Parenting is the toughest! You have to keep the kids fed, but you also want them to grow up and be productive citizens, and you don’t get a handbook at the hospital on how to make that happen. So sometimes you just gotta work with what the good Lord gave ya, and for Florida couple Joey and Chadd Mudd, the good Lord gave them drugs, so many drugs. So they figured, this house ain’t gonna clean itself (because they’re probably always high), and it’s not like they’ve got time to help the kids, ages 13 and 15, with their homework (because they’re probably … you get it), so they came up with a system. Reward the little children for good grades and getting all their chores done, with weed and blow!
Parenting is a tough job, which is part of the reason I’ve never had children. I admire parents who stick with it, do the hard work, and watch their progeny grow up to become fine, solid adults, if for no other reason than I never felt the desire or the commitment to do so. At least I had my wits about me enough to recognize that I wasn’t cut out for life as a parent. Our neighborhoods (and prisons) are filled with those whose commitment to being a good parent and a solid example for their children is in some cases virtually nonexistent. I’d submit that our would be a far better place if more people had the ability and self-knowledge to recognize that they simply shouldn’t procreate.
Then there’s Joey and Chadd Mudd, who at first glance seemed to have the right idea (What parent wouldn’t want to reward their child for good behavior and great results?) if not the right methods and tools. It’s not uncommon for parents to reward child who succeed in school with money, trips, clothes, food, or whatever else might help to provide some incentive to work hard and achieve. It IS uncommon for those rewards to include illegal drugs like marijuana and cocaine. Then again, if that’s what you have to work with….
I’ve always found it astonishing that one needs a license to hunt, fish, own a business, drive a car, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum…yet anyone with functional plumbing and the inability to control their urges can create a child. How is it that the most important job known to mankind is also the least regulated and not at all subject to any sort of education or quality control? When Matt Methhead and Helen Heroinaddict can make a baby, which will likely as not end up as a ward of the state as the parents fall into and out of prison and rehab facilities, something’s wrong. Society has no mechanism for identifying those who lack the wherewithal to raise children. I don’t think it’s a stretch or particularly outrageous to believe that society has a vested interest in ensuring that all children have a stable, loving home. After all, our prisons are filled with those from broken homes, who never learned even the most basic lessons that should be the solemn responsibility of every parent to pass along to their offspring.
Given that this is Floriduh we’re talking about, there’s every chance that when the Mudds get out of prison, they’ll be reunited with their children and pick up where they left off. The Mudds will be all about their parental rights…but what about the rights of their children to grow up free of being corrupted and broken by their parents?
And you wonder why we spend so much money on prisons these days….
Joey and Chad Mudd … are facing multiple felony child abuse charges, court records show. The children were provided the pot, investigators say, in the family’s home in Largo, a city 20 miles from Tampa Bay.
Chad Mudd, 36, has also been charged with providing the girls with cocaine, which he allegedly snorted with them earlier this year while the trio was inside his truck.
According to arrest affidavits, Joey Mudd, 34, admitted to smoking pot with her children on five occasions, and referred to the provision of the drug “as a form of a ‘bargaining tool.’”
A bargaining tool? What like, “If you don’t maintain at least a “B” average, I’ll take away you cell phone” couldn’t be a (legal) bargaining tool? Because before you know it, these two hard-working parents, who were undoubtedly trying to engage in some creative parenting,
