Adrian Peterson’s mom insists she knows what’s best, especially where her battle-scarred NFL star son is concerned.
Like a backfield of overhyped linemen running roughshod toward a slashing rusher encroached upon by a battery of would-be tacklers, Bonita Jackson took on all detractors on Wednesday in pronouncing her much maligned offspring’s decision to physically discipline his four-year-old son as an act “not about abuse, but love.”
Just the same, the 29-year Peterson now finds himself charged with a felony and banished from the Minnesota Vikings, points of contention that have Jackson rallying to the cause and rights of parents around the globe.
“I don’t care what anybody says,” Jackson told The Houston Chronicle. “Most of us disciplined our kids a little more than we meant sometimes. But we were only trying to prepare them for the real world. He has six kids and wants to be a good father to them all. It happened and so now we as a family need to work things out and move forward.”
Jackson later added of the whole rationale for one whipping kids “you want to make them understand that they did wrong.” And now, as a mother, she wants the NFL, the criminal justice system and, to some extent, society at large to know she’s wholly convinced they’ve done wrong by her son.
“My son is not a perfect man by no means, but in the end I’m proud to be his mom,” said Jackson. “For the most part he is trying hard to be a good parent, he’s working at it. People are judging him, but they don’t know his heart. This was never his intent.”
In short, Bonita Jackson hurts because her son hurts for doing the only thing they both will tell you he’s been overly conditioned to do.
“When Adrian showed out or was bad, he got a whupping,” uncle Greg Peterson told the USA Today. Added Larry Peterson, another uncle on the whole issue of disciplining misbehaving children “it’s not something that a little whipping can’t take care of.”
But still, Adrian Peterson stands accused and the NFL, by-and-large, remains on trial. Coupled with Ray Rice’s much publicized assault on his wife, Ray McDonald’s alleged transgressions against his fiancée, and the even more recently heralded accused attack by Jonathan Dwyer on his wife and child, the NFL stands at a crossroads as to how it wants to be universally defined.
Protest as she might, Bonita Jackson has to know that this now bigger than even her superstar son. But a mother’s love is a mother’s love. And, given that depth, that’s far more unlikely to change than even what some would call the ironclad culture of the NFL.
