She Made Her 14-Year-Old Daughter Sleep Outside In A Tent To Teach Her Empathy And Is Now Asking The Internet If That Was Too Much
A 34-year-old single mom living in North East England is questioning her parenting choices after she got some backlash over a recent decision she made.
She has a 16-year-old daughter named Jasmine and a 14-year-old daughter named Jessica, and their dad passed away while she still was pregnant with Jessica.
Understandably, she has had to work very hard to support her daughters all on her own. She hit rock bottom at one point and was having a hard time making ends meet, but she was able to finish her degree and go on to be successful.
Now, she lives very well, but that wasn’t always the case, and her daughters know she struggled too.
That’s why she was livid when Jasmine showed her a video of Jessica screaming at a homeless man.
In the video, Jessica said, “Stop asking me for money, you’d earn it yourself if you weren’t so f****** lazy and spending what you earned on substances.”
The homeless man replied with something about how cold it was outside and her daughter snapped back, “Yeah people camp for fun, even in December, you can’t complain, you’re living someone’s holiday.”
This mom was furious, as she had tried to raise both of her daughters to have empathy. She made Jessica find the homeless man she had berated and apologize to him.
But that’s not all she made Jessica do.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
She found the homeless man that Jessica berated. She made her apologize to him, and then she made her pay for him to get a room at a hotel for one night with her own money.
Additionally, she had Jessica sign up to spend some free time volunteering at a local food bank. Then, she “decided to take her up on her offer of sleeping outside.”
“I locked her bedroom door so she couldn’t go in, put a sign on it saying Closed for the holidays, pitched a tent in the garden and filled it with blankets and the sleeping bag I used when I was camping in Norway on a family holiday as a teen (aka really bloody thermal),” this mom explained.
She did sleep in a room very close to their garden, so that she could be close by in case things went badly outside for Jessica.
This mom did give Jessica the choice of sleeping outside or not being able to use her phone until after the holidays, and Jessica made her choice to sleep outside.
“In the morning, she was crying about how horrible it was to wake up on a cold mat and get disrupted sleep due to birds,” this mom said.
“After comforting her, I asked her would she like to do that every day like the homeless man. It struck a chord with her and she was crying over her actions, while even after the £20 she was rolling her eyes and her apology was not sincere.”
It really did impact Jessica’s behavior because not long after she slept outside, she found her in the kitchen making food to give to homeless people living close to their home.
She felt proud that Jessica got it now, but then her sister found out about how she had punished Jessica.
Her sister told her the punishment was way too much, and she’s wondering if she didn’t make a good choice at all.
Here’s what the internet had to say.
“Not only did it teach her empathy, but you were able to teach her in a very low stakes way. She isn’t roughing it as an adult with no one to turn to. She is roughing it as a child who has a parent who would step in if it got dangerous.”
“We teach our kids things so they grow up to be good people. The point of being a parent is to get these lessons across when you’re still able to step in if it goes haywire. Hence low stakes.”
“This is the best way to teach empathy, frankly. I will be using this if our children ever do something similar.”
“I work in a homeless shelter. Many of the people there are mentally ill and neglected. They are thankful to have any shelter at all. Your daughter got off easy.”
“You did a good thing here. You weren’t being cruel or unusual in any way. You provided her blankets and a warm sleeping bag and you didn’t force her to do anything, (you gave her the option to camp or loose her phone).”
“She clearly learned the lesson and feels genuine remorse. You should be proud of how you handled the situation and proud of your daughter for changing her ways.”
You can read her original post on Reddit here.
More About:Uncategorized
Read This Next
