Local opinion: Fred and Mary Trump's failure

It has happened to many of us. You’re at a restaurant or in the grocery store and your child throws a very public temper tantrum. It can be embarrassing. You think, “Where did this kid learn that this is how you get what you want? That’s not how we’re raising our children!” You get home and you deal with it by teaching your kids that tantrums will not work and making it clear there are negative consequences for bad behavior.

Similarly, some kids concoct lies hoping to get what they want or avoid consequences for bad choices. Again, as parents, we try to correct that course and teach our kids that honesty is the pathway to integrity, trust, and ultimately, to adulthood. It is often said that kids test our limits so they can learn where those limits are and adjust their behavior accordingly. The process (called “growing up”) usually works. Unless the parents fail those tests.

Fred and Mary Trump failed wholly and utterly to teach their son, Donald, these and many more critical life lessons. Maybe they genuinely tried and he was just unteachable. Either way, Donald Trump, ostensibly a grown man, has been in the convulsive throes of a years-long temper tantrum, out in the open for all to see. Poor Fred. Poor Mary.

His embarrassing childish behavior is a given wherever he may be. In the courtroom he has been admonished by multiple judges for his disruptive behavior, throwing his hands in the air, audibly mumbling his outrage from his seat at the defense table. On the campaign trail he has cruelly mocked people with disabilities, whined incessantly, and lied perpetually. As President, in the Oval Office his lying went unabated, and he showed off to foreign dignitaries by sharing national defense secrets. On a presidential trip abroad he called American soldiers who died defending our allies and our country “suckers” and “losers.”

Any parent with the smallest degree of investment in their child would be mortified by this self-absorbed, mean-spirited, loud-mouthed debacle of a man. Fred & Mary passed more than 20 years ago, so they were spared from the most recent manifestations of the shameful conduct of this truly awful person. Donald’s endless adolescence has only been amplified by sycophant politicians who refuse to hold him accountable and set this wayward man-child right. And the voters who revere him and feed his ego make it worse.

So I say to all fellow parents out there, let’s come together to help poor Fred and Mary. In November, let’s ground Donald Trump and send him to his gilded bedroom at Mar-a-Lago. No Big Macs and no Twitter. At least until he can behave like an adult.