Classic Rant #580 (September 14, 2011): Mommy Meanest

Some people kind of lose their heads about their kids.

In the old days, like when I was growing up, you had parents who talked incessantly about their children to the point that the listener wanted to throw up.

Nowadays, you have parents standing up for their kids, but standing up in such a way that I wish that they would just sit down ... probably because they would be sitting on their brains.

Such is the case with comely Daphne Melin, the mother of a 12 year old child who evidently was cyber-bullied on Facebook.

According to the news story, a planned altercation was arranged between Melin's daughter and another child at William Floyd Elementary School on Long Island. Melin allegedly drove her daughter to the confrontation. The other girl did not show up and sent a friend in her place.

A brawl erupted, and another girl who begged Melin to stop the fight was instead attacked herself by the mom, who used her best WWE moves on the spectator. The fight was taped on a cell phone and posted on Facebook and YouTube.

By the way, Melin is 32. The girl who she had the physical altercation with is 12.

The mother turned herself in, although she is continuing to plead her innocence. She was charged with three counts of endangering the welfare of a child and one count of third-degree attempted assault.

Evidently, the original dispute was over a boy that Melin's daughter was fond of. The fight over the boy escalated to taunts from another girl to Melin's daughter.

Melin says she previously went to the school district with her concerns, but the district turned a deaf ear to her pleas to stop the harassment.

There you have it. A mother defending her child is one thing, but a mother defending her child with brute force is another.

Melin was on the early news this morning, and she continues to claim that the whole incident was a misunderstanding--even though the video clearly shows her attacking another child.

I have to think that this woman is not of her right mind. She is nothing but a child herself, and she probably put herself in her daughter's position, and completely lost it.

And she still defends herself.

Girls have been arguing over boys for centuries, and vice versa. But now, with the Internet, the arguments can be elevated so that just about anyone can get involved and anyone can see what is unfolding.

This, in itself, is a product of modern technology, one that is not policed at all by Facebook and similar sites.

But for Melin to get involved to this extent in this fracas makes you wonder about the sanity of this person.

She is 20 years older than the girl she is said to have assaulted.

Sure, over my years as a parent myself, there have been parents and kids I would have loved to slap across the head, but I kept those thoughts in my mind. I never acted them out.

Melin, on the other hand, did.

It is hard to feel any pity for her, and quite frankly, when she goes back to court, the judge should throw the book at her, give her the stiffest sentence possible, and use her as an example of parenting gone berserk.

There is one thing to defending your child against cyber bullying; however, there is another thing to defending your child by attacking another kid.

Who is the real bully here?