In the aftermath, two parents united despite their separation, determined to protect their family’s integrity and teach hard lessons about responsibility and respect. They drew firm boundaries, cutting off allowances and imposing strict controls, hoping to guide their daughter back from a path of entitlement and reckless disregard. This is a story of love tested by betrayal, and the painful steps toward accountability and growth.
A few months ago, my daughter smashed her iPhone for a social media post. In the post, she said “it’s okay, my parents will buy me a new one.” The thing is, I definitely would have bought her a new one that same day and would have never known if it wasn’t for the fact her brother tipped me off and showed me the post.
Her father and I were obviously extremely angry. We both came from rough childhoods and worked hard to build a good life for our kids, so to see her take advantage of that was extremely upsetting in a way I can’t even describe.
Her father and I are divorced, but we sat down and agreed that 1) we are cutting off her allowance, and her purchases now have to come through us, 2) we will never buy her a new phone but we might consider a flip phone when she goes to college, 3) we will monitor her social media to make sure she’s not participating in damaging content, 4) if she gets a job and wants a new phone, she first has to pay us back for the phone she destroyed, 5) we won’t buy her a car when she turns 16.
As I said, a few months have passed and I still feel the same way, but her dad has softened and he thinks her “attitude’s changed”. He says that we might be “too harsh” over a “teenager’s mistake” and we should at least give her an allowance for chores and change “we’re never buying you a phone ever” to “going a year without a phone.”
Personally, I don’t care if all kids have one. She has an iPad with social media and a Macbook. She can still message her friends. But I refuse to get her another phone. If she wants one, she can get a part time job and work for it so she can see how much work goes into getting a phone.
But I don’t see value in giving more money to a kid who doesn’t know the value of money. I rather my daughter be unhappy for a few years over a phone than raise another spoiled and out of touch asshole for the world.
Her dad respects my opinion and agreed he won’t give her a phone or allowance, but now my daughter is pissed at me and calling me “a narcissist” and “controlling”. However, my actions are a direct result of her misbehavior and I am not preventing her from getting a phone; she is free to work and buy one at any point.
However, I think I might be the asshole because my daughter will be punished for years over one mistake. AITA here?
Conclusion
The original poster (OP) feels deeply betrayed and angry because their daughter publicly boasted about deliberately destroying an expensive phone, expecting parental replacement due to their hard work. The central conflict lies between the parents’ desire to teach a harsh lesson about entitlement and the daughter’s reaction, which labels the resulting consequences as controlling and narcissistic punishment.
Given the daughter has other devices for communication, is the parents’ collective decision to withhold a smartphone and deny allowance for several years a necessary, justified consequence for demonstrating a lack of gratitude and respect, or does this severe, long-term penalty unfairly label a teenage mistake as a permanent character flaw?
Here’s how people reacted:
\-don’t make her pay back the phone you bought, that was a gift and its controlling to change a gift into a debt even if she misused it. Gifts are given without strings attached, and the way she used it was stupid and spoiled but it was still hers to do.
\-dont buy her a new phone immediately – that will teach her to view money as a thing that you hand out whenever regardless of her behavior, but when she returns to school recognize that a phone (with texting and location capabilities is nearly essential for a social life at all, her safety, and depending on new covid restrictions potentially for attending school at all. )
\-consider offering her a deal, you’ll pay for an x model phone (something very cheap with the bare minimum of features – but has texting, locations, apps etc) and she can choose to upgrade it and pay the difference between the cheap phone and the model she wants. If she has the money right now, great otherwise come up with some form of a payment plan.
\-be understanding that the job scene is a disaster right now, she might not be able to get a job at all no matter how qualified and hard-working she is. Perhaps consider saying that if she volunteers at an organization you all support, you will count that work towards paying off the new phone. (that way she still must work for something she wants to earn, but you can be understanding of the current situation)
\-if you’re worried about her valuing money, consider keeping the allowance but changing the terms of it so that if she works you pay her. ie. my parents don’t pay an allowance for my little brother, but he gets paid 15 an hour for yard work – and it’s very difficult work in 90+ degree heat. Or pay her something small for volunteering (yes, it takes away from the volunteer nature of it but its something) so that she is doing work for her community and you’re teaching her more about money.
