Tough love can be awful tough. Tough on the parent as well as the child. But there are times when it just has to be done.
Haley Hassell posted about a situation she had with her 6-year-old daughter’s “brattyness” and how she dealt with it. Some agreed with her tactic and others did not, but her post about it went viral.
It started when Haley’s little girl, Presleigh, wanted a specific pencil box when her mom went out gathering up back-to-school items. Haley searched for that particular pencil box at 3 stores before finally finding it. But when she got back home with it, her daughter had changed her mind.
Says Haley: “When I surprised her with it this afternoon (just knowing she would be ecstatic) she stared at it and threw it in the trash and slammed the bedroom door. She yelled “that’s stupid, everyone in my class has that…I don’t want it anymore!”
Well, that didn’t go over well with Haley at all. She had spent so much time trying to find that special pencil box for Presleigh, and her fickle daughter was now throwing a tantrum about it. Haley could feel the smoke coming out of her ears and she had to restrain herself from going overboard in dealing with her bratty daughter.
She had always taken care of her; always given in to her needs. But this? This was not good. So after a little thought on it, Haley decided to give her daughter a different container for her pencils as a wake-up call for her. That container was a plastic ziploc bag.
Presleigh was absolutely horrified with the idea of using THAT to carry her pencils in, so she said the one her mom bought her… the one she had just tossed in the trash in disgust… would be fine now. But young Presleigh was in for a crushing surprise. Haley told her it was too late for that and wrote her name on the ziploc bag: it said Presleigh’s Pencil Bag. It was definitely a bottom-of-the-barrel downgrade to what the young girl was holding in her hands a short time earlier, but Haley was bound and determined to teach her a good lesson.
After posting about it, many criticized Haley for not allowing her daughter to earn back the pencil box she had bought her. But Haley was just fine with how she did things, wanting to leave her daughter with a lasting memory of how to be thankful for any good thing that comes your way in life.
So aside from giving her only the bag for her pencils, she told Presleigh to retrieve the box she had bought from the trash, to clean it off and that she – Presleigh herself – would be giving it to a youngster whose parents don’t have the money to buy nice school supplies for their children.
Says Haley: “I explained to her she’s not entitled to anything special and she is taking for granted how lucky she is… So for now she will be using a ziploc bag & will personally be delivering the nice box to a child that could benefit from it.”
This drastic measure is something Presleigh will no doubt never forget. And one day, because of it, she will realize just how much her mom truly does love her.
