Respect beaten into nine-year-old

Little Rock, Ark. – Sources close to single parent Charly Stempis said the unemployed 31-year-old successfully beat respect into his nine-year-old son Toby after the boy briefly refused to bathe early Thursday night.

“I was in the middle of my weekly poker game with the boys when I noticed it was almost eight o’clock and Toby hadn’t taken his bath yet,” said Stempis of the events preceding his implementation of parental guidance. “He knows he’s supposed to be in bed at eight on school nights. He thought just because I was in the other room playing cards that I’m not paying attention to him. He needed to learn that he’s wrong.”

After several bathing orders failed to elicit verbal or physical response from the third grader, Stempis said he had no other choice but to teach Toby respect, honor, reverence and thoughtfulness through the use of physical force.

“These kids today – it isn’t enough to just order them to respect you, sometimes you’ve got to put your foot down,” Stempis said. “Literally.”

Having obtained sole custody of Toby shortly after being divorced by his high school sweetheart Misty Lee, Stempis told reporters that his “tough love” approach to parenting has proved the most effective means for teaching his son to respect others, honor authority figures, and be thoughtful of other people’s feelings.

“It’s not like I want to [whip Toby with a leather strap], but it’s for his own good. Children learn quicker through actions that through any words – that’s a fact I learned from my own father,” Stempis said. “I could talk to Toby about respect until I’m blue in the face, but if the message isn’t getting through, what’s the point?”

Stempis, who over the past five years has received only limited parental assistance from a series of temporary live-in girlfriends, said he has attacked the enormous challenges of single parenthood by following many of the examples set by his own father, Harling Stempis, a hard-working factory millwright who raised Stempis by himself after his wife divorced him in 1983.

“Whenever I’m unsure of what to do when Toby talks back or doesn’t do what I tell him, I always think back to what my father would have done with me in the same situation,” said Stempis. “My father simply would not tolerate insubordination – period. I’m sure he didn’t enjoy giving me a whipping, but he loved me enough to take the time to show me what would continue to happen if I didn’t shape up and show him the proper respect.”

Stempis explained that while his father’s childrearing methodology may have seemed cruel at the time, today he “can totally understand why Dad did what he did.”

“My father was by no means easy on me, but his stern hand is part of the reason I am the man I am today,” said Stempis who, thought having been twice arrested for drunk driving, has never served time in a federal prison. “Once when I was crying about my dog running away, my father got right in my face and said, ‘You want to cry? I’ll give you something to cry about.’ And boy did he. That’s a lesson I never forgot. That’s a lesson worth passing on to Toby.”