Here's a story reminiscent of the Texas Cheerleader Mom.....

[Minnesota_Lib]

Dosing The Dew
Cops: Teen understudy put Clorox in lead actress's soda

JUNE 2--A Texas teenager angling for the lead role in a school play is facing charges that she spiked a competing actress's drink with Clorox. Katherine Smith, 18, was arrested this week and hit with a felony rap for tampering with a consumer product (in this case a bottle of Mountain Dew she gave to a 15-year-old rival).

According to a Tarrant County arrest warrant, Smith was the understudy of the teen victim in a play called "Ha." By dosing the younger actress's Dew, Smith believed that she would take over the play's lead role. The warrant notes that Smith "had a lot of family coming in from out of town to see the play and watch her perform." Additionally, Smith's mother believed that her daughter was the play's main character, not an understudy for the February performances at L.D. Bell High School in Hurst.

Smith, who used an eye dropper to place bleach in the 20-ounce soda bottle, told a school administrator that she wanted to harm the lead actress "so she could not perform in the play." Smith's plot was thwarted when the girl smelled an unusual odor emanating from the Dew. Pictured below in a Tarrant County Sheriff's Office mug shot, Smith faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the spiking bid.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0602061dew1.html

http://www.azstarnet.com/news/131819

[Pierre.Suave]

1. Wow,

WTF is wrong with kids?

edit: and their parents?

[enlightenment]

2. I'm going to suggest

something that may get me scorched . . .

What's wrong? Too much competition, too much emphasis on winning, too much of a push to be the best.

We put kids into competitive sports (t-ball, soccer, gymnastics, etc) practically before they can stand -- and encourage them to 'compete' against the other team or other participants. We push them not just to learn to play an instrument, act, paint or whatever -- we stress that they must perform and display their efforts, generally in a competitive atmosphere where someone 'wins.' Again, this starts at a very young age, often years before the child can even understand what competition entails.

I'm not saying that teaching kids to be competitive is wrong, but a little goes a long way. Somewhere along the way, we seem to have misplaced the idea that we can do things because we enjoy them without proving ourselves to others. Parents who encourage this sort of competitiveness are the one's who have kids enrolled in so many activities that they have to schedule time for them to do nothing. These parents are also the most defensive, insisting that their kids "love" the activities and would be "heartbroken" if they were restricted from doing them.

I think it's sad that kids have to have appointment books to keep track of their schedules -- and have parents who think that's perfectly normal.

[Pierre.Suave]

3. I dont know about that

I am pretty competitive myself and I have never even considered poisoning anyone. Something else is going on.

[lectrobyte]

4. The convergence of "fuck you, I've got mine" and "winning isn't

everything, it's the only thing" that seem to be our predominant values as a society from what I can see.

[enlightenment]

8. There's competition and there's competition.

Humans (and most animals) have natural competitiveness encoded -- it impacts everything from our career choices to our choice of mate. Some people are naturally more competitive than others; if you think about it, you may realize that you've always been a little more 'driven' than your friends or siblings. That's just who you are.

What I was suggesting is different -- call it nurture rather than nature, although that pretty much perverts the concept of nurturing. It's not normal to force uber-competitiveness down a kid's throat, and when it's combined with other factors, like shaky self-esteem and an over-inflated sense of self (which seem to go together, for some bizarre reason), it can create a mind-set that is pretty warped -- and might well consider doing something like poisoning the competition.

I agree that there is something else going on; this kind of thing is a culminating event, built on a lot of different stressors -- but I'd be willing to bet that she comes from an over-managed environment built on a winning is everything mentality.

(And I will now rise from the armchair from which I have been expounding . . . and go back to doing something I actually know something about!)

:silly:

[tenshi816]

7. No flames from me.

I agree with you 100%. My sons both have music lessons (14-year old plays 5 instruments and begs for more) and they've both been skiing for so long neither of them has any memory of not being able to ski, but it's for their own enjoyment. It's not a competition.

I know several alpha parents and it seems to me that they're pushing their kids so much because they think it makes them look good. When they were younger, one of my older son's friends used to have activities planned for every day of the school week and Saturdays as well. When they were about 11 he told my son that he hated all of it. He just wanted to go home after school and be a kid.

[Scoody Boo]

5. The story is sad but sadder still...

is that that was the best plan she could come up with?

[Pierre.Suave]

6. haha

true, I guess. Sad, but true.