Parents often have to be inventive when encouraging good behaviour in their children. For some, this involves rewarding positive acts, but for others this involves punishing negative acts. In these latter cases, parents might ground their children or ban them from playing a favourite game, for a short time. But one parent's similar approach has proved controversial after he revealed he banned his daughter from studying as a form of punishment.
Posting to Reddit, the dad explained why he thinks his method is reasonable to employ when the teenager acts out. But several people blasted the parent, suggesting he should never get in the way of his daughter's passion for learning.
In a post shared to the website's "Am I the A*****" forum, the dad claimed: "I have a daughter(16) who is unlike any teenager I've ever seen. The problem is she is extremely rude. I've tried many things to fix this but nothing works. I never had these problems with my other kids.
"With them I could just say no electronics for a week or ground them or something like that and it would be enough but not for her.
"She doesn't care if I take away her electronics she just picks up a few novels and starts reading them. She will actually be glad if I ground her and use it as an excuse to avoid all our family gatherings like 'oh we are going to aunties home tonight? I wish I could come but I'm grounded' and then happily goes to her room
His post continued: "The only thing that she likes is studying. Like she will spend hours studying. Last night when she was talking to her mom she was being rude and very sarcastic and as my last option I told her that she is not allowed to study until I decide she has learned how to talk to her mom.
"She started to yell at us and called me an a****** and said it's not fair. Then she called my brother who called us and told us we are assholes for not allowing her to study but she gave us no other choice."
But commenters were quick to take the daughter's side, with many struggling to understand the dad's approach.
One person asked: "Are we in a different universe? Why in hell would you tell your kid she can’t study? WTF is wrong with you?" And a second agreed, suggesting: "Taking growth and information away from a developing brain isn't a good move.
"Make her mow the lawn, or do her siblings chores on top of her own, or deep clean the fridge, or whatever creative thing you can give her to do that isn't taking away from her intellectual development," they added.
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