"Hannah Montana Tix Moms": Bad Role Models

Typical, Experts Say, Of Extremely Overzealous Parents Teaching Wrong Lessons

(CBS)  Parents want to give their children the best of everything, from the coolest gadgets to the hottest concert tickets.

But some parents go too far, experts point out, and end up teaching very wrong lessons.

Parents such as Priscilla Ceballos -- the Texas woman who tried to win tickets for her six-year-old daughter for a concert by Miley Cyrus, better-known as Hannah Montana, by having the girl lie in an essay-writing contest and claim help her father had died in Iraq.

Ceballos later admitted to a local TV station, "We never said anything like this was a true story, never. It was just an essay."

It was hardly the first time mothers had gone to extremes for their kids.

In 2006, 16-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide. Later, her parents found out she had been tormented on MySpace.com by someone she thought was a boy named Josh Evans, but who was actually the mother of a friend Megan had been feuding with.

"She knew our daughter struggled with depression," Megan's father, Ron, said later, "and was on medication since she was in third grade."

But perhaps the most memorable meddling mother was Wanda Holloway, the Texas woman who tried to help her daughter make the cheerleading squad by hiring a hit-man to kill the mother of a rival cheerleader.

Said prosecutor Alice Brown at the time, "I think it's the act of a person who is used to getting what she wanted, and when she was frustrated, was willing to go a little farther than most of us might go."

On The Early Show Wednesday, psychotherapist Dr. Leslie Austin, Ph.D. told co-anchor Harry Smith, "I don't think these moms are bad people, but they're really modeling the wrong values for their kids. And what they're broadcasting is, 'I want what I want, I want it now, I'll do anything I can to get it.' That's what they're telling their kids, including, 'Lie, cheat, and steal,' which is not OK."

"Really," Austin continued, "it would be better if (Ceballos) were teaching her daughter, 'You do your best, you try to get what you want, and if you don't get it, life will present you with other opportunities. You have to get a habit of resiliency, self-respect, good values.' This is instant gratification over long-term values, and it's a bad road to go down."

In her practice, Austin says, she's seeing a growing number of extra-meddlesome parents, and that sort of upbringing is showing up now in the business world, where you have "kids who grew up with this ... 'I'm important. Anything I want, I get. It doesn't matter what I have to do or who I have to harm to get it.' In corporate America, we have an energy and a mood now that it's OK to do anything as a company, just to succeed and sell things.

"But, where are the ethics, the values, the self-respect as an individual? Where are the basic, old-fashioned values? 'Don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, and most of all, don't retaliate, even just for practical reasons. It will always come back and get you. ' "

Which comes first, Smith wondered? Is it a societal message parents are taking, or the other way around?

"It's a chicken / egg question," Austin asserted. "They both feed each other. Our media, which I'm now speaking on, can do great things, but also we broadcast some really negative images sometimes. We idolize pop stars who have really bad values as parents and as people. They may be great performers, but they're not great role models, and we idolize them and follow them and obsess. So, our kids say, 'This one has all this money and all this fame, and look how great they are, and everybody follows them around, the paparazzi.'

" ... It's not a good sense of values and parenting. You really want to teach your kids to have self-respect, develop a habit of being resilient, to have ethics, and take the long view instead of instant gratification."

Austin added, "Here's the really important thing: I know it's hard for parents. Your child is a separate person from you, and you have to grow them up properly. I know that sounds very old-fashioned. But I need to sound old-fashioned. You really have to teach them values. You have to teach them, 'You don't always get what you want. ... Life goes on. You are more important, as a person -- you have more self-respect than any concert, any MP-3 player, any video game, and if you don't get those things, and you don't have the things all your friends have, you can still be a really good person and you can get them if you earn them.' That's a different set of values.

"Unfortunately, we're in a very protective culture, the one who has the most toys, wins -- the one who has the most money, the most fame. And, really, you've got to remind yourself -- you're a good person. Most Americans are not famous or rich and they're really good people and they live very good lives, and their kids grow up to be happy."

[maggg1]

Let''s not lose sight of the facts. The contest was an essay - definition of an essay "The essay is, first and foremost, essentially true, a piece of non-fiction. As soon as authors begin making up characters, adding details that really didn''t occur, or fabricating a plot structure in order to make what they are writing larger than real life, they are writing in a fictional mode. In other words, essays may be descriptive, use narration, propose solutions to problems, elucidate the inner workings of complicated creations of nature and/or humanity, but one thing they aren''t is fake or false or made up or fabricated."

If her mother was not an idiot she would have know that a made up story is not an essay.

Great job at teaching your child right and wrong.

[ann2003]

Let''s look at the facts folks.

Take an average tour stop. Suppose there were say 20,000 seats available for a city of 1 million people. So is it at all believable that in one MILLION people that 20,000 want to buy a ticket? YES. But wait, in many cases each person wants to buy 4 tickets. But for the sake of argument we''ll say each person buys 2 tickets.

