Dad gets blasted for lenient punishment of bully daughter; mom thinks he's too harsh.

Here's his question, 'AITA for not letting my daughter buy clothes?' And here's the story in his words.

My wife (37f) and I (37m) have 4 kids (14f and 14m, 12m, and 11f), we generally agree on parenting them, but a recent incident had me and my wife disagreeing and I want to see if I was in the wrong.

A few weeks ago, I was at home with our 12 y/o because he was sick with a stomach bug. While I was making him soup, I got a call from my twin’s high school, telling me that they wanted to speak with me, and that my daughter had received 3 days of ISS for a bullying incident.

Because of my son’s sickness, I spoke through them via phone and they told me everything that had happened, my daughter and a group of her friends was picking on a boy for wearing a crop top, the boy told the teacher, she asked them to stop, when they didn’t stop, she sent them to the office.

After talking to the boy, he admitted the bullying was going on for a few days, and that they kept bothering him when he asked them to stop.

My daughter and son came home and my son’s face was bright red. I told my daughter to go to her room and then sat down with my son to see if he was okay. Apparently the boy she bullied was a close friend of his, one of his football teammates.

The boy was talking to my son and their other friends and said something about how he thought it was cool that some men used to wear sports crop tops. The boys told him if he thought it was cool, he should try it. The boys went out and bought some jerseys from the thrift store and made them into crop tops.

I then spoke to my daughter, she didn’t show much remorse and was dismissive of me, last year she also got in trouble for bullying someone bc of clothing, she’s also gotten in trouble for racism at school (very white area, we are white, her and her friends were saying racist stuff in class).

When my wife got home, we discussed a punishment and agreed on not buying her new clothes for a while, she has plenty of good clothes already.

This weekend, we went to visit my brother. My brother lives around 3 hours away in a small town and we don’t see him often. This week was the town’s annual fair. At the fair, they had booths from local businesses.

Our oldest son went to the booth with antique sports stuff and then the book booth to get books on sports history (son loves reading those), our 12 y/o got some plushies and toys and our youngest was looking at video games.

Our oldest daughter went to the clothes, I stopped her and told her the rule was still in place. I said she could buy books, a video game, candy, ect, but clothes were the one thing she could not get.

She was bugging my wife and my wife eventually told her she would reconsider it, she then talked to me and I told her that I wasn’t changing my stance because I am letting her buy other stuff and I thought she was being entitled.

My daughter didn’t buy anything and my wife thinks I was too tough on her. When I called my mom for advice, she also agreed with my wife, AITA?

Here's the blasting:

Mrs239 says:

Right! How is she racist and a bully and the only punishment is no new clothes. AND...IS BEING FOUGHT ON THAT!! All of this is ridiculous.

I would take everything except 5 outfits. No phone or just a basic flip phone with no camera or social media, no TV, nothing. No kid of mine will behave like this and get a small punishment like the one you gave.

Beckella says:

And put her in therapy multiple times a week. She needs serious intervention. She’s turning into if not already a total shit person. (My vote is she’s already a shit person but has time to turn it around).

Tiredllama2486 says:

ESH except the OPs son, who seems to have developed empathy completely on his own.

Yochanan5781 says:

Wouldn't be surprised if the mother is racist, tbh. Kid had to learn it somewhere.

Chuchi25 says:

She's a repeat offender too. I wonder what punishment looked like for her first bullying incident? There's obviously zero real consequences in that household. Mom folds under a little pressure and OPs punishment is weak.