A dad was tired of his nine-year-old son leaving his bicycle outside at night, so he decided to teach him a lesson. But his wife is upset with him about it, so he turned to Reddit for advice. In a post to the “Am I the A-hole” section, the father explains that he and his wife are “constantly telling” their son to put his bike in the garage at night so it doesn’ get stolen, but their warning falls on deaf ears.
So one morning before work, the dad finds it outside and decides to show him what could actually happen. He put the bike in his car and left, then got a call from his distraught kid, asking if he’d seen the bike. He calmed the boy down, telling him they’d make a plan for him to earn a new bike and when he got home from work, he pretended he’d found the bike abandoned in a nearby park. The dad told his son he “wouldn’t always be this lucky.” But when he revealed his secret to his wife, she didn’t take it well.
“She looked at me as if I was some kind of horrible monster,” the father writes, adding that she questioned why he would put their son through that and not tell her what he was up to. The dad pointed out it was only for one day, but after his wife’s reaction, he turned to Reddit to ask if he’d taken things too far and users are really divided on this one.
● Some are on his side, saying “You didn’t trash the bike… you just let your son see the consequences of his actions.”
● Others point out it seems like the kid “learned his lesson” and that it was “a gentle way of teaching him.”
● But some were outraged that he was dishonest, like one Redditor who writes that the lesson the boy will remember “will be about lying and not to trust his own father.”
HT: Reddit