Some parents have decided that declaring their child a thief, a slob, a bully, a failure or a tramp to the world is the best way to cure them of this behavior.

Since medieval times, shame and humiliation have been used to control behavior and inflict punishment. The modern-day public stocks are viral shaming videos posted on Facebook and YouTube, punishments picked up by media outlets and broadcast to millions.

Earlier this month, a fed-up father in Georgia made headlines by moving his teenage daughter's bedroom furniture and belongings onto the driveway, along with a sign stating: "Haley, room moved to driveway. Clean it next time."

Would it not have been as effective to move her messy things to a garage, a backyard or basement? Would that not have gotten her attention, versus attracting media attention?

This latest incident follows a long string of such public punishments we've seen go viral on social media. The YouTube video of the father shooting his daughter's laptop for disrespectful posts she made on Facebook has more than 39 million views and gave him his 15 minutes of virtual fame.

Children have been made to walk around near busy streets or in front of schools wearing cardboard sandwich signs with their "crimes" -- such as twerking at a school dance, bullying, failing school and stealing -- announced to public ridicule.

No matter how frustrated or angry you may be with your child's messy room, bad grades or Facebook posts, shaming them in public teaches them that humiliation should be used as a weapon.

It can be understandable, in a time when traditional lines of authority within families have been upended, for parents to struggle to find ways to re-establish control with children who seem out of control.

Changing social mores about the lines between public and private may make it seem normal to harness the power of technology to make a point to children, and perhaps just as loudly, make a point to the world: I am the parent. I am in charge. I have power over you.

The individual parents in these circumstances tap into a larger nerve than just their own frustration: If it's not acceptable to spank my child anymore, then this is how I can teach them a lesson. And, overwhelmingly, the public reaction is one of support.

Karyl McBride, a clinical psychologist based in Denver and author of "Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers," echoes the sentiments of many professionals.

"What they are modeling for their children is mean and cruel," she said. "Children learn more for what they see us do than anything we teach or preach to them." Children are still developing during their teen years. These are some of the most important times for children's self esteem, she said, and publicly shaming them is not how people raise kind, empathetic, secure children.

Ultimately, the lesson the child learns is to use power to make others comply. The object is to avoid getting caught and suffering consequences rather than understanding why the behavior was hurtful and wrong in its own right.

"If you want children to respect you, you have to respect them," said McBride.

It can be near impossible for an adult to respect a rude, lazy, self-centered child. But you can refuse to tolerate those behaviors while still respecting your child's dignity as a human being.

Two years ago, an 8-year-old third-grader in Swansea, Ill. was forced to stand outside her school, screaming and crying, wearing a sign that read, "I like to steal from others and lie about it."

Her parents made her wear the sign as punishment after she repeatedly stole, according to local reports. The superintendent called the police, who persuaded the girl's father to let her take off the sign and go inside to class.

As that girl's parents know, it is difficult to help a child correct destructive behaviors. Sometimes we need the help of teachers, counselors, clergy and our own village to survive the most trying years.

But we ought to recall Nietzsche's response when he asked what is most humane about us. It is "to spare someone shame," he wrote.

Don't make me a party to shaming your child.

If there was a pretend game in which your 6-year-old dressed up in thigh-high stiletto boots and a lace midriff, flirted with boyfriends at a bar and invited them back to her apartment to earn more "diamonds," would you let her play?

Plenty of parents have downloaded a version of the Star Girl game on their smartphones, which creates this fantasy world. In it, the player takes on the persona of an aspiring singer, actor or model, and earns points (or "diamonds") by completing various tasks, such as adding friends on Facebook -- with whom she can compete for boyfriends in the pretend nightclub -- or judging a "perfect date challenge" in which she picks which boyfriend makes the better arm candy.

The game's page on Facebook has more than a million likes.

It's not as outrageous as the plastic surgery game that was pulled from the iTunes store earlier this year, which taught players (ostensibly tween girls) how to perform liposuction and other procedures on a blond woman.

But it's also not as kid-friendly as its age-4-and-older rating implies. It's not just the blatantly sexualized images and sexist messages that are troubling. The game also allows -- in fact, encourages -- purchases of pretend items such as panties or bras to collect more fake diamonds. That means that kids are spending real money, presumably their parents', as they play.

One of the online reviews included this plea to cut back on the in-app purchase pitches: "OK, so my daughter LOVES the game but she is always asking me if she can buy some gems, so can you fix that? That would really help for a lot of moms." Another reviewer wrote that her daughter had racked up hundreds of dollars in purchases without her parents' knowledge.

The developers note in their question and answer section that there is no confirmation notice before buying an item.

Parents have been making similar complaints about other apps for years. Just last week, Apple sent an email to customers announcing some changes: "We've heard from some customers that it was too easy for their kids to make in-app purchases. As a result, we've improved controls for parents so they can better manage their children's purchases, or restrict them entirely."

The company added that it would offer refunds "in certain cases."