\-also, you clearly have the money so it isn’t necessarily a terrible thing to get her a car and split car payments with her or work out some alternative payment plan. the car is unrelated to the phone issue, so don’t make her suffer for it. (most kids don’t get a car handed to them, so there’s a big issue that your children have grown up knowing that will happen to them, i suspect behaviors like this are why your kids don’t see money has having value)
it should be shocking to you that your kids see you hand out money so carelessly that they would smash a phone for the laugh. sometimes kids just feel entitled, but generally this comes from a pattern of parents behaving like money is something to not care about. You can’t blow up at your child for learning lessons you taught her and emulating you, however, you can learn from this and change how you act so you raise responsible children.
It’s a phone. An object. And she screwed up, yes. I’m fully on board with some of your punishments and I’m also okay with letting them last for a while.
But why should she try to improve her character if you insist on punishing her for the next five or more years? What’s the point for her in trying if you stomp your foot and say, “Not now, not ever!”?
Teaching the value of money and being grateful for good gifts is one thing but you are about to turn it into a shitty lesson. So, her brother will be treated normally. She, however, is supposed to never get an allowance again, is not allowed to buy a phone for years, she can’t save any allowance, and even if she manages to save she is forbidden to buy a phone.
You’ve cultivated the perfect breeding ground for resentment. Consequences are important but you have to think longterm! What do you want her to do? Do you want to punish her so she learns a lesson and does better in the future or do you punish her for the sake of punishment? All this over an object?
Yes, respecting property is important, playing rich brat is dumb and is bound to backfire, and her behaviour was ungrateful and disrespectful, those are all important lessons that need to sink in. But allowing no room for forgiveness and giving no chance to earn your trust (and your love, the way it sounds) back over an object is a horrible lesson. It teaches her that one misstep is not deserving of your forgiveness and that destroyed property means she is not deserving of a second chance no matter how hard she tries.
Cut the allowance for half a year, give her a cheap phone to cover the basics and tell her if she wants a better phone, she has to earn and buy it herself with no help from you. There. That hurts and that fits the crime and teaches the lesson you want her to learn.
What you are doing isn’t about teaching and learning and her realizing what she did wrong and growing from it. It’s about your anger and hurt feelings that, while justified to a degree, should not be the focus. You aren’t teaching her that actions have consequences, you are teaching her that you’re vindictive. If you keep this up, it’ll sour your relationship with her, not because of “my spoilt daughter is mean to me because I still punish her over a phone she broke years ago!” but because you have no trust or love in her character and are convinced she’ll never be someone who deserves to be forgiven.
YTA
The punishments you’ve laid out here go far beyond teaching the consequences of carelessness or attention seeking, and don’t actually teach the value of money.
The message here is that if she does something that triggers you because of your rough upbringing, she gets completely restricted for essentially the rest of her teenage life.
That’s a huge loss and I don’t think it fits the crime, nor does it teach the lesson you hope it will.
It seems like you want to punish your child for being a spoiled brat, which is your fault as her parent. You said you would have bought her another phone without a thought…
You are responsible for allowing and fostering her materialistic outlook, and now you’re punishing her for your parental failings, without actually teaching her anything.
You should indeed get her another phone… one she works for at minimum wage. It should not be an option for her not to replace it, she should have to work for it to learn the value of money, and that broken things should be replaced.
But if you take away her money options and don’t allow her to replace things, she’s going to still have no idea about money value, and she’s going to be rebellious because you took away her lifestyle that YOU taught her to expect.
You need to really engage here and TEACH her the things you learned through your rough upbringing. She doesn’t have the innate knowledge of survival you do – and you’re punishing her for it, when you’re the one who gave her the good life and failed to teach her to appreciate it.
This is your fault, and you are a narcissist if you expect your teenage daughter to understand life and money the way you do, after having a vastly different set of life experiences.
Grow up and parent your kid instead of being lazy and taking away every possible freedom or responsibility building milestone for the rest of her formative years.