OK that brings the total number of sales to 10,000. In this world where a website can get well over a million hits in a day, can you imagine that Ticketmaster had more than 10,000 logged on at 10am to buy tickets? YES, it happened folks.
But wait, the ticket scammers, you say. Well, look at the auction sites and resale sites. Is it fair to say there were 200 tickets available for resale? OK, we''ll go with that figure. That means 1% of the tickets on the "black market". ONE PERCENT. You want to say 400 tickets were on resale. Ok, fine...that''s 2%. Two percent of 20,000 tickets went to scalpers. Is that really the huge tragic deal that everyone wants to make it?
Of course, most venues didn''t sell 20,000 tickets, but I never saw more than 200 tickets for resale either, so the math still works. I mean if 10,000 tickets were on the ''secondary market'' that would be a problem. But it''s not the case!

THE FACT IS, that more people want to see the show than can fit into all the arenas scheduled for this tour. So, yes, some people WON''T GET TO SEE THE SHOW. Stop your boo-hooing and get on with your lives.

[lewiston14]

I blame the scalpers who use automated software to block out most people from places like Ticket master And grab all the tickets they can then resell them. I blame places like ticket master for allowing this to happen. As usual though Ticket master loves it. They get X number of tickets and if they can sell them all in an hour They can be home before supper. Why should they care? Disney wants to sell the entire venue to 3rd parties so they do not have to deal with the math just a few big checks. Some here say the kids are spoiled. Some are but I think a vast amount of them would have liked to see the live person from the Hanna tv show that they like to watch so much. Are they not allowed something that very seldom happens a show for them with a singer not much older then them? I just did not like the way this all happened. It was not fair it was wrong what happened but many states just made scalping legal. Sounds like some serious lobby in DC.

[asdflkjh2]

Disney is creating problems by selling the tickets for less than they''re worth. If they simply sold them at market clearing prices, there would be no room for the scalpers. It makes more sense for the producers of the entertainment to get the money than for the scalpers to get the money. I recognize that higher prices put the concert out of range of more people, but the scalpers are doing that anyway. (I''m speaking as someone who wouldn''t spend any amount of money to see Hannah Montana).

[keithle1]

More than a few parents are determined to turn their kids into the world''s biggest spoiled brats.

You don''t have to give your kids EVERY LITTLE THING from A to Z that they ask for. You''re in charge, Mom & Dad. Not little Timmy & Bobby Sue. Perhaps you have forgotten that. Don''t be afraid of tears & a temper tantrum. You''ll survive as will your kids.

[ronnielong1]

it''s not the childrens fault to an extent. the parents of the children who get everything they want make it hard for everyone else. this is what society has come to. go back to the times when you could leave your windows and doors open and unlocked. the good times.

[mennowoman]

Since Hannah Montana is the alias of a girl who lies to her friends in the TV show, it would seem the show teaches that it is respectable to lie if it gets you what you want. Why should anyone be surprised that a show that is based on lying would spur lies?

[lewiston14]

Misssu: The orginal ticket prices were very fair. It was the dealers that put them out of reach of the kids.

Dghsin: It is not uncommen for an event to be sold out a year before it even plays. NFL Nascar etc.

ianlou: Many unknowns made it to the top. Many did not. If you have talent people want to see or hear they will come. As far as your second question I don''t know who you are talking about.

[misssuzq]

It is up to the venues and the celebrities to work together to get ticket prices down so that more people can attend that do not have vast fortunes.

Look at the celebs that gave their proceeds to hurricane and fire victims, they CAN go without charging huge amounts for tickets.

SOMEHOW, SOME WAY, brokers should not be able to get their greedy mitts on tickets, especially those where young children are involved as fans!

[dgshiner]

I have to ask is all of this just for publicity? Because I cannot believe people would be this frenzied over getting tickets for any event! With all the modernizations we have today and not to mention this for entertainment as well as cd sales and people are this freaked over a kid?
Wow ***?

[ianlou]

Two questions:
One: Why is success in the entertainment business limited to only the relatives/offspring of people with their foot already in the door and...
Two: Why don''t they have guts enough to keep their real name thus admitting to this rampit nepotism?

[teearpee]

One would think with the popularity of this child star, a little better organization would go on with the planning of concerts. I mean how hard would it be to stop the advanced ticket sales to prevent the scalping going on of these tickets. If the promoters actually cared about the artist/fan base they would stop the insanity of this.

[lewiston14]

Yes some go over the top but consider this. The ticket company%u2019s sold out most of the tickets within minutes to scalpers so a $40 ticket is now $1000 for a concert geared to young kids. Is that fair? Thousands of kids were locked out because they could not afford it anymore was that right? Please no free market bull. This was a kid%u2019s show of which Disney makes a great deal of money over already. I would have rather seen a forced cancellation of the tour refund of money and correct and strictly watched sales of tickets. Come on tickets being sold in Florida for a show in Ohio. Hurting someone is not the answer but neither are scalpers.

[shortmama2]

I don''t think these are bad people, he says?!?
Attempted murder, etc. Come on...

[beehive21-2009]

Billy Ray,hooray,on the development of this superstar,job well done,the people sure like her.Moms can be stupid at times we hear one was going to kill a cheerleader,so her kid would make the squad ?

[ohiomom5]

http://www.myfoxcleveland.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=5360346&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.1.1
http://www.ohio.com/news/cardwell/12932207.html