Noah Rosenberg, co-founder and head of product at media and development firm happyMedium, has helped develop dozens of apps, including some children's games. As a parent of young children, he said he was put off by how many aspects of the Star Girl games encourage the child to make a purchase.

"The thing that's gross about it is the in-app purchase mechanism. That is extremely stressful to children and teaches them to 'want to want,'" he said.

I emailed a query to the company credited with the app on the iPhone, the Singapore-based Oriented Games, but never got a reply. I also tried a different company credited on the Android version of the game, Animoca, based in Hong Kong. No response there, either.

Richard Harris, executive editor of App Developer Magazine, said the world of app developing can be a Wild West sort of place.

"It's no secret to all of the people in the industry that you can alias yourself as any company you wish to be, especially on the Android," he explained. He's also a parent and says that although children are intuitively very tech-savvy, they still don't understand that there is an entire machine behind the app on their device, looking to make money off of them.

When I played the version of Star Girl I downloaded on my iPhone, I was able to earn extra diamonds by watching an advertising video that had something to do with Las Vegas slots. The longer I played the part of "judge" in the fashion contest part of the game, the more normal the contestants' Playboy bunny-style outfits started to look. You start the game with three boyfriends, and you can win three gifts from each; they'll also start sending you "private" messages. (The Q&A section clarifies that these messages are robo-generated and not from real men.)

While the pink-and-purple, stylized graphics of the game may look harmless to most parents glancing at it, it takes several attempts at playing to realize the extent of the warped values it peddles.

It also has thousands of positive reviews from players, although Harris pointed out that companies can buy thousands of fake positive reviews for relatively little cost.

It was my own tween daughter who brought the app to my attention after seeing a younger cousin playing it.

"I was horrified by it," she said.

CAPRION 01: Sexy lingerie, in-app are all part of the Star Girl game.

CAPTION 02: "perfect date challenges" are all part of the Star Girl game.

My mother walked in the back door of the house to find a pool of blood on the ground. There was a trail of blood leading to the family room couch, where my elderly aunt had dragged herself after falling down a flight of stairs.

This aunt, my father's sister, is in her late 80s and has lived on-and-off with my parents in Texas for the past 20 years. She survived her recent fall with just a cut to her head, which has since healed. It took much longer for her to recover from a stroke, also occurring in my parent's home, last spring.

She had been paralyzed, and my parents' main-level family room transformed to a nursing facility of sorts. The brunt of her care fell on my mother and father, but all of us -- her nieces and nephews -- rallied around her. She relearned how to talk, feed and dress herself and walk within a matter of months, a remarkable recovery for someone her age.

Doctors acknowledge that one of the most critical elements in a patient's rehabilitation from stroke is the strength and commitment of their primary support system, typically their family. The tenacity of family connections may be a factor that contributes to Hispanics living longer than non-Hispanic whites, despite a higher health risk profile.

Recent research indicates Hispanic study participants had significantly higher survival rates for cancer, heart disease, HIV/AIDS and other medical conditions such as lupus, diabetes, kidney disease and strokes -- part of the "Hispanic paradox" debated in academic papers.

In some cultures, including my own South Asian background, the typical family arrangement involves at least a period of multigenerational living beyond childhood. Growing up, we always had an aunt or a grandparent spending part of the year with us. Seasonally, one of us gave up our bedroom and moved into a shared space.

It's not so unusual in non-ethnic households anymore, either.

A 2011 report, "Family Matters: Multigenerational Families in a Volatile Economy," published by Generations United, reported that more than 51 million Americans -- about one in six -- lived in a multigenerational household. That's an increase of more than 10 percent since the recession began in 2007.

Yet, as often as tight family bonds and shared living quarters lead to improved health outcomes, they may just as often provoke a host of mental health issues -- specifically, nearly losing your mind because you are living with so many crazy people with whom you share genes and perhaps little else.

I am reminded of this every year when we visit my family for an extended visit. My parents' house, normally home to three generations, expands to four during these trips. It's not the sheer body count that heightens the sense of chaos.

A small person may be messing with the elaborate entertainment system upstairs set up by my adult brother and his wife, who live there. An older person may require a different meal than everyone else because of set-in-stone preferences and routines. Someone gets stuck doing most of the dishes. And sooner or later, normal political differences between adults begin to veer into increasingly ad hominem attacks during evening discussions.

The generational differences can surface in unexpected ways.

I have had a strained relationship with my aunt, who has lived with us for so long, because I have witnessed the extent to which her care has fallen on my mother's shoulders. She doesn't speak English, and her mentality is still very much mired in Old Country, back-home thinking. But I am grateful she, and her older sister before her, have been a constant part of my life. Living with them has taught me something valuable about compassion and tolerance.

I don't know if I could do what my parents have done -- so willingly and generously opened their home to any relative who has needed it, for as long as they have needed it. I've seen my father's brother and his wife, who also live in Houston, do the exact same with their home for as long as I can remember.

But their living example of choosing to give rather than take, of choosing to forgive rather than resent, has been a lifelong lesson in how to love.