequences. Perhaps instead of thinking kids are different now, just like every generation in human history has thought of the generation that came after them, we should show them as much love as we can and try to find shreds of ourselves in them.

Then they won’t seem so different.   
 

MySpace, Say Anything But That

So, my future stepson’s fourteen. Big YouTube fan. Likes his music irreverent, edgy, antiestablishment. I think that’s healthy and normal. His mother’s taught him right. He calls me over to the computer and says, "Have you heard of ‘Say Anything?’"

And I’m like, "Duh!" John Cusack with that stupid boombox over his head. And he’s like, "What’s a boombox?"

He says, "No, old dude," (I’m 30), and he brings up a YouTube video that I’m not going to link to because I’m sure it will be DMCA’d as soon as I do. It’s a tribute video, not the studio production of the band Say Anything’s song "Little Girls," with the lyrics appearing in sync with the audio, a Web 2.0 version of the old red bouncing ball, of which he probably also knows nothing.

The lyrics go:

I kill, kill, kill little girls.
I kill, kill, kill little girls.
It’s such a thrill, thrill, thrill to the world
when I kill, kill, kill little girls. 

The video cycles through pictures of little girls at birthday parties and such.

As my stomach turns, he’s laughing his head off and looking at me like I should be laughing with him. If the teenagers in the comments section beneath the video were standing in the room with us, they’d all be lmaoing and wondering why I wasn’t too.

I’m not laughing because I’m at once disgusted and conflicted. I think of Columbine and Virginia Tech, of child predators, of all the sickos out there that these teenagers probably haven’t thought much about between Biology and English. They’re not having the visceral, sad, sickening feelings I am when I think of it – it’s just a bunch of nonsense to them. They don’t watch the news.

But I’m also a defender of the arts, of free speech, and I remember how unjust and crazy and un-American I thought it was that Dee Snider was yanked in front of Congress to talk about some stupid song lyrics that the kids seem to get but the adults were outraged by.

And here I am, with only a few white hairs parked amid my dark chocolate waves, just one foot into full-on adulthood and still breaking in a 401(k), thinking the world is about to end because of a rock band. I could stomach Ozzie, Marilyn Manson and Mudvayne, but not this?

To be fair, judging from other lyrics it does seem to be some sort of shock rock attack on prettiness – you know, all the glossy lipstick DUI insanity inflicted on us from the Lindsay Lohan absurdities out there.

Other Say Anything titles include "It’s a Metaphor, Fool" (okay, fine, you don’t really want to put sixteen bullets in my head) and "I Will Never Write An Obligatory Song About Being On The Road And Missing Someone" which is just hysterical. 

With over 238,000 friends, the band is quite popular on MySpace, which is why I bring it up here. That, and by sheer coincidence, the day after I first heard their song about killing little girls, MySpace announced their first concert tour.

Guess who was headlining.

Weird, huh?

I tried to contact the band to ask them to explain the lyrics to me, but they have not responded.

I wanted to ask MySpace how promoting a band that sings songs about killing little girls fits into their aggressive campaign against child predation on their website, but neither MySpace nor Fox Interactive Media returned requests for comment. 

These are examples of you working for leaders who did not adapt their style based on the employee’s needs. I would venture to guess that you were not entirely motivated to put out your very best effort every time when you were feeling such frustrations.

What can you, as a manager, do to prevent the same mistake? My suggestion is to follow what good parents do.

Good parents instinctively know how they need to manage their children. But we sometimes don’t make the same connection when we are at work. Let’s think about the different stages of a child’s development.

The Toddler At this stage, there is so much they don’t know. They are just learning the basics of how to walk, and run, and talk, and play with others. The parents are generally right there at almost every moment. They are very involved in the child’s development.

They set boundaries for the child: “don’t’ go near the stove, its hot!”

They give very directive instructions: “Put the toy truck back into the basket.”

They give frequent feedback and encouragement: “That’s right, this is a blue ball. Now pick out the red one. That’s great!”

When you have an employee that is at the toddler stage in terms of job skills and proficiencies, you need to adopt the hands-on parenting style of leadership. First determine what they know and don’t know. Set boundaries for them so they don’t get into big trouble. Be very directive in what you want done, and provide them feedback and encouragement so they know whether they are progressing and satisfying your expectations or not.

The Teenager At this stage, the child wants more independence, and prefers to figure things out for himself. But the parents know that they still need to provide supervision. And they also give the child more space to experiment and build confidence.

When your employees are at the teenager stage, they often think they know more then they actually do. Surely you were never guilty of this when you were a teenager, right? So, you still need to be around enough to keep them out of trouble. Instead of checking in with them every day, you can now check in with them every week on their progress.

Your requests can be less directive, and more objective defined (“I’d like you to clean up your room this weekend.”) Instead of offering information and directions with every assignment, you can now wait for your employee to approach you with questions.

When your employees see they you have eased off your level of supervision, they know that you are feeling more comfortable with their ability to perform, and their confidence grows. But always remember to continue to give feedback and acknowledgement for their efforts.

The Young Adult Now your employees are almost independent. Like a good parent, you have provided them all the skills and knowledge to make it on their own. At this point, you can ease off even more on giving directions and checking up on progress. Instead, you want to help them grow as contributors to your organization.

Now when you hand over an assignment, you can give the most crucial details and leave them to figure out the approach. You let them know that when they come to you with problems and questions, you would like to see their recommendations or solutions.

