NEED TO KNOW
- A woman took to the internet, conflicted about how her husband wanted to punish his daughter for her actions at school
- Her husband wanted to send his daughter to school without letting her shower, brush her teeth, or change clothes after a comment she made about a girl’s ‘poor’ mom
- The woman has since moved to divorce the man
A woman was left conflicted about how her husband wanted to punish his daughter for her actions at school.
The Reddit user shares that she has a 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship and a 13-year-old step-daughter from her current marriage with her husband. The woman notes that her step-daughter has “been the near-perfect child” and has never “needed to be punished” for bad behavior, “until recently.”
“She had a problem with another girl (13f) at school. The other girl made fun of my stepdaughter’s ‘lesbian’ mom and my stepdaughter made fun of the other girl’s ‘poor’ mom,” the user explains
The poster says the other parents grounded their daughter for three weeks, and her husband has been trying to figure out how to discipline their teenager.
“My husband wanted his daughter’s punishment to match the crime. Since his daughter makes fun of the other girl’s financial situation, my husband wants his daughter to feel like how it is to be extremely poor,” the woman wrote in a post on June 2, noting that the “other family isn’t extremely poor, by the way.”
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“His plan for his daughter is to go to school with poor hygiene, for three days,” she adds. “No shower, no deodorant, no brushing of teeth, and reused clothes. I told him if he goes through with this plan, I will divorce him.”
Many people in the comments were quick to question his thought process, noting that “humiliation is not punishment, it’s cruelty.”
“Why not make her volunteer at a shelter/food bank?” another user questioned, which the poster said she would “suggest” to her husband.
“Either that and/or grounding his stepdaughter for 3 weeks,” the poster replied. “I still remember one day in high school when I forgot to wear deodorant and I had gym. I’m 41, and I still remember. I can’t imagine also having no shower, bad breath, and reusing clothes.”
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Other people shared their own experiences growing up financially unstable, and implored the poster to question her husband’s “prejudices.”
“Uhhh…your husband is way off base. Offensively so,” one user wrote. “Poor ≠ poor hygiene. He should really explore his own internal biases.”
“Being poor doesn’t automatically equal lack of hygiene, and using that as a punishment is diabolical for a myriad of reasons, instead of humiliating his kid, why not have her volunteer some of her time helping the people she’s mocked? That would be a much more useful and valuable form of ‘punishment,’” another person added.
“If I was her school nurse and she came to me with that scenario, it would’ve been my obligation to call CPS. That is child abuse, not educational. This is very disturbing….. Beware,” someone else wrote.
In an update to the post, the woman reassured commenters that both her daughter and stepdaughter were “safe.”
“I’m safe, and I will divorce my husband,” she concluded.
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