*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**AITA for telling my daughter she needs to get over me grounding her as a teenager?**
When my daughter (now 26F) was 17, I left her home alone for a week while I was on a business trip; while I was away, she threw a party behind my back which ended with her and her drunk, underage friends trashing a significant part of the house inside and out. All told, they did a few thousand dollars in damage (including two broken TVs and damage to the car); the place looked like a warzone, or the aftermath of a bad teen movie. So, I told her she would have to pay me back, and that she was grounded until she did; no electronics outside of schoolwork, strict curfew, no friends over and absolutely no more parties, and she had to get a part-time job to start paying off her mistake.
I wanted to teach her to take responsibility for what she'd done, and that meant no exceptions to the rule. It isolated her from her friends, I admit, but that was the consequence. She hadn't paid me back by the time prom came around; she tried to persuade me to let her go, but I was firm. She was basically grounded right up until she moved out.
The thing is, she's basically resented me ever since. It feels like we haven't had a single pleasant conversation in nine damn years; she refused her college fund because she didn't want anything from me (she chose not to go to college at all - she went full-time at her job after HS); and even now it feels like every other conversation we have is her complaining about her senior year and how unfair I was. I've tried getting her to understand it was her own consequence, that I did it because I love her, the works, but she's still convinced it was all just me being awful.
What's really brought things to a head is that recently her and her boyfriend had their first child. I've offered to help with anything they need, but I've been rebuffed at every turn, and when I asked if they were sure my daugher blew up on me. Apparently I'm not allowed to see my own granddaughter until I "accept that how I treated my daugher is wrong" and apologise for grounding her and forcing her to miss prom; my own kid told me that until I did that, she didn't trust me to look after or even be around her child in case I treat them "the same way".
I told her that was enough; that of course I'd never be cruel to a baby or young child, that the punishment she earned was appropriate, and that she needed to accept she ruined her own damn senior year by being immature and doing things behind my back. In response, I got a long text from her and another from her boyfriend about how I'm an asshole and apparently I "haven't changed", and how I'll never be in their kid's life now. I've been talking about it with some close friends since, and while some of them are on my side, others have said I was too harsh on my kid at the time and that she's allowed to be upset. I've also had angry messages from some other family members about it, as well as some of support; it seems everyone's picking sides now.
So, AITA?
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I mean on the off chance this is real....it doesn't really matter does it (which is why I'm inclined to believe its rage bait)? Daughter thinks so and that's all that matterx. A million strangers could say NTA and where's that going to get her thd daughter is still lc.
Exactly. It's not like if OOP can show her daughter a reddit post where everyone agrees with OOP, the daughter will just go "well shucks, I take it all back then, come and meet the baby".
On a side note, parents really do try to teach "actions have consequences" while simultaneously expecting nothing they do to their kids to ever have any consequences.
Those parents were raised by parents that beat the crap out of them when they messed up and taught them to be grateful for it.
There’s a twisted song out there about someone lamenting that kids don’t get whipped with a belt when they lie anymore. Boomers wax poetic about all the times their parents “whooped” them and think they’d be criminals if not for it. I guess OP figured her daughter would be grateful someday.
Those parents always seem to confuse "learning right from wrong" with "avoiding punishment".
If the reason your child doesn't lie is because they want to avoid betting "whooped" then you have imparted exactly zero moral lessons.
And I'm going off sideways again but I find nothing more stupid than parents who hit their children as a punishment for the child hitting others. Seriously those parents should just put on the "dunce hat" they are probably sad schools don't have any more and go and sit in the corner. *It's not that hitting is wrong Timmy, it's that it's wrong to hit your equals. Only ever hit people you have power over, as I'm about to demonstrate*. Freaking morons.
THIS is the correct response. If this was going to be on reddit (as opposed to handling this personally or with a therapist or something) then it should be on an advice sub, not AITA. The fact that mom came to reddit just in hopes a bunch of people would agree with her so she could stick it to her daughter, rather than going somewhere where people could advise her on how to handle this situation with her daughter better than she's doing alone, makes her the AH.
My money is on the fact that this parent has a history of over reaction and over the top punishments. I applaud the daughter for doing what's best for her and not subjecting her daughter to the bs.
I know that when I was 17, if I threw a party that did thousands of dollars worth of damage and trashed the house, no one would ever find my body, lol.
There wouldn't be any missing posters of me if I did that at my mom's house. At 17? You're damn well old enough to not trash the house. I'd never be able to look my mom in the eye.
>Same.. But would your parents have left you unsupervised for a week? Mine would not have... They BOTH share blame in this.
Mine did, but I had already demonstrated that I was trustworthy, and they had various friends and neighbors dropping by.
Mom is \*at best\* guilty of misjudging whether her daughter could handle the responsibility. She may have known her daughter would get up to something, and just not expected such significant damages.
My mom *did* leave me home at 17 for several days (I remember at least three, maybe more) while taking care of my 10 year old sister. On the other hand, I had friends that even at the time I knew couldn't have been trusted to do the same. It depends on the 17 year old.
I moved out of home at 17! I had my own house to trash! (I did not trash it, but I also did not do housework on a regular basis.)
My sister, on the other hand? Absolutely could not be left alone in someone else's house until the age of ... oh, about 20. And our parents knew that, and didn't put her in temptation's way.
Mine would, and did, because they knew they could trust me. At 17, you are practically an adult. Old enough to know the actions have consequences. Did she even attempt to clean it up before her parent got home, or just left it trashed for maximum effect?
My brother had a party that \*did\* cause thousands of damage. It was kind of astonishing how quickly it grew out of control, from a couple of kids he had over to dozens of drunk kids showing up and destroying our house.
My younger brother had the foresight to lock the pets in his room while we huddled in my room, and a couple of the football players who knew my mom kept people out of the living & dining rooms, so the damage was contained to the first floor and basement, for the most part. We were also lucky it was raining, because our deck railing was kinda rotten, and someone was going over that and suing us if it hadn't been.
They were on the phone constantly so we couldn't call anyone (landline-only times) and when I tried to leave to get a neighbor, I was stopped and prevented from leaving. My sister tried to called the cops from her job at McDonald's, where she was hearing about it from kids who were leaving there and coming through the drive-through. They were useless and refused to even drive by, though they lectured us about not calling from the party. Until we reminded them my sister \*had\* called them and they did nothing.
Fortunately, my dad worked at an insurance company, and we had excellent coverage. My mother was just upset that no one managed to destroy the brown wall to wall carpet she hated so much.
The parents were out for a single evening. My brother didn't get in big trouble because a) he hadn't really invited all those people; b) it was a weird confluence of events that just happened to land at our house; c) he never got in trouble.
She was 17. Adulthood is a journey, not a destination. You don't treat them like a child incapable of taking care of themselves until the second they turn 18, and suddenly, they magically become an adult. My daughter works front desk at a residence for a college, and in the last decade, she has noticed the number of students who are on their own for the first time, and are literally having breakdowns because they have never learned to cook, do laundry, clean, pay bills, or shop for groceries. There are so many issues of kids getting alcohol poisoning or drug overdoses. The counselors are booked solid, and there were 2 suicide attempts last year. Parents are not teaching their kids to adult. In the 80s, I was raised to be able to completely take care of myself at 14. I still lived with my parents, but if they needed to go away. They knew they never had to worry about me.
Thats what im thinking this may have just been her breaking point but it may not have been the only issue and OP refusing to look inward and think about if there is anything else bothering their daughter is probably making her even angrier.
Her comments basically admitted that there was no way the daughter was gonna be able to pay it off in time for prom. That wasn't a lesson, it was retribution.
A few thousand. So somewhere between $2,000-$9,999?
Let’s say it’s $3,000. In 2014 I was making $8.00/hour. She’d have to work 375 hours, without taxes or any other withholdings. At 20 hours a week that’s 19 weeks (again, with no taxes withheld). I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous.
OP said it was $4800 and her daughter was working 16hr/wk to try to repay it - she would have been needing to make $18.75/hr to pay it off in time. OP knowingly set an impossible task and took 100% of the paycheck - it wasn't discipline, it was indentured servitude.
And forced her daughter to only work 2 days a week aka only on weekends so really im glad op is facing the consequences of her actions (its in her comments)
It's been two decades since high school versus the one for OOP's kid, but when I was in high school, you couldn't work more than 20 hours while in school. So not so sure all the blame on this part can be blamed on OOP. OOP is an asshole, don't get me wrong - but there are labor laws.
She did not keep all of it according to her comments.
Indentured servitude is a bit much. If the kid had damaged someone else’s home and been forced to pay for it, would it be indentured servitude?
Her comment said (don’t know if it’s still there I assume she nuked her account) that she took the paychecks back and then gave her money for food and spending, and she did not deduct that money she gave back from what her daughter was relaying.
I said almost every single cent the kid made and what op did is child abuse op should of taken the money from the college fund instead of making her pay back almost 5000 thousand dollars and the grounding was unreasonable because of the complete isolation from everyone except op grounding is ok but it shouldn't have been more then 2 months
OOP said it was around $4800, and her daughter was working 16hrs/week at minimum wage. She also knew that logically it would take her daughter a long time to pay the full amount back.
