One day, a dad came home from work only to catch his 12-year-old son yelling at his mom about the laundry. The boy asked his mom how hard it was to clean his clothes.
The dad was stupefied and felt terrible for his wife, knowing how hard she worked all day. She was a teacher and did all she could to ensure they lived comfortably.
The dad tried to do most of the housework often. He didn’t want to burden his wife further, especially knowing her heavy teaching workload.
Upon hearing his son yelling at his mom, he took the 12-year-old to the laundry room. He taught his son how to sort clothes and operate the machines so he could do the laundry himself.
What Did the Dad Do to His Son?
Besides making him do the laundry, the concerned dad felt he needed to teach his son an important lesson on responsibility. With spring break drawing closer, he sent his wife on holiday to Mexico with her friends while he stayed home to care for the kids.
As he worked from home, he put the 12-year-old in charge of their housework. He made the boy do laundry and prepare breakfast and lunch for him and his brother. The boy couldn’t believe it. He thought it was unfair for his dad to impose housework on him during the break.
Then his dad asked if he thought it was a full-time job to do housework. He said yes. It was then that the dad made him realize something:
“I pointed out that his mother and I both have full-time jobs and still manage to do everything that he is whining about.”
Despite the perfect avenue to teach the boy a lesson, it seems nothing went through his head. The boy called his grandmother, his dad’s mom, complaining about what he needed to do. He asked his grandmother if he could stay in her house over spring break.
The furious grandmother called her son, saying he was being cruel “to her poor baby.” So the man asked his mother a rhetorical question about what she and his dad would have done if he yelled at her for not doing the laundry. She said it was a different time, implying that kids in recent days weren’t supposed to be punished the same way.
However, the dad wouldn’t budge. He told his mom he’d agree to have his 12-year-old son live with her over the break if she told the boy all the punishment he had to endure while living with them.
Upon realizing the punishments she gave her son back in the day were worse than what her grandchild had to endure, she told the 12-year-old that he couldn’t live with her over the break.
Despite thinking he did nothing wrong, the dad couldn’t help but wonder if he was too harsh on his son for punishing him. He asked people on the internet for their opinions, and they reassured him he did nothing wrong. The troubled dad felt responsible for allowing his son to become so entitled that he thought yelling at his mom was normal behavior for a pre-teen.
“I think you have a deeper issue that you need to work on with your son. I also think if your older son has been exposed to misogynistic attitudes, you should make sure your younger son doesn’t pick up on it, too. They both need to learn that women are partners, not maids, and that they need to pull their weight,” one user commented.
“I do think that you should consider approaching this in a more educational manner than a punitive one, and to treat it as a genuine and earnest learning experience for your son, rather than simply a punishment,” another suggested.
Do you think the dad did the right thing by punishing his son? What would you have done in this situation?