Being the parent of a teenager is never easy, especially if your child falls in with the wrong crowd and begins to show bad behavior.
It may seem like the sweet kid you knew was suddenly gone overnight. This was the case for one dad who took to Reddit explaining why he made his daughter, a germaphobe, sleep in the backyard for disrespecting their house help.
He asked if he was wrong to punish his daughter with what many considered such severity. He titled the post: Am I the a$$hole for making my daughter sleep in the backyard after what she did to our housemaid?”
Below is what he wrote:
“My M46 daughter (16) is a highschool junior. I noticed recently that she’s been behaving in a bad manner constantly commenting on other people’s looks, belongings, calling them stuff that isn’t cool and just being insensitive. It’s like she lost a filter or something because usually she’s polite but my wife suspected that our daughter’s sudden misbehavior occurred after she started hanging out with new girls from the school.
Basically the mean type and have picked on their behavior. I’ve sat with my daughter and had many discussions about how her behavior has been negatively affecting everyone around her. Our housemaid is the person most affected here and my daughter has chosen her to be her target for hair, clothes, “etiquette” criticism. She has complained about our daughter calling her offensive names like filthy and gross for cleaning certain areas in our house.
I took a stand and explicitly told my daughter I’d punish her if she ever said stuff like that to our housemaid again.
Last week my daughter had a party to go to, earlier that day she called our housemaid “filthy” so I grounded her by not letting her go to the party. She threw a fit and called our housemaid a liar saying she never called her that. That was the end of it.
Days later my daughter came to me saying she couldn’t find her iPhone after looking everywhere.
She asked me to call her number and I did. My wife and I were stunned to discover that the iphone was ringing inside our housemaid’s bag.
I had an confrontation with her immediately and she denied and cried saying she never touched the phone nor had any idea how it got there. I noticed my daughter calling her theif repeatedly so I told her to stop and go to her room. I checked the indoor camera before continuing the argument and saw my daughter place her iphone inside our housemaid’s bag, I was livid. I apologized to the housemaid and gave her the rest of the day off. I then showed the video to my daughter and she was absolutely speechless.
I said what she did was immoral and straight up offensive to tamper with that poor woman’s livelihood over a petty party she couldn’t go to.
I told her she was grounded and will have to spend the night in the backyard (she is a germaphobe) but she cried begging me to not make her sleep with the dirt, insects and hot temp. I refused to discuss it or I’d make it 2 nights. My wife said I should go easy on her but I said calling people filthy and accusing them of stealing wasn’t ok in fact it was the absolute worst, I then went through with my punishment.”
A majority of them sided with the Dad and said the house help didn’t deserve such treatment at all.
“You should pay the maid a week salary and make your daughter do ALL the housework for a week!” wrote one person.
The teenager supposedly refused to eat after being punished in such a manner.
One Redditor suggested therapy. “No, don’t do this. Send her to therapy. Something is clearly up and pushing a kid to be self-destructive is unacceptable,” they wrote.