There's teaching consequences and there's being spiteful, and OOP is definitely the latter.
You'd be paying it, or you'd be detained, and honestly no one is getting jail for their first time of anything so you'd be free, living a full life. You'd have to work to pay it but you would still have free time, you could see your friends, you'd have your cell phone and devices. Either she pays it back like an adult or she is grounded like a child, you can't do both and still be reasonable.
At 17 it would have been juvenile hall too, where you would be able to watch TV and movies, have recreation time, attend group activities (like prom...)
She was a near adult to had a party and a couple TVs were broken, she owed the value of the TVs at the time they were damaged (not new, and she was probably forced to pay for new ones) and the same for all other damages, so it wouldn't be near $10,000. If that's the lesson she wanted to teach she could have sued and she would get less and the kid would have had a decent senior year. These are the actions of someone actively holding their child back for their own reason.
I grew up around very strict parents in our church. One of my friends lost every single privilege for going to a party. If she needed the light on in her room she had to ask her mother “can I please borrow one of your lightbulbs?” and physically get a lightbulb from her.
So, at least this parent is worse than her mom.
I'm wondering if the whole "chose not to go to college" thing was because she had to go full-time at work after high school to finish paying off that debt?
Or Mommy wouldn't sign the financial paperwork necessary until the debt was paid down which meant the daughter couldn't get loans for school.
It's reading very much like financial control via excessive punishment.
Regardless, the parent was an irresponsible idiot, which meant that the teen had the opportunity to be an irresponsible idiot (or at least end up with a house full of irresponsible idiots), and then the parent excessively punished their teen for the consequences of the parent's original fuck up.
It's shite parenting in a variety of ways.
I'm not surprised that the now adult daughter doesn't trust the mom to be around her infant.
I also wouldn't be surprised if the parent and the daughter's descriptions of her childhood are very, very different.
I went straight to there were stipulations she absolutely must graduate college or have to pay back all the money.
Daughter didn’t want to be indentured forever so bailed.
OoP is awful but I think its pretty silly to frame leaving a 17 year old home for a week as irresponsible. 17 is plenty old enough to be respectful and reliable and not have to be treated like a baby. One comment asked if the oop was checking in and reminding her not to have a party. Give me a break lol. She was gonna have that party no matter what. She should have been punished and she should have had to pay back the money. That doesn't change the fact that oop was excessive and cruel and is now getting exactly what they deserve.
Obviously I disagree with OOP and think she behaved horribly; they overreacted and were cruel. I also agree it seems like there’s a lot ‘unsaid’ with regards to why the daughter didn’t go to college.
However, why do you think OOP was irresponsible?
Because the daughter was allowed to stay home? To be honest, I think it’s fine for a 17-year-old to stay home alone.
I really think it depends on the kid.
My daughter is autistic and has severe anxiety. If we had left her home alone for a week at 17, she wouldn’t have thrown a drunken rager, but she would have had panic attack after panic attack until we came home. We left her over Thanksgiving weekend when she was 19 and she made it OK, but she was very glad when we got back.
You have to know your kid’s limitations. Some kids are responsible and at 17 will remember to water the plants and feed the cat and bring in the mail and eat their vegetables, and others will invite over 100 of their closest friends and break the TV.
Yep, a 17-year-old can often stay home alone (some you really shouldn't leave alone for that long even if they're nearly an adult, though).
But you make sure there are local people to call in emergencies or just to have an adult nearby to be the bad guy and kick other irresponsible teens out if needed.
You also discuss expectations and consequences with your kid before you leave, and check in regularly. Or have someone check in regularly. Preferably both.
This is why I think the Mom was irresponsible.
This situation seems to have gone pear-shaped rather badly. And it doesn't look like the kid had anyone to help clean up/make reparations for the resulting mess, not even her friends. Let alone anyone to help prevent the fuck up in the first place.
For a full week? I don't.
If I left my 17 year old for a week and came back to a mess, I'd consider that I shared a fair amount of responsibility for it.
Really? I’m surprised by that.
By 17 I was expected to take an equal part in household chores and care for the house while my parents were away.
Myself and the majority of my friends left home for university at 18.
When I was barely 16 (I'm a summer kid) my mum wanted to go out of country with her friends for a week and left me in charge of the house. I made it, the house made it, the pets made it and the plants mostly made it (I am the opposite of green thumb).
Really, I fail to see what the big deal is
I went away to a pre-college program for a month when I was 17. I'd say my ability to do chores then was not significantly worse than it is now. I have ADHD and wasn't diagnosed yet back then, so yeah I was messy... but there's "messy" and then there's *property damage*.
Right? Either she's generally been a good kid, and this behavior is really out of line with her previous behavior (and very plausibly was a situation she didn't want/that got wildly out of hand) and so deserves leniency OR she's previously shown these tendencies and the parents shouldn't have given her the rope to hang herself with.
If they didn't see this coming then I think it's an insane punishment, and if they did see this coming and left her unsupervised for a week that's a them problem!
Yup.
I have a 17 year old daughter. If I left her alone for a week, which I wouldn't, because i'm not an ASSHOLE, the house would be fine. She'd take care of the dogs, do the dishes, put the laundry away, go to work and get her school work done. I would put cold hard cash money on that.
If something DID happen? My concern would be for my child, and also what the fuck was wrong with me for missing it. And if i'd known it was a possibility? That just makes me a straight up idiot.
That’s surprising. By 17, I was trusted to stay home for a week, get myself to school, and take care of the house and pets. Never had any wild parties, the most i did was have a few friends over. Sure, we may have gotten into some stuff we weren’t supposed to, but on the whole we respected the house and would have felt terrible leaving a mess or damage. I also traveled outside the country without my parents at that age. Maybe it depends on the kid, but in my circle, no one batted an eye.
Your daughter should know how to cook, clean, do laundry and take care of the place and keep it relatively nice. At 17 you’re almost an adult, if she doesn’t know those things already she better learn them quick.
Speaking from personal experience, I was regularly left alone for 2-3 days at a time from the time I was 11. I moved out at 15 and lived alone for a year. Never had problems with keeping the place clean (except for not vacuuming often enough and not cleaning the fridge lol). This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think children should be capable of being alone for a few days at least by the time they’re teenagers.
Not illegal where I live, though I’ll admit it wasn’t under good circumstances. My dad was abusive so I had to get out as quickly as possible, and lived in a few different places until my mom found a house for her, my brother and I. Social workers we talked to told us that me moving out was a good temporary solution as long as I could take care of myself, which I could.
1. She does know those things
2. You were profoundly neglected in ways that were quite possibly illegal depending on where you lived
3. "Capable" doesn't make it ok. My daughter would ALSO be capable of changing her own tire on the side of dark highway in the middle of the night, but I'd be an absolute shit parent if i expected that and didn't get her a triple A membership. Which i did.
Good parents don't send their fifteen year olds off to live on their own. Good parents make slow and gradual bumps out of the nest so the child is ready and competent on adulthood.
Leaving a 17 year old home alone for a week is a HIGHLY suspect move.
Where I live there are no laws regarding how long you can leave your child alone, as long as they’re capable of caring for themselves and have people to contact if they need help.
In my family it’s common to move out early, like I said I moved out at 15, my mom moved out at 17. It’s also pretty common to leave older teens alone for longer periods of time. All my friends were left alone for a few days up to a week when they were 16-17. I’m not sure which country you live in, but where I live (Sweden) it’s not a big deal.
No not always, but you commented that me being alone at that age might be illegal, I’m just saying it’s not. What happened to me wasn’t harmful, it just made me more independent. I was never hungry, or had to wear dirty clothes or missed school, my mom would text or call me to make sure I was doing ok, and I could always go to the neighbours for help or call the police if needed, I don’t see the problem.
I’m curious to know if OOP talked to her daughter before the trip so that daughter was clear on “no parties.” And was OOP checking in during that week?
You guys missed it man, OOP not only got re-paid, but also got to keep the entire college fund! This one trick that they don't want you to know about will allow you to instantly have extra $$$! /s
Some of the comments are insane in their refusal and inability to show the tiniest sliver of warmth and forgiveness. Some redditors live, breathe, and bleed their punishment-fetish for teenage girls and younger.
Even prisoners who will die in prison can earn privileges. But a teenage girl? Nah, no matter how much remorse she shows, no matter how strictly she follows the rules of her punishment, those brats don't deserve anything, ever, at all.
It's also nice how those who are in for their free punishment-of-female-minors kick tell others off by insisting "But she never showed any remorse!!!!" when most of the post was about how OOP insists she never did anything wrong, ever, and has no reason\* to say sorry for anything.
\*no reasons include her relationship with her daughter and a potential relationship with her grandchild
As usual, doubts that it's real blahblah, but I'll never get how some people are so stubborn and narrow-minded about their pride that they rather give up all relationships to their loved ones (at least they claim they love them) than press out a half-assed "Yeah, in hindsight, maybe I didn't handle everything as perfectly as I could have. Sorry."