1) I wouldn’t cut off her allowance indefinitely. Depending on her age, she might not have a lot of other ways to make a few bucks. BUT if it wasn’t directly tied to chores before, make it that way now. Her allowance in contingent on chores x,y and z and additional help when parents ask. With this, I would offer her additional, larger chores to help with for extra money. Might be worth revisiting how much her allowance is too to make sure you’re not contributing to the spoiled behavior there.
2) as others have said, for safety reasons I would buy her an older, basic model phone just in case. But I am 100% on board that if she has an iPad and Mac, there’s nothing she needs a iPhone for.
3) no arguments here
4) I think its a bit much to have her pay for a replacement *and* to pay you back for the broken phone. The phone was a gift. Maybe make her pay a portion of the WiFi bill? In lieu of paying her own phone plan right now. At most, have her pay for the basic flip phone now while she saves up for an iPhone.
5) I’m not gonna say you’re an AH for not buying a 16 year old a car because that’s very generous. But if you were outspoken about this plan I’m not sure if the fair thing to do is go completely back on your word. Look into older, cheaper models or require her to get a job and pay for the car 50/50 with you.
That said…
I agree with your daughter’s father. You went overboard. I 100% agree you shouldn’t buy her a new phone. You and her father are responsible for teaching her the value of money/time, that’s partly your fault too. Having to buy her own phone is an awesome way to teach her the concept.
Her comment about you being a narcissist isn’t far off. You said if it had broken from carelessness she would have gotten a new one immediately. That’s another scenario she could be learning about value. (This doesn’t apply to freak of nature breakage, like the phone falling out of a back pocket while she was using the toilet and shattering from the two inch fall.) Once you knew the phone broke on purpose, the phone you bought with your money you decided you weren’t going to give her anything else for a few years. And she has to pay you for a gift you gave her, because how dare she damage something you gave her.
By making this a multi year punishment, you show her that you don’t think she deserves a chance to change. She can’t have a car in a couple of years because she doesn’t value money/time in 2020.
Edit to address a common complaint: the punishment doesn’t have to be open ended, and shouldn’t be. But the point of this is to teach the child to value money. You can’t just look at her and tell, yep, she gets it. There needs to be a discernable change in behavior, and once you start seeing that you can slowly back off the punishment. Say she upgrades her phone on her own money, doesn’t destroy it, and makes major headway into saving for a car. At that point, it would be a perfect time to sit her down and explain how proud OP is, and that they feel like she has earned the parents paying for the remainder of the car.
This is called corporal punishment and it’s a disgusting use of a parents power. You’re so mad at her you’re going to punish her for YEARS for a silly teenage mistake that her friends and social media probably convinced her was cool. She’s a teenager for goodness sake. Take away some privileges, not the rest of her existence.
You seem to take personal pleasure in seeing her punished to the extreme. So much so that you’re mad her father is now seeing it as it is…way overboard of a punishment.
So what is the rest of the story? Because your level of anger is to such an extent, something else has to be wrong in this dynamic.
But she’s not even 16, expecting her to go all the way through to college without even a flip phone is excessive
What if she’s in a situation where she gets lost or is stuck somewhere and needs a ride and can’t contact you to let you know what’s going on. I know most parents would want to be able to contact their kids to avoid having to worry about their whereabouts. Wouldn’t it make sense to at least give her a flip phone without internet access so she can call you?
I think a flip phone or slider keyboard phone would be fair now with a payment plan for the phone she ruined.
Punishment for punishments sake doesn’t teach anything. If you want her to learn how much a phone costs you need to teach her. With numbers, plans, lists, etc.
Source: high school teacher
Also, the sheer no time limit on punishment won’t help her in the end. She did a dumb thing. She deserves to be punished, but not indefinitely. She needs a realistic timeline and steps to take in order to earn some privileges back. Otherwise she will resent you and learn nothing.
I do think you should remove the “pay you back first” clause from the punishment. The original phone she destroyed was a gift, it’s unreasonable to demand restitution for a gift. Just my opinion