'AITA for making my daughter throw away her rock collection as punishment?'
"AITA for making my daughter throw away her rock collection as punishment?"
I genuinely don't think I did wrong here, but my wife says I went too far, so I need an opinion.
I(43m) have 3 daughters. The oldest, "Jane", is 16, and the youngest, "Faith", is 11. They don't get along very well. I've put both of them in therapy, and they don't fight like they used to, but I doubt they'll ever be friends.
A couple of days ago, the two of them were having an argument over Jane making cookies for her friends and only giving Faith one. I told Faith that it was fine and that she could make her own cookies another day.
In retaliation, Faith stole and destroyed one of Jane's portfolios. Jane's an artist, and a very good one too. She only had three of these portfolios, and this one was her favorite. She was devastated. A few of the drawings she did took close to a month and were absolutely gorgeous. There are a couple copies of some of them, but the majority are just gone.
As punishment, I went into Faith's room and bagged up her entire rock collection. I saved a few of the more sentimental ones she got as a gift and will return those later, but most of them I threw out. I told her that how she felt is how Jane felt and that she should think of how she'd feel in the other person's shoes before doing something.
My wife thinks I should have just grounded her. But my wife rarely follows through with groundings, especially with Faith. Personally, I feel like this was a better lesson. AITAH?
The great thing about the internet, is you can give advice to parents even if you have no children of your own. Here were the top comments on the post.
Due-Science-9528
Hey OP I’m not going to comment on this mess but Im going to give your kid advice as an artist. You need to get an external hardrive and something waterproof and locking to store it in. Take high quality, high pixel images of her art and save them there for the future. Your kids need therapy though.
13Lilacs
They should read Little Women. Destroying someone's art portfolio because they only got one cookie is frightening, extreme behaviour. Faith may have something else going on.
Vashtachordata
This is a tough situation. Obviously Faith needs a consequence for her behavior. I’m not in the situation enough to know if yours was appropriate or not, but I’m not gonna call you an AH over it.
My biggest question is why is there so much animosity between siblings 5-6 years apart in age? When did that start? I doubt the cookie was the main catalyst here and was more the straw that broke the camels back.
Has your 11 year old been mistreated by the older sister her whole life? Does the older sister resent her for existing or is the youngest just a jerk who got what’s coming to her?
Only someone in your family would know the answers here, but I really doubt this is as cut and dry as it’s being presented. Typical siblings that far apart in age with a middle sibling in between wouldn’t have such a quarrelsome relationship.
mban4
Oof. This is a hard one. I am going for NTA. Faith destroyed hours and hours of her sister's work, over a trivial arguments about cookies. She needed to understand the magnitude of her cruelty towards Jane.
You should probably have confiscated her rock collection instead of throwing it away, but to me - the fact that she can't get it back is commensurable with Jane losing her portfolio. Faith certainly should ALSO be grounded.
Also, both the girls need therapy - this kind of malicious animosity between siblings needs to be resolved soon.
WavesnMountains
NTA — Faith went off the rails, both with her sense of entitlement to Jane’s cookies and thinking her destroying of Jane’s artwork as fitting the ‘crime’ of not getting more than 1 of Jane’s cookies. I would be very alarmed at Faith potentially escalating in the future
NaryaGenesis
NTA. Faith didn’t become a little monster overnight. This happened because her previous actions weren’t dealt with properly and so she faced no consequences because your wife undermines you and the punishments.
This way she know understands that her actions will have consequences. You should also get her evaluated because this level of maliciousness in a child is worrisome and isn’t your typical sibling rivalry
LunaLexy22
One time, When I was about 6, I coloured all over my brothers new dartboard that he got as a birthday gift. As punishment my dad made me do the same thing to my favourite fairy princess dress.
He said "next time you'll think twice about ruining something that's important to someone." He wanted me to feel the way my brother felt. My mom thought it was a bit much but honestly it really stuck with me. They could have sent me to my room, but it wouldn't have had the same impact. Smartened me the f up real quick.
Sea-Breaz
NTA. Your younger daughter's actions were disproportionate. She shouldn’t have destroyed the artwork for something as trivial as cookies and needs to understand that actions have consequences.
I would just say, trying to make them be friends is pointless. My sister is a malicious, nasty person. No amount of therapy would make me like her. It’s hard to accept that as parents, but it’s worse to try to force a relationship.
I’m no contact with my sister now (we’re in our forties) and also with my parents as they refused to respect my boundaries where my sister was concerned. Some people just don’t get on. Being sisters isn’t enough of a reason to stay in a toxic relationship.