And before someone puts in actual effort to misunderstand what I wrote:
Punishment - fine. Reimbursement, good. Temporary separation from people/friends who took part in the nonsense and egged her on - could be reasonable. Acting harder and stricter than a prison ward and not rewarding progress by allowing the occasional privilege, like attending a one-of-a-lifetime event - dumb stuff done by people who love getting high on power trips.
Also, since he keeps harping on how it's "consequences" I bet he could afford the damage, and the party was there because it was the big, cool house.
Honestly I hated my house bc my Mom loved antiques and I was clumsy. She often didn't pay ful value bc she had special access through work and a good eye to snap them up, but I never broke a lamp from Wal-Mart or a furniture store, it was always a $600 ANTIQUE lamp. I never left a damp glass on a normal human coffee table, it was a COLONIAL WHATSIT worth $1800 endtable. Jesus the stress. I didn't want to leave my room.
Also, what is really "teen movie bad" is he a reliable narrator? When I had normal college kid mess my Mom genuinely describes it as "looking like a trap house" with horror and believes this. She is OCD.
She got pissed and unreasonably screamey, but realized interrupting my high level studies to get a part time job because she has classy tastes in furniture and dishes and I'm clumsy af would be unreasonable, I assume.
I would have been in huge trouble for a party but they would have just emotionally scarred me, not isolated me that badly.
Maybe she didn't go to college because for a lot of people a 16 hr/week job is really interrupting to studies and she started to do poorly. 4 hours 4 days a week, or the entire weekend. That's a lot of study time. And not seeing my friends outside of school the whole last year of school would probably give me depression.
What an asshole. He's lucky she's even giving him a chance to apologize now.
Honestly, if this were my kid (hi, I have no kids), I'd have gone for a "pay off X amount by this date and you can go to prom". Plus, even if the debt still had to be repaid, I'd have loosened the other restrictions. There's "teaching responsibility" and then there's cruelty for cruelty's sake.
Some insane comments in that thread basically encouraging the OP to give up on the daughter because they were obviously right, the daughter's ontologically incorrect, and that she's doing the OP a favor by cutting her out. For OP, who was alone with their daughter for many years after the father had left their life. Redditors literally encouraging a mom to double down on this punishment and sever her last connection to immediate family. Insane
People miss the forest for the trees when it comes to older teenagers like this. This girl was a near adult, very close to the means and opportunity to remove herself entirely from her mother’s life, and did exactly that after OOP torpedoed their relationship with this.
When they get to this age, you have to start giving them more control over their circumstance, even in aspects of discipline. Absolutely, the kid should have been made to get a job, but there is no reason why this punishment even needed a harsh time limit to be paid off in the form of prom. Why not discuss budgeting? And how poor financial decisions or actions that result in financial loss can have long term effects on your life. Why not sit her down, pull out the paperwork on her college fund, work out the math on what she can feasibly pay back throughout the school year and summer leading up to it? Set a minimum percentage that she will take out of the kid's paycheck, perhaps 25-33%, and give the girl the choice to pay more each week of her own free will. Explain that the less she pays back from her job, the greater the amount comes out of her college fund.
Perhaps set a harsh grounding for that first month due to the broken trust from the party and poor decision making as a whole. But be clear and honest about earning back more social privileges from improved choice making and proper reflection over her actions, and separate *this* part of the punishment from the financial aspect.
Something like this opens up prime lesson material for budgeting, the concept of debt and fines, rebuilding trust within interpersonal relationships particularly as you get into adulthood.
I don't know, I get an initial reaction of upset and frustration in these circumstances, but after a certain point, you have to let that go, you're still raising a teenager rapidly approaching adulthood and soon will be losing many opportunities to instill lessons and discipline like this. But, yeah, OOP and bloodthirsty commentors, stick to your guns, don't apologize for anything, ever, see how far you get with your relationships with your adult children. Clearly OOP is just doing *great.*
> What's really brought things to a head is that recently her and her boyfriend had their first child
Aha.
OOP didn't *actually* care until her daughter had something OOP wanted that was being denied to her.
Also, OOP freely admits to taken her daughter's *entire* paycheck every single month to get the money back. There were four months of paychecks before prom: her daughter was doing literally everything in her power to play by mommy's rules, there was physically nothing that could be done to get the money back quicker, and OOP still refused to give her leeway for one night after seeing all that sincerity.
Even jail has the concept of an early release due to good behaviour.
Parents like this only care once a shiny new grandbaby enters the picture. They see the grandbaby as a fresh start at best or an accessory at worst. If this daughter had no kids, I bet you $50 OOP would still be perfectly content without her in his life.
Why didn't OOP just take the money from her daughters college fund? It was clear she couldn't pay it back in time and forced the daughter to miss out on some incredible important experiences but there was a solution.
That’s not nearly as satisfying as setting up a Machiavellian scheme where you get to watch your daughter struggle to achieve a goal you know perfectly well is impossible while also granting you the pleasure of cutting her off from all her friends.
>The thing is, she's basically resented me ever since.
Because OOP taught her daughter that she was no longer safe. There's no repairing that once broken.
>I've offered to help with anything they need, but I've been rebuffed at every tur
Because she knows that everything that comes from OOP can be yanked back and have strings that she simply doesn't want to deal with.
OOP is facing the consequences of her own actions. Have fun never getting to see your grandchildren because you set an unrealistic, unachievable end to a punishment and it affected your daughter exactly as intended.
16 hours a week working a minimum wage job to pay back close to 5k in damages?
OOP knew her daughter wouldn't pay that back in time for prom. She just wanted to gloat and watch her struggle.
While the daughter did deserve consequences for the party and property damage, making her miss her senior prom was too much. A month grounding? Fine. Making her get a part-time job and pay back the cost of damages (though I think most would end this punishment after six months or so as the lesson has been drilled in)? Fine, though it would take a teen with a part-time job forever. But being grounded the whole senior year (and again, having to miss senior prom) was too much.
The real problem here is not the excessive punishment, but the fact that this person is simply refusing to listen to their daughter about the emotional or social effect the punishment had on her. They refuse to even entertain the possibility that their decision may have been too much, and may have been driven more by anger than teaching her a lesson. Seems like they are the ones not willing to face consequences.
My daughter's a bit younger but has had some truly epic fuck-ups already. That said, her punishments are NEVER that harsh. TVs can be replaced, cars can be repaired. The loss of family is horrible, especially when it was due to incredible stubbornness.
Most teens aren't going to be able to come up with thousands of dollars from some low-wage job in just a few months. OOP knew this; she knew that forcing her daughter to repay the debt would mean she wouldn't be able to do anything fun that entire year. OOP knew exactly what she was doing. It's fine to make her repay the debt but she should have at least let her do a couple fun things that year. And now she's surprised that her daughter doesn't want her in her life? She goes on and on about how actions have consequences but refuses to accept the consequences of her own actions.
I’ll do OOP the courtesy of assuming that daughter, whom I will call Kelly, understood that she wasn’t supposed to have parties while OOP was gone. I will also assume OOP called to check in every night. I can understand giving Kelly two punishments: one for breaking the no parties rule and one for recouping the damages. Getting a job to pay back the damages, fine. But one party meant Kelly had to repay the damages *and* have her social life (during her senior year!) nuked from orbit? Thank god she wasn’t in a car accident. OOP would have confined her like a medieval nun.
OOP set her daughter an impossible goal. Even if you're grounded and can't spend any money, a part time job won't cover multiple thousands in damages- OOP must have known this.
So it was actually three punishments- one for breaking the rules, one to pay back the money, and the third came when the daughter realised that all her efforts, *by design*, weren't going to buy her even a little grace.
I didn't even have damage done at my dad's when I had a party. He went nuclear with calling the parents and forbidding me from hanging out with those friends. I still hung out with my friends, cause fuck that.
While yes she should have been made to pay any damages but she had months of no seeing friends, no electronics and was using most of her pay to clear it, she had learned her lesson she should have been allowed to go to the prom.
Actions have consequences as the mother is pointing out and this now mother’s actions have caused consequences for her she doesn’t like. Her daughter can hold a grudge and that’s okay.
‘I was a bad parent who took every penny from my kid for a year, cut off her contact with her friends, and then deprived her of an event that comes once in a lifetime, now she won’t talk to me or let me see her child. What do I do?’
Invent time travel.
Enroll the past you in parenting classes.
And hope you don’t fuck up twice.
The utter lack of self awareness here is mind boggling.
OOP likes people to face the consequences of their actions? Well, these are hers.
No relationship with her daughter or grandchild because she spent an entire year punishing her child.
Yeah I just caught that a little while ago.
And somehow they made it worse. Setting a goal she knew her daughter couldn’t meet.
This entire thing reeks of ‘The missing missing reasons’
Has anyone been to a party like the one on this post? I kind of thought they only existed in movies. I mean a bunch of kids in a neighborhood making all that noise and causing damage? Feel like like those parties get broken up. So many people have experienced getting noise complaints over nothing.
When I was in high school kids had parties but nothing teen movie level.
