You missed the whole point of the story. A father prohibits his son from attending the funeral of a fire fighter. Yes. The father was an idiot!
we must not have read the same story.... nowhere in the story I read did it say the father grounded him with the purpose of not attending the funeral. He was grounded. That is all the article says. As such, I have to back the parents here ( I would assume that if the kid asked, he may have been given permission, he may not have, he was being punished for something )...nowhere in the article does it say the kid asked his parents if he could go....
The fact is that it is none of your business what the father's reasons were. He doesn't even have to have one.
You are sounding more like michelle obama then a conservative on this.
The article doesn’t say that he was prohibited from attending the funeral.
“He was under strict orders not to leave the house after school.”
“Do not leave this house after school” is not the same parental edict as “Do not attend a firefighter’s funeral.”
We don’t know what the eleven-year-old did (if anything) to prompt the father to give the edict to not leave the house after school.
You seem to be making the assumption that he was specifically ground so he could not attend this funeral. I don't see that in the article and the following makes me believe he was grounded for other reasons.
We were talking about how even though what he had done was very nice, we’re trying to go back over the rules that he wasn’t supposed to leave the house. But it’s very touching that he would go and do that for someone.
“He has such a big heart.”
In your home, if your kids were grounded for other reasons, would it be okay to leave the house, without your knowlege or discussing the issue with you first?
This year my son takes the bus home from school. I was nervous about him coming home to an empty house, but it has worked out well. His grades have gone up. Once he gets home, the rule is don’t leave the house, because we live off a busy road. Plus, he has homework which needs to get done before soccer. He calls me at work when he gets home, as he did on this day. He mentioned the helicopters flying over the house for the funeral on that busy road a quarter-mile away. I didn’t know he was going to pay his respects for the firefighter, but I know why he did. His half-brother had committed suicide after coming home from Iraq in August and we had just flown back from that service. It was still on his mind.