A Reddit user named HallNum032 took to the platform seeking advice after constantly dealing with his 16-year-old daughter’s worsening attitude.
He noticed her behaviour changed when she started hanging out with a different set of friends in school. The man was the first to admit that his daughter used to be polite.
He and his wife suspected that she began adapting her new friends’ attitudes, as they were known as the mean type, and one day they finally had enough.
Their daughter was no longer the soft-spoken, polite young girl they once knew. She started to comment on people’s looks and belongings and use negative words to describe others.
Worried about how his daughter was growing up, the concerned father sat her down several times to discuss her bad behavior. He went so far as to admit her attitude negatively affected those around her.
One person constantly affected by his daughter’s behavior was their housemaid. “My daughter has chosen her to be her target for hair, clothes, ‘etiquette’ criticism,” the man explained.
When their housemaid could no longer take it, she complained to her bosses that their daughter was calling her offensive names. She would call their helper “filthy” and “gross” for cleaning even the dirtiest areas of their home.
The father couldn’t help but feel ashamed of how his daughter was acting. He took a stand and warned her that one more misdemeanor against their housemaid would result in punishment she wouldn’t want.
Days later, she approached her father, saying she couldn’t find her phone after searching everywhere.
He thought she would finally listen to him after such a stern warning. However, his daughter continued calling their helper “filthy,” leading to the 16-year-old getting grounded. The teenager threw a fit and began accusing the housemaid of lying.
That same day, she had a party to go to but her father barred her from attending for what she did. She was livid and blamed the housemaid for being the reason she couldn’t go out.
Days later, she approached her father, saying she couldn’t find her phone after searching everywhere. The young woman asked her father to call her phone, and he did. The phone rang from the housemaid’s bag to his and his wife’s surprise.
He immediately confronted their housemaid, and she vehemently denied it, crying that she never touched the phone, nor did she know how it got to her bag. During that time, the daughter kept calling their housemaid a “thief.”
The man told his daughter to stop and go to her room. What the high school junior hadn’t anticipated was that her bad behavior would make her father distrustful toward her and that he’d take measures to try and find out the truth.
How Did the Redditor Find the Real “Thief” and What Were the Repercussions?
HallNum032 checked their surveillance camera before deciding what to do, and what he discovered stunned him. The parent saw his daughter putting the phone inside their housemaid’s bag. The man was furious at his daughter for setting up the innocent woman.
Before confronting his daughter, he apologized to their housemaid and gave her the rest of the day off. He then showed the video to his daughter, and she was speechless. The Redditor decided he would do all the talking with him recalling:
“I said what she did was immoral and straight-up offensive to tamper with that poor woman’s livelihood over a petty party she couldn’t go to.”
At this point, the man was running out of punishments to give his daughter. He decided he would make her sleep in their backyard, knowing it would teach her a lesson because she was a germaphobe.
His daughter cried and begged him not to make her sleep in the dirt but he didn’t budge and warned her that he would make it two nights if she refused. The man’s wife told him to go easy on their daughter.
He stood his ground and said their daughter needed to be taught a lesson, as calling people names and framing them for theft wasn’t right. HallNum032 took his story online to see whether or not what he did was wrong.
How Did People React to the Redditor’s Story?
People assured the parent that his daughter needed to learn a lesson, and that was one way to do it. However, others asked why he didn’t choose another punishment, like asking her to do house chores or taking away her phone.
He admitted that he already tried all of these. His daughter deliberately stopped eating for days to get out of the house chores punishment, and it ended with a trip to the emergency room for low blood pressure. Someone else thought the parent wasn’t wrong but thought he should’ve given their helper a paid week off.
Instead, the man’s daughter should’ve taken her place and get no pay for the work. Another reader thought the father should’ve made his child do the housekeeper’s work for two weeks and that he was right to give her a “hard” punishment that would knock reality into her head, while someone else said:
“Punishment doesn’t fit the crime.”
A Redditor thought a better punishment would’ve been to sell the child’s phone and the money from the sale should be given to their helper. They also felt the daughter was supposed to do chores, work around the house, or do something for their community as punishment, adding:
A person who didn’t agree with the way the parent chose to punish his daughter thought the punishment didn’t fit the crime. Instead, they believed the child’s phone was supposed to be taken away for a year and a month of grounding where she did the helper’s work.
“Buy her a Nokia brick if she needs a phone to keep in contact with her.”
The helper would be placed on paid vacation during that time. The social media user also felt the teenager deserved another month of grounding to keep her from her destructive friends and with regards to her stopping to eat to avoid housework, the reader believed the girl was “manipulative.”
They thought HallNum032 should’ve let the girl starve herself and would’ve stopped when she realized it wasn’t getting the desired effect. If the teenager insisted, the parent was supposed to threaten to get her hospitalized for anorexia.
Someone else didn’t think the father was wrong for what he did but felt the punishment wasn’t going to make his daughter’s behavior turn around miraculously. They thought the way the child lied and blamed their helper and how she treated her like a “subpar being” pointed to bigger issues.