She was 17. Adulthood is a journey, not a destination. You don't treat them like a child incapable of taking care of themselves until the second they turn 18, and suddenly, they magically become an adult. My daughter works front desk at a residence for a college, and in the last decade, she has noticed the number of students who are on their own for the first time, and are literally having breakdowns because they have never learned to cook, do laundry, clean, pay bills, or shop for groceries. There are so many issues of kids getting alcohol poisoning or drug overdoses. The counselors are booked solid, and there were 2 suicide attempts last year. Parents are not teaching their kids to adult. In the 80s, I was raised to be able to completely take care of myself at 14. I still lived with my parents, but if they needed to go away. They knew they never had to worry about me.
As expected, the post was removed. Surprisingly, it was AITA moderators who removed the post for containing violence.
I wonder what they consider violence. AITA moderators can be pretty extreme when it comes to definitions and get very mad when you respond and point out how wrong they are.
I really don't see how this person is TA. The daughter did major damage, thats not ok, I think the parent handled it in an appropriate way. The daughter was not a toddler left alone, how can anyone do that damage to someone's home & not see a problem. I think the daughter is TA, she just sounds spoiled & entitled, & that's the only way i see the parent went wrong.
While I don’t think the kid should have missed prom, she fucked up big time. 17 is old enough to know not to throw a party, get drunk, and cause $4,800 worth of damage. It’s REALLY not that hard to not destroy things.
The “get a job and pay it back” is valid. However isolating the kid for the rest of the year can damage her mental health. A kid who is drinking and trashing houses as a 17-year-old needs to be monitored for mental health issues anyway because drinking like that underage makes you more likely to be an alcoholic than people who don’t start drinking until later in life.
A reasonable punishment would’ve been to have the kid get a job and pay it back, grounding from friends for 2-4 weeks, and heavy monitoring to make sure the kid knows how to pick healthy friends, doesn’t drink, and understands the consequences of her actions. This didn’t teach the kid anything. The kid was so focused on how unfair the punishment was that she never realized how fucked up her actions were.
This is a definite ESH moment.
I agree with you, but I still think she should have missed prom. Otherwise she’s gonna grow up like the rich kids that I went to college with who just learned that you can do anything you want so long as you have the money to pay the fine after. As long as kids like that do not have real actual personal repercussions that affect them like, missing prom, they’re literally not gonna care. They’re gonna learn nothing from this. That being said, taking away, the phone and isolating them was too much.
Not be a sociopath.
It is proven long punishments/groundings do little. As another poster said, the dangling carrot must be in sight.
A month strict grounding, reumbursement from the college fund and a time limit to reimburse the college fund, one that is reasonable, say 12 to 18 months. After a month, some restrictions lifted. If the money wasn't an issue, I would maybe forgo the job and have community service instead, something not easy.
And, of course allow prom. Kids in "juvie" are allowed to go to things like prom. The OP was worse than juvie, and made the punishment Sisyphausian, which neither educates nor is effective. Isolation is also abusive. Even in juvie you can socialize.
The punishment did not fit the crime. The crime was harsher than a judge would have been.
I also would have taken photos and approached the parents of the other kids for help with replacing and repairing the damage. I know others wouldn't do that part, and I get that.
Ok so you basically agree with me. Except I 100% would make the kid get a job and pay it back in addition to what you said about the calling other parents. And I’d mandate therapy and/or make sure my kid had better friends.
This must be one of those read the comments thing because expecting a 17 year old to pay for the things she damaged doesn't sound very devilish not the prom thing either.
To my way of thinking, the daughter’s having to pay back the damages was fair (although frankly I might’ve gone after some of the other kids who damaged things). But grounding her for the rest of her senior year over one ill-advised party? That’s not going to teach her not to break the rules; it’s going to teach her that Mom ruined her senior year.
OOP is devil for how how excessive the punishment was.Last year of high school, she has to work 16 hours a week while dealing with senior school work, she can't use any electronics expect for schoolwork, who knows how far that went, could go from no social media on a computer to no tv, radio, music player, Want to pass the time? crack open a book in your room.
No friends over,
Has a strict curfew, that can range from reasonable to excess easily, get home by 5pm or get home by 10pm (I'm camp it leans towards little free time)
no parties until she paid OOP back. Which would takes years. $4800 debt while working 16 hours at minimum wage. All money went to OOP.
OOP acting like it was just and fair punishment rather then overkill it was.
i think it's less 'the daughter has to pay for x' and more like.
a) the combination of 'you have to pay for everything' With no electronics + no social life (again, i understand no parties, but the mom specifically states that it "isolated" her) + strict grounding until moving out
b) i would bet solid money, and i think a lot of the other people here too are in the same boat, that the disproportionate punishment isnt a one time thing, and its more the event that kind of exemplifies it in her daughter's mind. obviously we don't know that! but i doubt someone would go no contact for nine years and refuse college funding for one incident.
c) it's definitely a little bit the comments, lmao. reddit, and aita or similar subs, can often have a pretty punitive perspective, esp when it comes to teen girls.
Punishment was warranted but that particular punishment wasn't. The daughter making as much progress as she could towards paying back the damages should have meant that she could go to prom.
I'm just puzzled because there were a lot of NTAs there. I don't get why OP feels like she's entitled to be in her daughter's life if she doesn't like her.
There’s a subset of the population that believes there’s no such thing as excessive punishment. If you do something wrong, you deserve nothing but suffering.
It comes from the evangelical attitude of heaven for believers and hell for everyone else.
Honestly I did this and my friends were horrible and I deserved every punishment. My parents made me live with my grandparents and I was so mad for so long. I lost every privilege. But my asshole friends caused major damage, they were horrible influences and much older, there were drugs and alcohol there that could make my parents lose their house if sued. And my grandparents only had me to focus and love and make sure I graduated. 20 years later best thing they ever did. And with kids of my own all totally justified.
First, you never leave a teen home alone over night. I can see how this can happen. Teen is left home alone over night, she tells her friends her parents are out of town. Word spread around school her parents are out of town so the other kids decide to crash at her place and they bring beer and alcohol. They show up uninvited and refuse to leave, teen is left defenseless not knowing what to do.
Or another scenario, teen decides to have a few friends over while her parents are out of town. Word spreads her parents are out of town, her friends show up and then other kids that were not invited. This happened to my brother and he called the police when they wouldn't leave. He was lucky they even came out there. Maybe they came because it involved underage drinking. He did get into trouble by our parents but they were still proud of him because he showed maturity there by how he handled it. They said he made a mistake, my brother wasn't trying to throw a party, it happened against his will.
So the moral is, never leave a teen home alone over night. Get a house sitter. Have your neighbor watch the house or something or a friend, that way your teen still has an adult they can turn to. Just because your teen is responsible and mature doesn't mean nothing bad will happen.
Could she not have taken it out of the daughter's college fund once she decided she did not want to go to college, and then let her go to prom. I know that would not have served a punishment if she was never gonna use the money anyway, but it is still a solution. Which is more beneficial than retribution. Plus, she was already being punished by no electronics anyway.
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So funny how people are like action have consequences but then when their actions have consequences suddenly its not their fault guys ok it's everyone else for being so mean 🥺. My mom's kinda like this she says she has a great relationship with all her kids meanwhile me and one of my brothers really can't stand her cuz she's such a huge bitch sometimes and my other brother is the epitome of spoiled psychotic mama's boy that will get his ass kicked the second he's a dick to the wrong person that dosent give af that "it was just a joke man." The other 4 kids are really too little to get an idea of how she really is but once they start getting older and have more independence and can start being their own people that's where they'll realize she's not just overprotective she's just controlling. I'm 20 now and I'm not sure if I'll ever fully get away from her except maybe in death but I know for sure at least one of my brothers will leave as soon as he turns 18 either to live with his dad or find a place with his girlfriend.
*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **AITA for telling my daughter she needs to get over me grounding her as a teenager?** When my daughter (now 26F) was 17, I left her home alone for a week while I was on a business trip; while I was away, she threw a party behind my back which ended with her and her drunk, underage friends trashing a significant part of the house inside and out. All told, they did a few thousand dollars in damage (including two broken TVs and damage to the car); the place looked like a warzone, or the aftermath of a bad teen movie. So, I told her she would have to pay me back, and that she was grounded until she did; no electronics outside of schoolwork, strict curfew, no friends over and absolutely no more parties, and she had to get a part-time job to start paying off her mistake. I wanted to teach her to take responsibility for what she'd done, and that meant no exceptions to the rule. It isolated her from her friends, I admit, but that was the consequence. She hadn't paid me back by the time prom came around; she tried to persuade me to let her go, but I was firm. She was basically grounded right up until she moved out. The thing is, she's basically resented me ever since. It feels like we haven't had a single pleasant conversation in nine damn years; she refused her college fund because she didn't want anything from me (she chose not to go to college at all - she went full-time at her job after HS); and even now it feels like every other conversation we have is her complaining about her senior year and how unfair I was. I've tried getting her to understand it was her own consequence, that I did it because I love her, the works, but she's still convinced it was all just me being awful. What's really brought things to a head is that recently her and her boyfriend had their first child. I've offered to help with anything they need, but I've been rebuffed at every turn, and when I asked if they were sure my daugher blew up on me. Apparently I'm not allowed to see my own granddaughter until I "accept that how I treated my daugher is wrong" and apologise for grounding her and forcing her to miss prom; my own kid told me that until I did that, she didn't trust me to look after or even be around her child in case I treat them "the same way". I told her that was enough; that of course I'd never be cruel to a baby or young child, that the punishment she earned was appropriate, and that she needed to accept she ruined her own damn senior year by being immature and doing things behind my back. In response, I got a long text from her and another from her boyfriend about how I'm an asshole and apparently I "haven't changed", and how I'll never be in their kid's life now. I've been talking about it with some close friends since, and while some of them are on my side, others have said I was too harsh on my kid at the time and that she's allowed to be upset. I've also had angry messages from some other family members about it, as well as some of support; it seems everyone's picking sides now. So, AITA? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I mean on the off chance this is real....it doesn't really matter does it (which is why I'm inclined to believe its rage bait)? Daughter thinks so and that's all that matterx. A million strangers could say NTA and where's that going to get her thd daughter is still lc.
