Everybody makes mistakes. Sometimes mistakes lead to consequences. Are those consequences always fair?
One father took to Reddit to explain the rationale behind forcing his daughter to go bald as a form of punishment, sending Reddit in an absolute uproar.
In the now-deleted Reddit post, the man claims that he has a 16-year-old daughter, who he has full custody of, with an ex-wife.
The daughter was in trouble “for making fun of a student that lost her hair from cancer treatment,” the father said, “Including pulling off her wig.”
“She showed no remorse,” the father writes.
“She tried to excuse her behaviour by saying the girl in question deserved it,” he said.
Thus, the father gave his daughter an ultimatum — albeit an unequal ultimatum.
The first option for punishment was that the daughter would have all of her electronics thrown away — not taken away — but thrown away. Another condition of this punishment is that he would never buy her another electronic again.
“This was just to coerce her into choosing option 2,” he wrote.
The second option requires the daughter to “go to the hairdresser and get a cue ball haircut” and “as bald as the hairdresser can do.”
The two girls were in an argument
The two girls had “some pre-existing bad blood” between them and, according to the father they “were having an argument in class about stupid teenage gossip regarding my daughter’s boyfriend.
“At some point, the other girl mentioned how my daughter’s boyfriend was just using her for sex,” he continued, “And called my daughter a slut. “
Still, the father felt that his daughter’s behaviour was unacceptable.
“Not how I’ve raised my daughter to treat people and it truly disgusted me to hear how she acted from her deputy principle,” he wrote — misspelling the word “principal.”
His daughter agreed to shave her hair
His daughter agreed to shave her hair with her dad forbidding her from wearing wigs, insisting the punishment continues until her hair grows back.
“As you can imagine, everyone thinks I went way overboard,” the father wrote. Her mother was upset about the father’s decision to force their daughter to shave her hair.
“Her mother went ballistic at me,” he said, stating that his wife was worried their daughter would become the target of bullying.
“Kind of the point,” he said, justifying his actions, “Teach her some compassion.”
Some Reddit users thought that the punishment was too harsh
“Your daughter is a bully because you are a bully,” someone commented on the father’s post.
People also felt that the punishment was a form of child abuse.
“I seriously doubt this is the first time you used abuse and humiliation to ‘teach her a lesson,” the same person said.
Another person commented, “there’s a term for what you did. It’s called child abuse.”
The same person wrote that taking away electronics or grounding the child would have been reasonable punishments.
“Disrespecting her right to bodily autonomy and humiliating her is not an appropriate punishment,” they wrote. “She’s unlikely to learn from it and if anything it risks perpetuating a cycle of bullying.”