Which of course pretty much has nothing to do with anything ...
Well, it gives some people a reference for the weight. But as a practical matter, when you snark at someone because you think their comment has nothing to do with anything, and then offer up this...
The average weight of a 6 year old is 46.2 pounds ... and the average weight of a 7 year old is 50.6 pounds ...
... one can't help but to sense some hypocrisy in the offing. Might as well give us the average weight of a newborn hippo or a 3 week old newt, since we're doing things that pretty much has nothing to do with anything.
So a 23 pound rock would be roughly half of his weight, on average.
His? Who's his? Ah, the undefined pronoun strikes again, as clearly you must be talking about someone other than the kid in the story, because...
As xiggi, the text in the OP, the video at the USA Today link, and every news story on the matter noted, the kid is sixteen, not six or seven.
and because...
(BTW: the average weight of a kid of the height mentioned in the story is 70 pounds)
And the actual weight of the actual kid mentioned in the story is 144-145 pounds.
And many adults are idiots ... some of them even go out of their way to prove it ... regularly ...
I do love a good irony.
I'll preface my comments below by stating that I believe a parent should be able to discipline their children any way they see fit, and without any outside interference.
The kid in question is a 16 year old with a history of problems in school going back 3 years. The problems became so bad that the parents finally had to pull him out and homeschool him. The problems continued where he wouldn't complete his education assignments nor his household chores. The rock-carrying make-work punishment is hardly for the purpose of having the kid say, "How high?" when dad says jump. If he didn't learn that by age 6, he isn't likely to learn it at 16. Nor was this a "pointless" activity. It was an activity designed to teach consequences of failed personal discipline and not respecting authority. As was noted earlier, I bet he listens to his father now. Except, he probably won't, since outside interference has cut the parents off at the knees.
While the kid was doing his walking, the father would check in on him frequently, walking along side of him a lot of the time. He was to carry the rock for 3 miles, and do it within 2 hours (or start over from the beginning). He did that 5 times over 3 days. He did it all 5 times within the allotted time. In between hikes he had to move rocks from one side of the back yard to the other, but he did eat and get plenty of sleep over the 3 days. It's a little harsh, but as the father told the judge, nothing else has worked with this kid.
The father would drive him out to a spot, drop the kid off, and then have the kid walk home from there. The only real problem with the punishment is the fact that the route of the 3 mile treks took him down Kings Highway which is kind of a busy road with no sidewalk. Not exactly a safe place for a kid who is fatigued to be walking, but not as bad as some would like to make it. But it's that aspect of it that resulted in the charges.
The kid wasn't injured, so the cop probably should have talked to the father and told him to restrict punishments like this to a more safe and secure area, but the overreach of people telling parents how to discipline their children doesn't allow that.
The real overreach, however, is the charge filed against him by the prosecution: First Degree Child Abuse. Child abuse in the first degree is when a person "maliciously causes a child under the age of 18 cruel or excessive physical or mental pain." Meaning, the father did it specifically and intentionally for the explicit purpose of causing physical or mental pain. In law, malice imports the absence of all elements of justification or excuse and the presence of an actual intent to cause the particular harm produced, or the wanton and willful doing of an act with an awareness of a plain and strong likelihood that such harm may result. The charge of First Degree Child Abuse seems like a charge designed right up front to be plea bargained down to a lesser charge, because it'll be very hard to prove malice.
He told Judge Joel Dodson: "I had tried everything else and nothing seemed to work. I know it may be an adult punishment and he is a 16-year-old boy. It was something we did when I was in the military. The sergeant would have us move rocks. I know how it sounds, but we did that all the time. No one every got hurt moving rocks or hiking with rocks."
He also told the judge he didn't feel it was an inappropriate punishment. His wife told the judge the same thing, as they consulted with each other to determine the child's punishment.
It can certainly be argued the punishment went too far, but I'm not sure it can be argued that it went far enough to demand a punishment not-less-than 5 years and not-more-than 20 years in prison for doing it. That seems almost malicious.