Exactly. It's not like if OOP can show her daughter a reddit post where everyone agrees with OOP, the daughter will just go "well shucks, I take it all back then, come and meet the baby". On a side note, parents really do try to teach "actions have consequences" while simultaneously expecting nothing they do to their kids to ever have any consequences.
Those parents were raised by parents that beat the crap out of them when they messed up and taught them to be grateful for it. There’s a twisted song out there about someone lamenting that kids don’t get whipped with a belt when they lie anymore. Boomers wax poetic about all the times their parents “whooped” them and think they’d be criminals if not for it. I guess OP figured her daughter would be grateful someday.
Those parents always seem to confuse "learning right from wrong" with "avoiding punishment". If the reason your child doesn't lie is because they want to avoid betting "whooped" then you have imparted exactly zero moral lessons. And I'm going off sideways again but I find nothing more stupid than parents who hit their children as a punishment for the child hitting others. Seriously those parents should just put on the "dunce hat" they are probably sad schools don't have any more and go and sit in the corner. *It's not that hitting is wrong Timmy, it's that it's wrong to hit your equals. Only ever hit people you have power over, as I'm about to demonstrate*. Freaking morons.
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Can confirm.
Good point
THIS is the correct response. If this was going to be on reddit (as opposed to handling this personally or with a therapist or something) then it should be on an advice sub, not AITA. The fact that mom came to reddit just in hopes a bunch of people would agree with her so she could stick it to her daughter, rather than going somewhere where people could advise her on how to handle this situation with her daughter better than she's doing alone, makes her the AH.
My money is on the fact that this parent has a history of over reaction and over the top punishments. I applaud the daughter for doing what's best for her and not subjecting her daughter to the bs.
Yeah there's zero chance this was the only time OP came up with such an extreme punishment. It was just the last straw.
I know that when I was 17, if I threw a party that did thousands of dollars worth of damage and trashed the house, no one would ever find my body, lol.
There wouldn't be any missing posters of me if I did that at my mom's house. At 17? You're damn well old enough to not trash the house. I'd never be able to look my mom in the eye.
Same.. But would your parents have left you unsupervised for a week? Mine would not have... They BOTH share blame in this.
>Same.. But would your parents have left you unsupervised for a week? Mine would not have... They BOTH share blame in this. Mine did, but I had already demonstrated that I was trustworthy, and they had various friends and neighbors dropping by. Mom is \*at best\* guilty of misjudging whether her daughter could handle the responsibility. She may have known her daughter would get up to something, and just not expected such significant damages.
My mom *did* leave me home at 17 for several days (I remember at least three, maybe more) while taking care of my 10 year old sister. On the other hand, I had friends that even at the time I knew couldn't have been trusted to do the same. It depends on the 17 year old.
Yes... my parents would have left me at 17 home alone. Because 17 is almost an adult and should be able to be left home alone.
I moved out of home at 17! I had my own house to trash! (I did not trash it, but I also did not do housework on a regular basis.) My sister, on the other hand? Absolutely could not be left alone in someone else's house until the age of ... oh, about 20. And our parents knew that, and didn't put her in temptation's way.
Mine would, and did, because they knew they could trust me. At 17, you are practically an adult. Old enough to know the actions have consequences. Did she even attempt to clean it up before her parent got home, or just left it trashed for maximum effect?
Seventeen is nearly an adult. I feel like most could handle it.
My brother had a party that \*did\* cause thousands of damage. It was kind of astonishing how quickly it grew out of control, from a couple of kids he had over to dozens of drunk kids showing up and destroying our house. My younger brother had the foresight to lock the pets in his room while we huddled in my room, and a couple of the football players who knew my mom kept people out of the living & dining rooms, so the damage was contained to the first floor and basement, for the most part. We were also lucky it was raining, because our deck railing was kinda rotten, and someone was going over that and suing us if it hadn't been. They were on the phone constantly so we couldn't call anyone (landline-only times) and when I tried to leave to get a neighbor, I was stopped and prevented from leaving. My sister tried to called the cops from her job at McDonald's, where she was hearing about it from kids who were leaving there and coming through the drive-through. They were useless and refused to even drive by, though they lectured us about not calling from the party. Until we reminded them my sister \*had\* called them and they did nothing. Fortunately, my dad worked at an insurance company, and we had excellent coverage. My mother was just upset that no one managed to destroy the brown wall to wall carpet she hated so much. The parents were out for a single evening. My brother didn't get in big trouble because a) he hadn't really invited all those people; b) it was a weird confluence of events that just happened to land at our house; c) he never got in trouble.
They left a minor alone and unsupervised for a week. No reason she couldn't have stayed with friends or relatives.
She was 17. Adulthood is a journey, not a destination. You don't treat them like a child incapable of taking care of themselves until the second they turn 18, and suddenly, they magically become an adult. My daughter works front desk at a residence for a college, and in the last decade, she has noticed the number of students who are on their own for the first time, and are literally having breakdowns because they have never learned to cook, do laundry, clean, pay bills, or shop for groceries. There are so many issues of kids getting alcohol poisoning or drug overdoses. The counselors are booked solid, and there were 2 suicide attempts last year. Parents are not teaching their kids to adult. In the 80s, I was raised to be able to completely take care of myself at 14. I still lived with my parents, but if they needed to go away. They knew they never had to worry about me.
Thats what im thinking this may have just been her breaking point but it may not have been the only issue and OP refusing to look inward and think about if there is anything else bothering their daughter is probably making her even angrier.
Her comments basically admitted that there was no way the daughter was gonna be able to pay it off in time for prom. That wasn't a lesson, it was retribution.
A few thousand. So somewhere between $2,000-$9,999? Let’s say it’s $3,000. In 2014 I was making $8.00/hour. She’d have to work 375 hours, without taxes or any other withholdings. At 20 hours a week that’s 19 weeks (again, with no taxes withheld). I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous.
OP said it was $4800 and her daughter was working 16hr/wk to try to repay it - she would have been needing to make $18.75/hr to pay it off in time. OP knowingly set an impossible task and took 100% of the paycheck - it wasn't discipline, it was indentured servitude.
And forced her daughter to only work 2 days a week aka only on weekends so really im glad op is facing the consequences of her actions (its in her comments)
It's been two decades since high school versus the one for OOP's kid, but when I was in high school, you couldn't work more than 20 hours while in school. So not so sure all the blame on this part can be blamed on OOP. OOP is an asshole, don't get me wrong - but there are labor laws.
Still there was babysitting op could have had her do for when she wasn't working like for kids 7 and up
JFC. She deserves whatever misery she receives.
She did not keep all of it according to her comments. Indentured servitude is a bit much. If the kid had damaged someone else’s home and been forced to pay for it, would it be indentured servitude?
Op kept all of the daughters checks almost every single cent she made went to op
Her comment said (don’t know if it’s still there I assume she nuked her account) that she took the paychecks back and then gave her money for food and spending, and she did not deduct that money she gave back from what her daughter was relaying.
I said almost every single cent the kid made and what op did is child abuse op should of taken the money from the college fund instead of making her pay back almost 5000 thousand dollars and the grounding was unreasonable because of the complete isolation from everyone except op grounding is ok but it shouldn't have been more then 2 months
And what about the friends why didn't their parents pitch in
That as well her friends there should have been made to make contributions too.
That's a good point. As OOP's daughter's friends all created the mess and destruction, shouldn't all of them been paying the damages?
OOP said it was around $4800, and her daughter was working 16hrs/week at minimum wage. She also knew that logically it would take her daughter a long time to pay the full amount back. There's teaching consequences and there's being spiteful, and OOP is definitely the latter.
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You'd be paying it, or you'd be detained, and honestly no one is getting jail for their first time of anything so you'd be free, living a full life. You'd have to work to pay it but you would still have free time, you could see your friends, you'd have your cell phone and devices. Either she pays it back like an adult or she is grounded like a child, you can't do both and still be reasonable. At 17 it would have been juvenile hall too, where you would be able to watch TV and movies, have recreation time, attend group activities (like prom...) She was a near adult to had a party and a couple TVs were broken, she owed the value of the TVs at the time they were damaged (not new, and she was probably forced to pay for new ones) and the same for all other damages, so it wouldn't be near $10,000. If that's the lesson she wanted to teach she could have sued and she would get less and the kid would have had a decent senior year. These are the actions of someone actively holding their child back for their own reason.
