Mom 'sentences' 9 year old daughter to community service as punishment. AITA?
When this mom decides to take disciplining her daughter into her own hands, she asks Reddit:
"AITA for sentencing my daughter to community service as punishment?"
My daughter's 9. During dinner once last week, she was getting upset we served her mashed potatoes. She's eaten them before, even recently. Just decided now she doesn't like them.
Instead of communicating to us that she doesn't like it, or leaving it on her plate, or, hell, even secretly giving it to the dog during dinner, she decided to take her entire plate, bring it to the garbage, and dump it all out.
I decided to punish her by having her volunteer at the local food bank. My work schedule is flexible so I can take tomorrow off, pull her out of school, and both of us will volunteer for a few hours.
Husband says I'm being too harsh, but I will rain down fury for needlessly wasting food like that. At least the punishment is related to the crime, and she (and I) can help our community while doing it. AITA?
Let's see what readers thought.
noamount1576 writes:
YTA. I'm a mom to two... I'm familiar with the frustration of food waste by kids.... especially when you live on a pretty tight budget. Unless this is a common occurrence with her then yes, I'd say you overreacted.
Even at 9 years old kids still need us to teach them how to people. At school kids are expected to dump their unwanted/uneaten food. She just did what she either does at school or sees done at school. It's your job to talk to her about why home and school is different and what the more appropriate way to go about it would have been.
amethystdanger writes:
She’s 9. Sentencing?? What are you, a judge? Get off your high horse. There are clearly better ways to parent a child. So she wasted food. Did you even explain to her why that is a bad thing or did you just blow your top over it? YTA
thickjournalist0 writes:
YTA better ways to deal with this. The punishment doesn't fit the crime. Like this is a one time incident. Shouldn't be pulling her out of school. She threw out some potatoes big deal. Just talk to her about not wasting that if she doesn't want something to eat just put it in a container and put it in the fridge for someone else to eat.