Recently you may have seen or heard the now infamous video of Gospel minister Kirk Franklin cursing his oldest son Kerrion Franklin out like a dog in the street. I wrote about it here, but doing the follow-up on Afro Mama because that’s just not good parenting. Kirk is a father so it’s not about motherhood in any way, but I have seen across the interwebs many black people including other black mothers defend this sort of toxic parenting behavior. The apology:
Note how he felt necessary to preface the apology with a lot of background information about the terrible relationship he has with his son, as if that excuses it. And he did not apologize to his son, but to the people for hearing it.
Talking to your child in this way is disturbing and trifling in my book no matter what they’ve done or how old they are, and especially how old the parents are. Kirk Franklin is a middle-aged man, by now at this stage of life he should have learned personal restraint and how to control his temper. Especially concerning his own children. Let anybody else in the world ‘trigger’ you and ‘make’ you go off on them, but not your children.