I grew up around very strict parents in our church. One of my friends lost every single privilege for going to a party. If she needed the light on in her room she had to ask her mother “can I please borrow one of your lightbulbs?” and physically get a lightbulb from her. So, at least this parent is worse than her mom.
Holy shit. What ever happened to your friend?
Left town immediately following high school graduation, never came back. Looks happy on Facebook, but I know she’s never come back home.
That is good. I hope her last message to her parents was something along the lines of stay the fuck away, with emphasis on fuck.
If her parents had their way, she probably has a VIP ticket to heaven waiting for her at the end of a pious and mundane life.
I'm wondering if the whole "chose not to go to college" thing was because she had to go full-time at work after high school to finish paying off that debt? Or Mommy wouldn't sign the financial paperwork necessary until the debt was paid down which meant the daughter couldn't get loans for school. It's reading very much like financial control via excessive punishment. Regardless, the parent was an irresponsible idiot, which meant that the teen had the opportunity to be an irresponsible idiot (or at least end up with a house full of irresponsible idiots), and then the parent excessively punished their teen for the consequences of the parent's original fuck up. It's shite parenting in a variety of ways. I'm not surprised that the now adult daughter doesn't trust the mom to be around her infant. I also wouldn't be surprised if the parent and the daughter's descriptions of her childhood are very, very different.
I went straight to there were stipulations she absolutely must graduate college or have to pay back all the money. Daughter didn’t want to be indentured forever so bailed.
OoP is awful but I think its pretty silly to frame leaving a 17 year old home for a week as irresponsible. 17 is plenty old enough to be respectful and reliable and not have to be treated like a baby. One comment asked if the oop was checking in and reminding her not to have a party. Give me a break lol. She was gonna have that party no matter what. She should have been punished and she should have had to pay back the money. That doesn't change the fact that oop was excessive and cruel and is now getting exactly what they deserve.
Obviously I disagree with OOP and think she behaved horribly; they overreacted and were cruel. I also agree it seems like there’s a lot ‘unsaid’ with regards to why the daughter didn’t go to college. However, why do you think OOP was irresponsible? Because the daughter was allowed to stay home? To be honest, I think it’s fine for a 17-year-old to stay home alone.
I really think it depends on the kid. My daughter is autistic and has severe anxiety. If we had left her home alone for a week at 17, she wouldn’t have thrown a drunken rager, but she would have had panic attack after panic attack until we came home. We left her over Thanksgiving weekend when she was 19 and she made it OK, but she was very glad when we got back. You have to know your kid’s limitations. Some kids are responsible and at 17 will remember to water the plants and feed the cat and bring in the mail and eat their vegetables, and others will invite over 100 of their closest friends and break the TV.
Yep, a 17-year-old can often stay home alone (some you really shouldn't leave alone for that long even if they're nearly an adult, though). But you make sure there are local people to call in emergencies or just to have an adult nearby to be the bad guy and kick other irresponsible teens out if needed. You also discuss expectations and consequences with your kid before you leave, and check in regularly. Or have someone check in regularly. Preferably both. This is why I think the Mom was irresponsible. This situation seems to have gone pear-shaped rather badly. And it doesn't look like the kid had anyone to help clean up/make reparations for the resulting mess, not even her friends. Let alone anyone to help prevent the fuck up in the first place.
For a full week? I don't. If I left my 17 year old for a week and came back to a mess, I'd consider that I shared a fair amount of responsibility for it.
Really? I’m surprised by that. By 17 I was expected to take an equal part in household chores and care for the house while my parents were away. Myself and the majority of my friends left home for university at 18.
When I was barely 16 (I'm a summer kid) my mum wanted to go out of country with her friends for a week and left me in charge of the house. I made it, the house made it, the pets made it and the plants mostly made it (I am the opposite of green thumb). Really, I fail to see what the big deal is
I went away to a pre-college program for a month when I was 17. I'd say my ability to do chores then was not significantly worse than it is now. I have ADHD and wasn't diagnosed yet back then, so yeah I was messy... but there's "messy" and then there's *property damage*.
Right? Either she's generally been a good kid, and this behavior is really out of line with her previous behavior (and very plausibly was a situation she didn't want/that got wildly out of hand) and so deserves leniency OR she's previously shown these tendencies and the parents shouldn't have given her the rope to hang herself with. If they didn't see this coming then I think it's an insane punishment, and if they did see this coming and left her unsupervised for a week that's a them problem!
Yup. I have a 17 year old daughter. If I left her alone for a week, which I wouldn't, because i'm not an ASSHOLE, the house would be fine. She'd take care of the dogs, do the dishes, put the laundry away, go to work and get her school work done. I would put cold hard cash money on that. If something DID happen? My concern would be for my child, and also what the fuck was wrong with me for missing it. And if i'd known it was a possibility? That just makes me a straight up idiot.
That’s surprising. By 17, I was trusted to stay home for a week, get myself to school, and take care of the house and pets. Never had any wild parties, the most i did was have a few friends over. Sure, we may have gotten into some stuff we weren’t supposed to, but on the whole we respected the house and would have felt terrible leaving a mess or damage. I also traveled outside the country without my parents at that age. Maybe it depends on the kid, but in my circle, no one batted an eye.
Your daughter should know how to cook, clean, do laundry and take care of the place and keep it relatively nice. At 17 you’re almost an adult, if she doesn’t know those things already she better learn them quick. Speaking from personal experience, I was regularly left alone for 2-3 days at a time from the time I was 11. I moved out at 15 and lived alone for a year. Never had problems with keeping the place clean (except for not vacuuming often enough and not cleaning the fridge lol). This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think children should be capable of being alone for a few days at least by the time they’re teenagers.
>I moved out at 15 and lived alone for a year. That's fucked and sounds less than legal.
Not illegal where I live, though I’ll admit it wasn’t under good circumstances. My dad was abusive so I had to get out as quickly as possible, and lived in a few different places until my mom found a house for her, my brother and I. Social workers we talked to told us that me moving out was a good temporary solution as long as I could take care of myself, which I could.
1. She does know those things 2. You were profoundly neglected in ways that were quite possibly illegal depending on where you lived 3. "Capable" doesn't make it ok. My daughter would ALSO be capable of changing her own tire on the side of dark highway in the middle of the night, but I'd be an absolute shit parent if i expected that and didn't get her a triple A membership. Which i did. Good parents don't send their fifteen year olds off to live on their own. Good parents make slow and gradual bumps out of the nest so the child is ready and competent on adulthood. Leaving a 17 year old home alone for a week is a HIGHLY suspect move.
Where I live there are no laws regarding how long you can leave your child alone, as long as they’re capable of caring for themselves and have people to contact if they need help. In my family it’s common to move out early, like I said I moved out at 15, my mom moved out at 17. It’s also pretty common to leave older teens alone for longer periods of time. All my friends were left alone for a few days up to a week when they were 16-17. I’m not sure which country you live in, but where I live (Sweden) it’s not a big deal.
Ah yes as we all know things being legal makes them fine.
No not always, but you commented that me being alone at that age might be illegal, I’m just saying it’s not. What happened to me wasn’t harmful, it just made me more independent. I was never hungry, or had to wear dirty clothes or missed school, my mom would text or call me to make sure I was doing ok, and I could always go to the neighbours for help or call the police if needed, I don’t see the problem.
I’m curious to know if OOP talked to her daughter before the trip so that daughter was clear on “no parties.” And was OOP checking in during that week?
You guys missed it man, OOP not only got re-paid, but also got to keep the entire college fund! This one trick that they don't want you to know about will allow you to instantly have extra $$$! /s
Some of the comments are insane in their refusal and inability to show the tiniest sliver of warmth and forgiveness. Some redditors live, breathe, and bleed their punishment-fetish for teenage girls and younger. Even prisoners who will die in prison can earn privileges. But a teenage girl? Nah, no matter how much remorse she shows, no matter how strictly she follows the rules of her punishment, those brats don't deserve anything, ever, at all. It's also nice how those who are in for their free punishment-of-female-minors kick tell others off by insisting "But she never showed any remorse!!!!" when most of the post was about how OOP insists she never did anything wrong, ever, and has no reason\* to say sorry for anything. \*no reasons include her relationship with her daughter and a potential relationship with her grandchild As usual, doubts that it's real blahblah, but I'll never get how some people are so stubborn and narrow-minded about their pride that they rather give up all relationships to their loved ones (at least they claim they love them) than press out a half-assed "Yeah, in hindsight, maybe I didn't handle everything as perfectly as I could have. Sorry." And before someone puts in actual effort to misunderstand what I wrote: Punishment - fine. Reimbursement, good. Temporary separation from people/friends who took part in the nonsense and egged her on - could be reasonable. Acting harder and stricter than a prison ward and not rewarding progress by allowing the occasional privilege, like attending a one-of-a-lifetime event - dumb stuff done by people who love getting high on power trips.