At this stage, your responsibility as a “parent” is quite light. But you must continue to give feedback and acknowledgement so your employees stay motivated to excel. They need to know that you have noticed their development and appreciate their efforts.

The Adult Now you are on “easy street”. Your child has moved out of the house, and is successful and productive. At this point, your role as parent is to show love and appreciation of the person they have become (thanks to your hard work), and to offer them opportunities for growth.

Your expectation of these employees is that they can pretty much operate without you. You provide them with the vision of where you are going and they immediately rally the troops and make a plan and start marching down the road.

When these employees encounter a problem, you expect them to come to you with a list of alternatives, the recommendation they want to choose, and just ask for your concurrence. They come prepared with all the critical information you need to make a sound decision. You can ask these employees to be mentors to your toddlers or teenagers and take some of the responsibilities from you. You continue to provide them feedback and acknowledgement so they know they are still on the right track.

Now take a look at your team, and make an assessment of what stage of development each of your employee is at present. Adopt the appropriate parenting/leadership style that is needed and your employee will respond. Most employees want to do a good job for you, so set your expectations clearly and watch them perform.

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With nearly 30 percent of online moms using the Internet to get information about pregnancy, parenting or being a new mom,(1) this new resource for the first time joins respected content from Healthy Pregnancy with Baby Talk and Parenting magazines, all in one convenient location. The new channel delivers customizable planning and organizational tools such as the Healthy Pregnancy Planner and a new baby namer, the latest, need-to-know parenting information and shopping guides to meet everyday parenting needs. By joining Pregnancy Circles and Mom-to-Mom Circles, parents can connect at anytime with other moms and dads for advice and support.

“Managing a family is one of life’s greatest challenges, so AOL Parenting offers a comprehensive array of services and information parents need, in an easy to access format,” said Tina Sharkey, senior vice president of AOL Life Management and Community. “AOL Parenting marks a continuation of our Life Management strategy to provide members with all the services they need to make their days, and lives, easier to navigate.”

Available at AOL Keyword: Parenting, the Parenting channel joins AOL’s series of offerings to make everyday life easier. Through services such as Bill Pay, AOL Food, AOL Diet & Fitness and AOL Research & Learn, AOL provides busy parents everyday tools and solutions that simplify their daily routines and responsibilities, including raising a family. Recognizing parents’ concerns about their family’s online safety, AOL offers Parental Controls to help members manage their kids’ and teens’ activities and time spent online. The KOL and RED services are designed entirely for the kids and teens audiences to ensure for a more secure and personalized online experience for young audiences.

“The daily demands of parenting and raising a family can no doubt be overwhelming, as can the endless questions that surface throughout pregnancy and the stages of childhood,” said Susan Kane, Editor-in-Chief of BabyTalk. “That’s why we are thrilled to further the AOL/Time Inc. Interactive relationship, bringing AOL members expert editorial advice and answers to such plaguing questions as ‘How do I choose the right day care center? What type of stroller should I buy? What are the most popular baby names?’”

Key features of AOL Parenting include:

– Ages + Stages: This comprehensive directory featuring thousands of articles from the editors at Parenting magazine provides AOL members with authoritative information on the major milestones to look for in a child’s physical, mental and emotional development. Topics such as health, eating and lifestyle are addressed for children ranging from birth to 12 years.

– The Healthy Pregnancy Planner (HPP): This innovative, customizable weekly planner provides the mom-to-be with personalized information from Parenting, BabyTalk and Healthy Pregnancy magazines, coaching her from conception to due date. The customized Weekly View illustrates fetal development with photos and gives timely tips on health, exercise, body changes and more. Synched up with AOL Calendar, a Pregnancy Calendar not only keeps track of prenatal care appointments and the baby’s first kick – it also links to relevant articles for each week of pregnancy. A weekly e-mail includes even more relevant news and tips from other women based on their own pregnancy experiences.

– The Pregnancy Record: Moms-to-be can create, print and share a keepsake of their personalized pregnancy experiences. This record captures milestones, thoughts and information about the baby for easy retrieval of what moms want to remember most about their pregnancies.

– Pregnancy Circles and Mom-to-Mom Circles: AOL’s community of 23 million members offers a built-in support network to which expectant mothers and parents can turn for real-life advice and to share momentous occasions. The Pregnancy Circles and Mom-to-Mom Circles are an extremely popular way for members to meet other parents across the country, with members posting more than 2,500 entries a week to the two communities.

– Shopping: Integrated with AOL’s inStore commerce channel, AOL Parenting makes shopping easy with the click of a mouse, allowing parents to search for different items while comparing the various brands and prices. Also on the AOL Parenting channel, parents can consult expert recommendations and Parenting “Mom-Tested” reviews on the latest gear such as strollers and high chairs, as well as the must-have toys of the season. Parents can also consult a checklist of essential items and create, store and share “wish lists” with friends and family. Additionally, parents can sign up for free product recall Alerts and other timely product safety announcements.

– Baby Namer Tool: Members can explore thousands of names gathered by the top experts in the field, organized in fun to use categories like “Celebrity,” “Cool Trends” or “The Classics.” The Baby Namer also provides the story behind a name, tracks the name’s popularity over time and enables members to share their favorites with friends and family.

– Learning: Through AOL Research & Learn, families can obtain tips on how to maximize a child’s potential and properly prepare kids for school. Grade readiness checklists track a child’s progress from preschool through high school.

– Other AOL Parenting features include a birth options planner featuring a checklist to help guide women through the many delivery options.

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