British reality TV star Katie Hopkins has gone completely mental (as the Brits would say) and viral. She went on national television in the U.K. to tell the whole world that if they give their child a "weird" name,don't expect her to let her children play with your little weirdo.
That's right, she doesn't care if your daddy is Beckham. If your name is Brooklyn, you can just keep your ass home. If your name is North West, no way you are welcome in Katie Hopkins' home. She firmly believes that kids are influenced by their friends; and most parents would agree with her on that point.
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Hopkins believes that good parents don't give their kids crazy names and it stands to reason if good parents don't give their kids weird names, then bad parents must be the ones giving their kids the terrible names, which means the kids are essentially from a bad sort and will themselves perpetuate the madness. She wants none of it. That's why good parents don't let their children associate with children who have crazy names. In the end, she's not judging the child at all, she is judging their parents. It's all a vicious name cycle.
Hopkins even believes that you can determine a kid's socioeconomic status just based on his or her name. I agree there sure does seem to be a disproportionate amount of Brittanys and Brookes working the pole and I've never heard of Thurston Howe the II selling crack, so maybe this wackadoo reality TV personality knows something the rest of us don't.
But can you really know if a kid is a deviant troublemaker just by the name? Isn't that judging a book by its cover and isn't that exactly what we've been trying to teach our kids not to do? What would the world become if we all stopped letting the Velvettas, Apples and Chardonnays of the world have play dates with our kids? That is absolute discrimination based on a name and hello, crazy lady, have you ever heard of self-fulfilling prophecy? If you treat a kid like a criminal long enough, they will begin to believe it and become it. This all sounds completely insane but there may be something to it.
Don't we all judge books by their cover? Maybe not on purpose or even consciously but we do. I'd never let my kid hang out with a kid who acted like a terror because I wouldn't want my child to pick up their bad behaviors and if the kid's name was something odd like Jetliner or Hashtag, I'm pretty sure that I could find a way to blame it all on the name.
Maybe Jetliner was just having a bad day and was otherwise absolutely terrific. I'll never know because I caught him on a bad day and he was mean to my daughter and that was enough for me to write that kid off for good and associate every kid named Jetliner for the rest of my days as being a bad kid. It's sad but true, we all judge books by their covers, at first. Luckily, most of us know that you need to open up and look inside to really know if you like the book.
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