Dad asks if he was wrong for refusing to punish son who fought bully.
Parenting is hard, especially when another parent is telling you how to raise your kid. When this father is conflicted about whether or not to ground his son, he takes to the popular Reddit forum to ask:
'AITA for not grounding my son?'
throwawayson87 writes:
There is a little boy(M6?) in our street who constantly bullies other kids. We told his parents multiple times but it seems like they don't care. Today my daughter(7) went outside to play and took her doll with her.
A few minutes later she came back inside crying saying that boy stole her doll. Before I could do or say anything my son(13) went out and a minute later came back, holding my daughters doll and gave it to her.
I was busy making lunch so I didn't ask what happened. a few minutes later I heard someone knocking and it was the boys mom. She told me my son scared her son and yelled at him.=
She demanded my son be punished for this and be grounded because she doesn't want my son around hers. I told her it seems like her problem not mine and went back inside.
I told my friend about what happened and she called me an asshole for letting my teenage son bully a little boy. AITA?
Well, let's see what Reddit had to say.
okpossibility1715 writes:
NTA. I think the only thing you should maybe have done would be to tell the boy's mum that he is a bully and he deserved that as he took your daughter's doll and her son should be the one who should be grounded.
mintsdrawthings writes:
You are absolutely NTA. Your son was protecting your daughter from a bully, that the parent refused to do anything about. If they didn't want their kid to face consequences for being a bully, they should have made him stop being a bully.
pebblesflint makes this great point:
NTA. She needs to focus on parenting her own child. Your son stood up for his little sister. Now, if he had beat the kid, then yeah there would be some concern but he told him off as the bully should have been and handled it like a big brother would