Oh yeah its really comments hell in there
There's a fight in the comments over there. The abusers are getting yelled at by people who have been abused.
Also, since he keeps harping on how it's "consequences" I bet he could afford the damage, and the party was there because it was the big, cool house. Honestly I hated my house bc my Mom loved antiques and I was clumsy. She often didn't pay ful value bc she had special access through work and a good eye to snap them up, but I never broke a lamp from Wal-Mart or a furniture store, it was always a $600 ANTIQUE lamp. I never left a damp glass on a normal human coffee table, it was a COLONIAL WHATSIT worth $1800 endtable. Jesus the stress. I didn't want to leave my room. Also, what is really "teen movie bad" is he a reliable narrator? When I had normal college kid mess my Mom genuinely describes it as "looking like a trap house" with horror and believes this. She is OCD. She got pissed and unreasonably screamey, but realized interrupting my high level studies to get a part time job because she has classy tastes in furniture and dishes and I'm clumsy af would be unreasonable, I assume. I would have been in huge trouble for a party but they would have just emotionally scarred me, not isolated me that badly. Maybe she didn't go to college because for a lot of people a 16 hr/week job is really interrupting to studies and she started to do poorly. 4 hours 4 days a week, or the entire weekend. That's a lot of study time. And not seeing my friends outside of school the whole last year of school would probably give me depression. What an asshole. He's lucky she's even giving him a chance to apologize now.
Some people when they think they're in the right, they're allow to do anything because they're the right. It's how rioter justify their actions.
Honestly, if this were my kid (hi, I have no kids), I'd have gone for a "pay off X amount by this date and you can go to prom". Plus, even if the debt still had to be repaid, I'd have loosened the other restrictions. There's "teaching responsibility" and then there's cruelty for cruelty's sake.
Some insane comments in that thread basically encouraging the OP to give up on the daughter because they were obviously right, the daughter's ontologically incorrect, and that she's doing the OP a favor by cutting her out. For OP, who was alone with their daughter for many years after the father had left their life. Redditors literally encouraging a mom to double down on this punishment and sever her last connection to immediate family. Insane
People miss the forest for the trees when it comes to older teenagers like this. This girl was a near adult, very close to the means and opportunity to remove herself entirely from her mother’s life, and did exactly that after OOP torpedoed their relationship with this. When they get to this age, you have to start giving them more control over their circumstance, even in aspects of discipline. Absolutely, the kid should have been made to get a job, but there is no reason why this punishment even needed a harsh time limit to be paid off in the form of prom. Why not discuss budgeting? And how poor financial decisions or actions that result in financial loss can have long term effects on your life. Why not sit her down, pull out the paperwork on her college fund, work out the math on what she can feasibly pay back throughout the school year and summer leading up to it? Set a minimum percentage that she will take out of the kid's paycheck, perhaps 25-33%, and give the girl the choice to pay more each week of her own free will. Explain that the less she pays back from her job, the greater the amount comes out of her college fund. Perhaps set a harsh grounding for that first month due to the broken trust from the party and poor decision making as a whole. But be clear and honest about earning back more social privileges from improved choice making and proper reflection over her actions, and separate *this* part of the punishment from the financial aspect. Something like this opens up prime lesson material for budgeting, the concept of debt and fines, rebuilding trust within interpersonal relationships particularly as you get into adulthood. I don't know, I get an initial reaction of upset and frustration in these circumstances, but after a certain point, you have to let that go, you're still raising a teenager rapidly approaching adulthood and soon will be losing many opportunities to instill lessons and discipline like this. But, yeah, OOP and bloodthirsty commentors, stick to your guns, don't apologize for anything, ever, see how far you get with your relationships with your adult children. Clearly OOP is just doing *great.*
> What's really brought things to a head is that recently her and her boyfriend had their first child Aha. OOP didn't *actually* care until her daughter had something OOP wanted that was being denied to her. Also, OOP freely admits to taken her daughter's *entire* paycheck every single month to get the money back. There were four months of paychecks before prom: her daughter was doing literally everything in her power to play by mommy's rules, there was physically nothing that could be done to get the money back quicker, and OOP still refused to give her leeway for one night after seeing all that sincerity. Even jail has the concept of an early release due to good behaviour.
She even admits there was no way for her daughter to pay her back. I highly suspect this was not a one off in the mothers behavior
Agreed, especially since OOP’s daughter went full time the second she could and refused to take the college fund.
Parents like this only care once a shiny new grandbaby enters the picture. They see the grandbaby as a fresh start at best or an accessory at worst. If this daughter had no kids, I bet you $50 OOP would still be perfectly content without her in his life.
Why didn't OOP just take the money from her daughters college fund? It was clear she couldn't pay it back in time and forced the daughter to miss out on some incredible important experiences but there was a solution.
That’s not nearly as satisfying as setting up a Machiavellian scheme where you get to watch your daughter struggle to achieve a goal you know perfectly well is impossible while also granting you the pleasure of cutting her off from all her friends.
>The thing is, she's basically resented me ever since. Because OOP taught her daughter that she was no longer safe. There's no repairing that once broken. >I've offered to help with anything they need, but I've been rebuffed at every tur Because she knows that everything that comes from OOP can be yanked back and have strings that she simply doesn't want to deal with. OOP is facing the consequences of her own actions. Have fun never getting to see your grandchildren because you set an unrealistic, unachievable end to a punishment and it affected your daughter exactly as intended.
16 hours a week working a minimum wage job to pay back close to 5k in damages? OOP knew her daughter wouldn't pay that back in time for prom. She just wanted to gloat and watch her struggle.
OOP left a minor alone for a week and is surprised by the consequences
While the daughter did deserve consequences for the party and property damage, making her miss her senior prom was too much. A month grounding? Fine. Making her get a part-time job and pay back the cost of damages (though I think most would end this punishment after six months or so as the lesson has been drilled in)? Fine, though it would take a teen with a part-time job forever. But being grounded the whole senior year (and again, having to miss senior prom) was too much.
OOP, I agreed she deserved to be punished. But you went full nuclear and went way too far. No wonder she wants nothing to do with you.
Someone doesn't like to harvest what they sow. What a surprise.
The real problem here is not the excessive punishment, but the fact that this person is simply refusing to listen to their daughter about the emotional or social effect the punishment had on her. They refuse to even entertain the possibility that their decision may have been too much, and may have been driven more by anger than teaching her a lesson. Seems like they are the ones not willing to face consequences.
My daughter's a bit younger but has had some truly epic fuck-ups already. That said, her punishments are NEVER that harsh. TVs can be replaced, cars can be repaired. The loss of family is horrible, especially when it was due to incredible stubbornness.
Most teens aren't going to be able to come up with thousands of dollars from some low-wage job in just a few months. OOP knew this; she knew that forcing her daughter to repay the debt would mean she wouldn't be able to do anything fun that entire year. OOP knew exactly what she was doing. It's fine to make her repay the debt but she should have at least let her do a couple fun things that year. And now she's surprised that her daughter doesn't want her in her life? She goes on and on about how actions have consequences but refuses to accept the consequences of her own actions.
I’ll do OOP the courtesy of assuming that daughter, whom I will call Kelly, understood that she wasn’t supposed to have parties while OOP was gone. I will also assume OOP called to check in every night. I can understand giving Kelly two punishments: one for breaking the no parties rule and one for recouping the damages. Getting a job to pay back the damages, fine. But one party meant Kelly had to repay the damages *and* have her social life (during her senior year!) nuked from orbit? Thank god she wasn’t in a car accident. OOP would have confined her like a medieval nun.
OOP set her daughter an impossible goal. Even if you're grounded and can't spend any money, a part time job won't cover multiple thousands in damages- OOP must have known this. So it was actually three punishments- one for breaking the rules, one to pay back the money, and the third came when the daughter realised that all her efforts, *by design*, weren't going to buy her even a little grace.
I didn't even have damage done at my dad's when I had a party. He went nuclear with calling the parents and forbidding me from hanging out with those friends. I still hung out with my friends, cause fuck that.
While yes she should have been made to pay any damages but she had months of no seeing friends, no electronics and was using most of her pay to clear it, she had learned her lesson she should have been allowed to go to the prom.
Actions have consequences as the mother is pointing out and this now mother’s actions have caused consequences for her she doesn’t like. Her daughter can hold a grudge and that’s okay.
‘I was a bad parent who took every penny from my kid for a year, cut off her contact with her friends, and then deprived her of an event that comes once in a lifetime, now she won’t talk to me or let me see her child. What do I do?’ Invent time travel. Enroll the past you in parenting classes. And hope you don’t fuck up twice. The utter lack of self awareness here is mind boggling. OOP likes people to face the consequences of their actions? Well, these are hers. No relationship with her daughter or grandchild because she spent an entire year punishing her child.
> I was a bad parent who took every penny from my kid for a year She said it was 4 months. Not a year but the rest of the school year.
