In the quiet tension of this weekend, frustration and love collide. The father’s desperate attempt to motivate through humor and consequence reveals the tender struggle of parenting a teenager who is testing boundaries and seeking independence. This is a story not just about chores, but about the complex dance of growing up and holding on.
I have a 16 year old daughter, and she has 3 big chores that we pay her allowance for. She puts out the garbage, cleans up the dog poop in the backyard, and empties the dishwasher. I refill the dishwasher, so when she doesn’t do her job I can’t do mine (yes, I could just do it myself, and I have, but we pay her to do it, so why should I?)
This weekend my wife asked her to empty the dishwasher, and take the trash out. She said “Ok” then just went up to her room. I went up to her room an hour later, and found her laying in bed watching youtube on her phone (Volleyball videos, nothing important, if anything on youtube could be considered important) I took her phone away, and said “Your mom asked you to do your chores, not watch videos, please do them so i can do mine” She said “Whatever” and just continued laying there.
So I told her if she is not down in 10 minutes I was going to send a picture of myself to all of her friends on snapchat. Now we have tried plenty of different methods of punishment, but nothing really gets to her.
I know how important social media is to the kids now a days, so i figured I would try that, and see if anything happened.
I gave her 20 minutes, and still nothing. So true to my word my wife and I took a selfie on her phone and I sent it to all of her friends with the caption “Someone didn’t do her chores like we asked :'( ” I didn’t go through her messages, i didn’t even read the replies to our picture, that was it.
A few of her friends know me, and know what I’m like, but apparently the picture went to a group chat from her school, and to a few boys she liked and just stalked on social media, but didn’t message.
She says it was so embarrassing, and I’m an a-hole for doing that.
But come last night, my wife asked her to do the dishes. She first refused and went up to her room, but I reminded her what would happen if she didn’t listen. She was downstairs like a rocket and put the dishes away so fast she almost broke some of them.
So obviously the punishment seemed to have worked (for now), but she screamed at me calling me an a-hole all night. I am just a Stepdad, so I’m still fairly new at this. So I thought I would bring the vote to you guys.
AITA here?
Conclusion
The original poster (OP) is struggling to enforce household rules and allowance requirements with their 16-year-old daughter, leading to a significant escalation in disciplinary action involving public embarrassment via social media. The central conflict lies between the parents’ need for the daughter to meet her agreed-upon responsibilities and the daughter’s clear defiance and subsequent intense emotional reaction to the unusual punishment.
Was the stepdad justified in using the threat and subsequent sending of a picture to the daughter’s social contacts as a means to enforce chore compliance, or did this action cross a serious boundary regarding privacy and emotional safety? Should parents prioritize immediate obedience, even through humiliating tactics, or must they seek less damaging disciplinary routes?
Here’s how people reacted:
1) As a new stepdad, let your wife be the one to handle consequences for now. You can tell her your idea and let her be the one to deliver the message. I don’t mean forever, just until y’all gel more as a family.
2) Both of you need to make your expectations clear the *first* time you ask for something. My own dad used to drive me crazy with this. He’d ask for something non-urgent to be done, and I’d agree, knowing I’d do it in X hours or whatever. Then he’d get mad that it hadn’t been done right when he’d asked, even though it wasn’t clear that was important. He wasn’t consistent, either, so it was deeply aggravating. Giving her a reason it needs to be done within that timeframe will also help.
Tl;dr version: next time it’s time for her to do a chore, the reminder/request should be: “I’m filling the dishwasher in ten minutes, so I need you to empty it now.” Or whatever.
Edit: I forgot about the allowance part! I don’t hate the social media thing, but if her allowance is contingent on her doing the chores, you already have consequences in place and the Snapchat thing made you a little bit TA. If withholding the money isn’t enough to get her to do her chores, though, cancel the allowance and continue to embarrass her until she shapes the fuck up.
People calling this tantamount to child abuse…really? It’s not going to kill a teenager to be embarrassed, everything their parents do embarrasses them at that age. Sending the photo was ultimately harmless, nobody at school is even gonna give her any grief for it and most of them probably thought it was funny. It’s a damn Snapchat photo. People need to calm down with these accusations.
I would have been embarrassed by this too as a teenager – my parents were always embarrassing when my friends were over, because that’s the dynamic between teens and their parents, especially dads. Somehow I miraculously survived that and it didn’t leave traumatic scars on my psyche. I laugh about it myself now as an adult and roll my eyes at my dramatic 16-year-old self.
I doubt it’s something she’ll forget soon, so be prepared for blowback down the line, but it might be a better idea to let her mom take care of the punishments in the future?
Most people can agree that hitting is a bad punishment. Unfortunatly its effective.
Embarrassment is also a bad punishment. Its consider child abuse and is ratified in the UN convention of the rights of a child. But the US is one of two countries who hasn’t signed the convention. Therefore it’s not illigal there but it’s not right.
It’s a slippery slope I get it you’re at your wits end but it’s still an invasion of her privacy, and a sure fire way to break trust.
you have punished a person when punishment wasn’t warranted, this wasn’t a crime she simply didn’t fulfill her part of the transaction.
This is the type of stuff that makes your child resent you.
“Put away the dishes now, or put away the dishes later AND load it”
“Take out the trash now, or I can set an alarm to get you up in the morning to do it”
The embarrassment angle is unhealthy and unsustainable.
Make a scoreboard for every day and every chore, mark off which chores were done and which were not. Pay allowance only for completed chores.
No work, no money. That’s a better lesson than an immature social power game that degrades trust on both sides.
She’s a teenager, she’ll say anything you do is humiliating. She’ll also have forgotten this in no time. No harm done here, lesson (maybe) learned. Maybe her mom should have been the one to suggest this “punishment”, thereby avoiding the step-parent boundaries issue, but if mom backs you up, I see no problem.
It works but punishments should stay within the family.
Airing dirty laundry on Facebook is trashy. This as less trashy but I definitely would look for a different punishment. The internet is forever and I would count this as oversharing.
As a stepdad she probably has little respect for you. Let her actual parents discipline her and stay out of the way.