Bad parenting is like pornography

You know it when you see it. Or hear it, as in last night's case.

Our next-door neighbors--the ones who built the god-awful cinderblock wall down the center of the shared driveway--have a daughter who's about 7 or 8 years old.

As I was turning in after an inordinately stressful day, I hear the daughter screaming and her dad yelling back that now she would know the difference between the parent and the child. (I can't imagine what led up to this declaration).

Neighbor dad's preferred method of discipline is to put his screaming daughter in the car, parked on the shared driveway. This is maybe 15 feet away from my open bedroom window.

Thus confined, the child's screaming and crying and the dad's yelling continued, punctuated occasionally by the car's horn. All this at 11:00 pm. The hubbub continued for about 40 minutes.

It was clear I wasn't going to get any shut-eye while this was going on. It's the kind of thing you can't help but eavesdrop on because it's loud and RIGHT THERE and you hope it will go away before it becomes necessary to call the authorities.

I told mom about the commotion and she said the kid is a terror and the shouting matches/disciplinary action used to be much worse. The kid's a home-grown terrorist, apparently, and the dad has some decidedly odd notions of how to handle it. (Same guy who thought two cement horse heads would make his cinderblock wall look classy).

Commenting on other peoples' parenting skills is always a little sketchy--especially when a single, childless person like myself is providing the critique. But deprive an already stressed out bride from her precious sleep, well, prepare to be skewered. And if you insist on using poor technique, at least try to be a little quieter.