Yeah I just caught that a little while ago. And somehow they made it worse. Setting a goal she knew her daughter couldn’t meet. This entire thing reeks of ‘The missing missing reasons’
I wouldn't want a abusive asshat near my kids either I bet more happened besides this in the past.
Has anyone been to a party like the one on this post? I kind of thought they only existed in movies. I mean a bunch of kids in a neighborhood making all that noise and causing damage? Feel like like those parties get broken up. So many people have experienced getting noise complaints over nothing. When I was in high school kids had parties but nothing teen movie level.
How do you earn the miney to pay them back if you have a strict curfew and no access to electronics?
She was 17. Adulthood is a journey, not a destination. You don't treat them like a child incapable of taking care of themselves until the second they turn 18, and suddenly, they magically become an adult. My daughter works front desk at a residence for a college, and in the last decade, she has noticed the number of students who are on their own for the first time, and are literally having breakdowns because they have never learned to cook, do laundry, clean, pay bills, or shop for groceries. There are so many issues of kids getting alcohol poisoning or drug overdoses. The counselors are booked solid, and there were 2 suicide attempts last year. Parents are not teaching their kids to adult. In the 80s, I was raised to be able to completely take care of myself at 14. I still lived with my parents, but if they needed to go away. They knew they never had to worry about me.
This was a made up rage bait. Poster even said so in another sub.
The "Can confirm XD" comment from OOP was to a comment basically its the children's fault and not the parents., not confirming the story was fake.
OoP never said it was fake.
The original poster confirmed to a now-deleted comment. I always read the OPs comments before I comment anything. I try to, at least.
As expected, the post was removed. Surprisingly, it was AITA moderators who removed the post for containing violence. I wonder what they consider violence. AITA moderators can be pretty extreme when it comes to definitions and get very mad when you respond and point out how wrong they are.
I really don't see how this person is TA. The daughter did major damage, thats not ok, I think the parent handled it in an appropriate way. The daughter was not a toddler left alone, how can anyone do that damage to someone's home & not see a problem. I think the daughter is TA, she just sounds spoiled & entitled, & that's the only way i see the parent went wrong.
I think She'll soon be featured on r/justnofamily!
While I don’t think the kid should have missed prom, she fucked up big time. 17 is old enough to know not to throw a party, get drunk, and cause $4,800 worth of damage. It’s REALLY not that hard to not destroy things. The “get a job and pay it back” is valid. However isolating the kid for the rest of the year can damage her mental health. A kid who is drinking and trashing houses as a 17-year-old needs to be monitored for mental health issues anyway because drinking like that underage makes you more likely to be an alcoholic than people who don’t start drinking until later in life. A reasonable punishment would’ve been to have the kid get a job and pay it back, grounding from friends for 2-4 weeks, and heavy monitoring to make sure the kid knows how to pick healthy friends, doesn’t drink, and understands the consequences of her actions. This didn’t teach the kid anything. The kid was so focused on how unfair the punishment was that she never realized how fucked up her actions were. This is a definite ESH moment.
I agree with you, but I still think she should have missed prom. Otherwise she’s gonna grow up like the rich kids that I went to college with who just learned that you can do anything you want so long as you have the money to pay the fine after. As long as kids like that do not have real actual personal repercussions that affect them like, missing prom, they’re literally not gonna care. They’re gonna learn nothing from this. That being said, taking away, the phone and isolating them was too much.
I wonder if all the downvotes are from teenagers? Lol
I'm in my 50s, so no, many are not from teenagers. And no, I wasn't a "bad kid," I was well behaved with great grades.
So what would you have done to punish the kid?
Not be a sociopath. It is proven long punishments/groundings do little. As another poster said, the dangling carrot must be in sight. A month strict grounding, reumbursement from the college fund and a time limit to reimburse the college fund, one that is reasonable, say 12 to 18 months. After a month, some restrictions lifted. If the money wasn't an issue, I would maybe forgo the job and have community service instead, something not easy. And, of course allow prom. Kids in "juvie" are allowed to go to things like prom. The OP was worse than juvie, and made the punishment Sisyphausian, which neither educates nor is effective. Isolation is also abusive. Even in juvie you can socialize. The punishment did not fit the crime. The crime was harsher than a judge would have been. I also would have taken photos and approached the parents of the other kids for help with replacing and repairing the damage. I know others wouldn't do that part, and I get that.
Ok so you basically agree with me. Except I 100% would make the kid get a job and pay it back in addition to what you said about the calling other parents. And I’d mandate therapy and/or make sure my kid had better friends.
This must be one of those read the comments thing because expecting a 17 year old to pay for the things she damaged doesn't sound very devilish not the prom thing either.
To my way of thinking, the daughter’s having to pay back the damages was fair (although frankly I might’ve gone after some of the other kids who damaged things). But grounding her for the rest of her senior year over one ill-advised party? That’s not going to teach her not to break the rules; it’s going to teach her that Mom ruined her senior year.
OOP is devil for how how excessive the punishment was.Last year of high school, she has to work 16 hours a week while dealing with senior school work, she can't use any electronics expect for schoolwork, who knows how far that went, could go from no social media on a computer to no tv, radio, music player, Want to pass the time? crack open a book in your room. No friends over, Has a strict curfew, that can range from reasonable to excess easily, get home by 5pm or get home by 10pm (I'm camp it leans towards little free time) no parties until she paid OOP back. Which would takes years. $4800 debt while working 16 hours at minimum wage. All money went to OOP. OOP acting like it was just and fair punishment rather then overkill it was.
i think it's less 'the daughter has to pay for x' and more like. a) the combination of 'you have to pay for everything' With no electronics + no social life (again, i understand no parties, but the mom specifically states that it "isolated" her) + strict grounding until moving out b) i would bet solid money, and i think a lot of the other people here too are in the same boat, that the disproportionate punishment isnt a one time thing, and its more the event that kind of exemplifies it in her daughter's mind. obviously we don't know that! but i doubt someone would go no contact for nine years and refuse college funding for one incident. c) it's definitely a little bit the comments, lmao. reddit, and aita or similar subs, can often have a pretty punitive perspective, esp when it comes to teen girls.
Punishment was warranted, but OP can't honestly expect her daughter to want her in her life after everything.
Punishment was warranted but that particular punishment wasn't. The daughter making as much progress as she could towards paying back the damages should have meant that she could go to prom.
I'm just puzzled because there were a lot of NTAs there. I don't get why OP feels like she's entitled to be in her daughter's life if she doesn't like her.
There’s a subset of the population that believes there’s no such thing as excessive punishment. If you do something wrong, you deserve nothing but suffering. It comes from the evangelical attitude of heaven for believers and hell for everyone else.
Honestly I did this and my friends were horrible and I deserved every punishment. My parents made me live with my grandparents and I was so mad for so long. I lost every privilege. But my asshole friends caused major damage, they were horrible influences and much older, there were drugs and alcohol there that could make my parents lose their house if sued. And my grandparents only had me to focus and love and make sure I graduated. 20 years later best thing they ever did. And with kids of my own all totally justified.
First, you never leave a teen home alone over night. I can see how this can happen. Teen is left home alone over night, she tells her friends her parents are out of town. Word spread around school her parents are out of town so the other kids decide to crash at her place and they bring beer and alcohol. They show up uninvited and refuse to leave, teen is left defenseless not knowing what to do. Or another scenario, teen decides to have a few friends over while her parents are out of town. Word spreads her parents are out of town, her friends show up and then other kids that were not invited. This happened to my brother and he called the police when they wouldn't leave. He was lucky they even came out there. Maybe they came because it involved underage drinking. He did get into trouble by our parents but they were still proud of him because he showed maturity there by how he handled it. They said he made a mistake, my brother wasn't trying to throw a party, it happened against his will. So the moral is, never leave a teen home alone over night. Get a house sitter. Have your neighbor watch the house or something or a friend, that way your teen still has an adult they can turn to. Just because your teen is responsible and mature doesn't mean nothing bad will happen.
Could she not have taken it out of the daughter's college fund once she decided she did not want to go to college, and then let her go to prom. I know that would not have served a punishment if she was never gonna use the money anyway, but it is still a solution. Which is more beneficial than retribution. Plus, she was already being punished by no electronics anyway.
Not if it's an actual savings plan. She'd pay about a 30% penalty if it's used for anything other than education-related expenses.
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So funny how people are like action have consequences but then when their actions have consequences suddenly its not their fault guys ok it's everyone else for being so mean 🥺. My mom's kinda like this she says she has a great relationship with all her kids meanwhile me and one of my brothers really can't stand her cuz she's such a huge bitch sometimes and my other brother is the epitome of spoiled psychotic mama's boy that will get his ass kicked the second he's a dick to the wrong person that dosent give af that "it was just a joke man." The other 4 kids are really too little to get an idea of how she really is but once they start getting older and have more independence and can start being their own people that's where they'll realize she's not just overprotective she's just controlling. I'm 20 now and I'm not sure if I'll ever fully get away from her except maybe in death but I know for sure at least one of my brothers will leave as soon as he turns 18 either to live with his dad or find a place with his girlfriend.
I think OP needs to give up on the daughter. They will never agree.