Is "Oklahoma" ok?

So, I'm scrolling through my social media page this morning while I'm eating my bowl of cereal and I see a post from our local CBS affiliate about a mom in Oklahoma who is making her son hold a sign on the side of the street saying "I picked a fight at school because I'm a bully".  The boy is 8 years old and, understandably, looks miserable in the picture.  Below the post are (at present time) 569 "Likes", 71 "Shares", and 175 "Comments", one of which is my own.  These comments range from completely supportive to down-right disgust for the mother saying that she is "bullying her own son for being a bully".

I know most women don't like to share their age but I have no problem letting everyone know that I am 40 (soon to be 41 in 44 days) and I DO NOT consider myself to be old by any means.  I did have a very strict mother who probably would have done the EXACT same thing Oklahoma Mama did...and I knew it.  Did I do things that I got into trouble for? Yes.  And the punishment was harsh.  Was I a quick learner?  You betcha!  There were very few things that weren't allowed that would've been worth the punishment I would've been sentenced to had I gotten caught.  But, I wasn't the only kid who had rules and expectations at home.  ALL of my friends did.  Mine were a bit heavier but we all had rules and if we misbehaved we had to suffer the consequences.  There was no rewards for bad behavior in the late 70' and early 80's at my house, or any other that I knew of.  And if we acted out in public, we got punished...in public.  We didn't have to hold a sign but it was still "public humiliation".  When I was younger, I remember hiding in a circular clothing rack at a store when I was out shopping with my mom once.  ONCE.  Again, I was a fast learner.  Not only did I know how mad at me she was, so did EVERY person in that store as she grabbed my arm so tight I thought she was going to twist it off and walked me out the door.  Did I do it again?  Nope.  Would I react the same way if my daughter scared the living crap out of me by hiding in a rack and I couldn't find her when she was younger.  Probably.

I was returning a movie to the large, free-standing dispenser of a particular color at the grocery store the other week.  There were two machines side-by-side, both being used by the same family (a mother older than me, a teenage boy approximately 15 and a teenage girl approximately 17).  The boy was hovering over one machine and the girl casually tapping the one on the right with the mother standing between them.  She sees me walk up with my rental in hand and stand behind them.  She says to the boy "hurry up because there is someone behind you" and he proceeds to say "Well they can just wait".  The girl must have seen the expression on my face because she then assured me that she was just playing around on her machine and if I was just returning my movie I could do it on hers.  I was outraged that the teenage boy was so rude as to say what he did, but I was even more appalled at the fact that the mother said NOTHING to him!  Really?!? Let my daughter even try to be rude and disrespectful to an adult and we'll just see if she's a quick learner too.

So, my opinion is, we can't have it both ways.  We can't complain when parents DON'T discipline their kids and they turn out to be disrespectful young adults who have no regard for authority, or anyone else for that matter, and we certainly can't complain when they DO.  Do we really want to continue to raise a generation of entitled people who think they can behave any way they want to and there are no consequences?  We are not raising children.  We are raising people that we are sending out into this great big world and, if we do our jobs right, they will be successful and independent law-abiding citizens who respect others.