Most parents of teenage boys will tell you that their son will do almost anything to avoid cleaning up or helping with the housework.
Whether it’s hiding dirty dishes and clothes or lying about doing their chores, it’s enough to drive some moms crazy. Then we’ll do crazy things for which the world judges us.
A mom has asked on the internet if she went too far with punishment when she let her son eat dirty dishes to teach him a lesson.
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A mother devised an unusual punishment for her teenage son. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
The woman, who called herself aitadirtydishes, took to Reddit’s popular “Am I the A — hole” advice column overnight to explain that her son was still furious about the incident two months ago.
The woman said she loves her oldest son, who is 17, but they have a “constant battle” over chores.
“The dishes are the worst. He doesn’t rinse the terms, so they are dirty and caked. He overloads the dishwasher, so the detergent can’t get on the words.
“If we want to eat the day after he does the dishes, we must wash them by hand. He doesn’t care. Any attempt to talk to him is greeted with a small grin, and he would say, ‘But the dishwasher has cleaned it’,” adding, “he knows exactly what he’s doing.”
The woman said something recently got out of hand when she went to cook dinner after his evening to wash the dishes and found her still filthy in the dishwasher.
“I’d been working all day. I was exhausted. I cried when I saw these bulls—. I didn’t have the energy to prepare dinner, let alone wash a whole load of dishes first.” she wrote.
“I quietly called hubby in, and he offered to hand wash the dishes I needed,” adding that she was having a “light bulb moment” at the time.
“I said to him, yes, please, but only enough dishes to prepare the food and serve everyone except… [her son]â€
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The son wanted to do his dishes, but the mother refused. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
“I prepared dinner and called the children to eat. Seventeen years old sat down and saw that his area was empty. He asked where his plate and cutlery, and water cup were. I pointed to the dishwasher and said, ‘Tonight, you eat from the dishes you’ve done; go and sort them out’.
“He turned pale and started protesting that it was dirty. I quickly interrupted him and reminded him that the dishwasher had cleaned them.”
She said her husband supported her and told their son that it would be from his dirty dishes if he wanted to eat. They also refused his request to wash his words or make his food first.
“In the end, he gave in and found the least disgusting dishes and ate his dinner quietly,” she wrote. “I felt bad – he looked so sick and disgusted. But I was tired of him wasting time, water, and detergent.”
The woman added: “It worked! His dishes came out immaculate after that. No blemish. But, as I said, he’s still furious, and I feel bad now that it’s over and done.
“I’m just tired of incompetence with guns. He doesn’t realize his laziness is worse than everyone else in the house.’
The post has already received thousands of votes and hundreds of comments. Most commentators praised the mother for her “class A parenting”.
“The fact that [she] and her husband got into the habit of washing the dishes after their son didn’t clean them properly means he never learned his lesson,” one wrote.
“Natural consequences are an important tool in raising children who are not assholes. Eating dirty dishes is a natural consequence of poor cleaning work. Raise him now. He will be grateful later.” wrote another.
But at least one person said something deeper might be happening with their son.
“As a child with ADHD, that mindset was very hurtful growing up and caused me to have serious problems with perfectionism, which when combined with ADHD and anxiety is a very, very terrible thing,” they wrote, adding that while parents “should be strict’, they also have to make sure ‘that it does not negatively affect your children’.
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