Mom Arrested For Endangering Her Daughters
I don’t normally watch the morning news shows. But yesterday, I was doing my routine search for the day’s weather and I saw a segment on the Today show about a New York mother who was arrested for endangering the welfare of her daughter. Did you see that?
Madlyn Primoff, a lawyer from Scarsdale, NY, reportedly got so fed up with her two bickering daughters (ages 12 and 10) while driving that she booted them from the family car at an intersection 3 miles from home. Primoff then drove off. She stopped and allowed her older daughter to get back in when the girl ran after her. But the younger daughter was left alone to fend for herself.
What astounds me most about this incident is what happened next: Primoff went home and reported her younger daughter missing.
That is when she learned the girl was already in police custody, thanks to a responsible citizen who took her in. Mom was then arrested for endangering the welfare of a minor.
Today hosted a psychologist and a parenting expert from Momlogic.com to discuss this matter, and they acknowledged that all parents have high-stress moments, and that handling bickering children is inevitable. They also agreed that this was not a good method for dealing with anger. Instead of totally losing it and doing something reckless, parents should
- take deep breaths/count to ten
- stop the car to take a “mommy time out”
- have a plan in advance for how you will handle those high-tension, breaking-point moments with your children
Primoff made a mistake, no question about it. My goal in this post is not to judge her harshly, but to elicit suggestions and techniques that have worked for you. This is a cautionary tale. 
Let’s take advantage of it.
The floor is yours, mom crowd! What do you think? How do you keep your anger in check when dealing with unruly kids?
Share the fun: Email + Del.icio.us + Digg + Technorati
Hey Dawn! My kids(4,2)are too young yet to bicker in the car. Yeah, they can occasionally irritate each other but nothing so annoying.
I do remember as a child driving from Iowa to Texas on a family vacation. There were 7 of us kids in a van(5 of those being teenagers) and my father was an only child. You can imagine the potential. After many escalating warnings he pulled the van to the side of the road and ordered us out. He didn’t leave. We all stood in the middle of a harvested cornfield contemplating what was going to happen next. Nothing happened next other than we entered the van again much more subdued and our father had time to cool down.
Unruly children? At home, I separate them as soon as I feel my temperature rising and then send them outside. We try to spend as much time out as possible as it helps gets the wiggles out and wears them out so they don’t have the extra energy to irritate each other.
In the car I think I would take away privileges. Kaleb LOVES his after nap DVD time. Taking that away is the ULTIMATE punnishment.
Looking forward to hearing other strategies!
My kids are still really young (4 and 1), but a change of venue is best for changing attitudes… theirs AND mine. I have actually pulled the car over before when my oldest child was throwing a fit in the backseat… pulled off the freeway, into a neighborhood and we just sat there until he stopped screaming. It helped me gain my composure too without endangering us on a busy freeway!
I posted about this the other day. We’ve all been there I’m sure.
Dude. My kids aren’t old enough for that yet. The car is usually a peaceful time for me. I have tossed my daughter in her crib and shut the door when I’ve been angry.
Once in high school I kicked my younger sister out of the car I was driving when we were fighting about something. I drove home and my mom went to go get her. Needless to say I did get in trouble.
I read this story on the internet and it was not sure how I felt. I felt bad for the mom for not being able to control her temper with her children but I know there will be some point in my daughter life where I might act just on a whim of insanity. As a mother tho I could not imagine DRIVING off. The other question that came to me was where is the other parent and is she a single mom? I know the stress of being a single parent and I can see how emotions and stress can get out of hand. BUT I do not condone her actions. I will be curious how this plays out in the media.
All my ideas pertain to this particular issue. Reacting out of anger is never the good way to go. Thinking ahead could allow a parent to come up with all kinds of ideas….
I think a good in advance thing to do would be to have a friend on standby following you in another car if you anticipate a day of in the car bickering. Then you could stop the car, drop them off and inform your friend by phone to follow them home and make sure they get home safely. Depending on how old the kids are would depend on how far from home you would kick them out of the car. Then the next time car bickering starts all you’d have to say was something (calmly) like, “will you be walking home or can we drive home in peace?”
Or you could just stop the car and say, “I’ll be happy to keep driving when the fighting stops.” That one works well if you are taking the kids somewhere they really want to go.
Or, next time the kids want you to take them somewhere you could say (empathetically) that you don’t feel like you can trust them to use kind words with each other and that your ears just can’t listen to all the fighting –so no, you can’t take them to their friends house….the mall…the movies…..Maybe next time though.
Those ideas come from Love and Logic. The key thing is staying calm, incorporating friends, thinking ahead, and offering lots of empathy in the process.
I can remember my dad stopping the car and booting us out a few times…but it was just to shock us. And he picked us up a few metres up the road.But leaving one and then reporting her missing.That is bizarre.