How far does a parent's "double standard" go?

[Big Phil]

And how is the parent at fault for saying "I'm busy now, I'll help you in an hour?" That's what this kid is bitching about, after all.

I'm no longer arguing that he is. His only mistake was in responding poorly to the child's charge of hypocrisy.

I don't accept that the parent responded poorly to the charge of hypocrisy. If we'd seen a video of the conversation, maybe I'd agree, but instead what we have is the writings of (I'm assuming) a teenager who is upset because his dad didn't jump when his son wanted him to. In other words, a heavily biased story. The parent might have responded poorly, in which case I think they could have done a better job but they're still not the one out of line, or the parent might have explained his actions in a perfectly reasonable fashion, but the kid was still pissed and went online to bitch about it, and made the parent seem like an ass.

[Elmca]

Again, I'd like to point out the SoE gave us two scenarios that he wanted us to consider as one: the parent not helping with the homework right away and the computer use "hypocrisy".

There was only one reason to give us the first scenario: to attempt to make the parent look bad so that we'd be biased in our decision-making in the second case.

I've got two kids and I love them dearly. But they get restricted computer hours. The eight-year old gets less than the 17-year old. Is that hypocrisy, too? I don't think so.

Do I drop everything to help them with homework? No. Hell, even if I'm watching TV, they wait until commercial. Maybe they figure it out themselves in the five minutes (or hour--I watch a lot of PBS) they had to wait. That's what learning is all about.