Tony Hawk is arguably the greatest skateboarder of all time. His son, Riley Hawk, is also now a professional skateboarder. Hawk’s youngest daughter, Kadence, is not a professional skateboarder -- at least not yet -- so her Dad sometimes takes her along for brief joy rides on his board in his backyard concrete skating paradise. For a 4-year-old, that’s a pretty cool ride.
After one recent outing, Hawk posted photos of himself swinging Kadence from his board as they neared the lip of his backyard park’s bowl on the social media site Instagram, via Twitter. The 4-year-old looks thrilled with the ride, but drew scorn from a number of followers because neither she nor Hawk were wearing a helmet.
As news of the helmet-less rides spread across social media, Hawk came under siege on Twitter. The most scathing of the comments ran something like this:
'Crash, split, blood! Put a helmet on her, moron!'
Hawk responded the following day with another photo of himself riding with Kadence, along with a brief note defending his parenting.
“One more from yesterday,” Hawk tweeted, including the picture you see directly above. “For those that say I endanger my child: it's more likely that you will fall while walking on the sidewalk than I will while skating with my daughter.”
As noted by other sources, this isn’t the first time that Kadence’s image has appeared online. In fact, it isn’t even the first time she’s had an online cameo this month. In early December, Hawk posted a photo of Kadence duct taped to a wall with a caption reading “This is what happens when my kids fight over video games.”
Odd parenting? Sure. Effective? It’s far too soon to know. Still, to this point Kadence has yet to be injured while riding with her father on a skateboard, or while being taped to a wall. If she ends up becoming as successful as her half-brother Riley in the action sports world, she and her father might even have the last laugh.
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