Sometimes parents do not discipline their children and later flip out when people refuse to put up with their kids misbehaving. Even when presented with the outcomes of allowing everything or justifying any behavior with “he’s just a kid”, permissive parents often refuse to face it, blaming anything but their lack of attention, guidance, or parenting skills.

At least this seems to have been the case when this mom focused on getting an apology from this Redditor’s wife for defending herself from the aggressive behavior of a 12-year-old, rather than dealing with her child’s troubling behavior during the family picnic.

More info: Reddit

A man asked if he was right to take his wife’s side after she dumped her coffee on a 12-year-old and did not apologize

Image credits: Maël BALLAND (not the actual photo)

It all happened when a man and his wife hosted a family weekend stay at their camp on the lake

Image credits: Perfect_Ear2994

Image credits: Rachel Claire (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Perfect_Ear2994

Image credits:  KoolShooters (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Perfect_Ear2994

The daughter of the man’s brother’s girlfriend was picking fights and throwing tantrums all weekend

Image credits: Caleb Oquendo (not the actual photo)

The girl’s mother told her to “go play” after she kept smacking the OP’s wife and spilled her iced coffee twice

A man shared his story on Reddit, asking if he was a jerk to defend his wife who refused to apologize after dumping her coffee on a 12-year-old kid who slapped her on the forehead.

The man explained that he and his wife own a camp on the lake and once a year they host a large barbeque and weekend stay for the entire family. This time his brother came with his girlfriend he has been in a relationship with for around a year and her three kids.

The two younger boys were great, but their 12-year-old sister was picking fights with people, throwing tantrums, and hitting people all weekend, while her mother just stood back saying “I don’t know why she acts like that”.

Eventually, everyone was sitting out on the deck talking and enjoying their coffee when the girl kept picking up a fly swatter, swatting at flies, and knocking over people’s coffees several times, in addition to smacking the man’s wife repeatedly saying there were flies on her when there weren’t.

The girl dumped the man’s wife’s iced coffee twice and was only told by her mother to “go play”, which she did only to come back promptly and slap the man’s wife on the forehead with the fly swatter, saying “bug, missed it”.

The girl left but soon came back and slapped the woman on the forehead with the fly swatter

Image credits: solod_sha (not the actual photo)

The woman took her coffee and flung it at the girl, who immediately started crying, while her mother flipped out

The woman took the third cup of coffee that she made and flung its contents all over the girl, who immediately started crying, while her mother, as well as the man’s brother, flipped out, calling the woman immature and asking for an apology, while the woman asked them to leave instead.

While some of the guests were suggesting the apology was warranted in the situation, the man was with his wife here. He responded to some of the comments online about it not being his wife’s job to set an example for the kid, nor did she have to remove herself from her own property.

The Redditor u/Perfect_Ear2994’s post gathered 27.2K points in just four days and sparked a discussion about parenting online, putting the mom’s response to her 12-year-old daughter misbehaving as well as her excuse “she’s just a kid” under scrutiny.

User nilmot81 made their point that “the tricky part about being a parent is figuring out when being a kid stops being an excuse”, as at some point parents have to teach their kids “to be functioning human beings who understand boundaries and consequences.”

Similarly, CatmoCatmo added to this point, clarifying that “it’s not just figuring out when ‘she’s just a kid’ – but what situations warrant that. A kid not sitting still is “just a kid” territory but some behaviors aren’t warranted regardless of age and can’t just be explained away.”

As a parent, one needs to know when it’s time to step in “and sometimes that means removing yourself along with your child.” Because “parents aren’t entitled to continue having the day they want if their kids aren’t behaving.”

It might be argued that the woman could have just asked the mother to leave along with her daughter without splashing her with iced coffee, but that wasn’t the course of action that she took.

On the other hand, after failing to discipline her child before or during the family gathering and the girl going as far as to get splashed with iced coffee, the mother concentrated on making the woman who did it apologize and in such a way tried to minimize the confrontation and make a point that despite the girl’s aggressive behavior and many warnings to the girl and her mother, the woman’s response wasn’t warranted, which might be interpreted as not allowing the girl to experience consequences of her actions coming from anyone other than her own parents.

Verywell Family discussed natural consequences, explaining that as a parent, it is tempting to just fix things for one’s children, for example, put away your child’s chalk that they left outside, or rush in with a sweater when your child is reminded to bring one but doesn’t; however, this might prevent a child from learning the powerful lessons that natural consequences can teach.

They explained that natural consequences are what happens as a result of a person’s actions, without any intervention by an outside party. Verywell Family quoted Dr. Aliza Pressman on this one, who said that the key to using natural consequences with kids is for the parent to step aside and allow their child to experience the effect of what they’ve done or not done.

Even though truly experiencing the fruits of their labor can lead to any number of unpleasant things like failing a test or losing an item they forgot at school, making a kid feel disappointed or frustrated, the aim here is for them to learn from these experiences.

And while it is important to know when to use it, taking into consideration various factors, like a child’s age and possible risks of particular circumstances, when appropriately applied, experiencing natural consequences might have tremendous benefits for children, teaching a child responsibility, independence, and motivation.

Verywell Family emphasized that when parents routinely rush in to do things for their kids and “rescue” them from their actions and inaction, they rob them of developing motivation to take care of their own needs and developing intrinsic motivation for behaving in adaptive ways. 

They explained that when a child finishes their book report because their parent hounded them to do it, that is external motivation as opposed to the one the child develops if they do so in order to get a good grade or for the satisfaction of getting their work done.

Redditors shared their takes on the situation

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