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Unfit for Parenting?

This story comes out of New York, New York, and presents a very slippery slope situation. The backdrop to the story is an ongoing case for divorce between David Schorr and Barbi Schorr. The father (David Schorr) has his son every other weekend and each Tuesday night for dinner. What David was not expecting from what he believed was a good parenting move, was potentially less court awarded time with his son.

David picked up his son for their usual Tuesday night dinner and the child wanted McDonald’s. However, David trying to be a good parent (or what you would assume) told his son that he had been eating too much junk food and he could not have McDonald’s. His son argued and wanted nothing else so David gave him the ultimatum; either eat something other than McDonald’s or don’t eat at all. Of course any child would do two things in this situation; remain stubborn and choose the no eating option or give into eating something the parent chooses. Unfortunately for David, his son chose the first option, eating nothing at all.

Since the child chose not to eat dinner, David dropped his son back off with his mother (Barbi Schorr). David noted that on the way back he tried to entice his son to choose something else so that he could eat dinner. An issue arose from this because the psychologist (Schiller) that was appointed to the divorce case told the judge this, “raises concerns about the viability of the father’s weekend visits with his son”. As a result, Schiller also asked that the judge eliminate or limit David’s weekend time with his son.

This story seems pretty striking and a very interesting example of what could go wrong when you are trying to make the best decision for your children. Although the child refused to eat anything but McDonald’s and David thought he was making a good decision for his son, in the eye of a psychologist this was not a good decision. David’s argument was that he ” felt that giving in would reward bad behavior, so he offered the elsewhere-or-nowhere “final offer.”

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