Dad sparks outcry with 'harsh' punishment for 8-year-old: 'As a parent, you failed'

Katie Mather
Updated ·4 min read

The Am I the A**hole subreddit is a place for people to freely share situations to be willingly judged by fellow strangers to see if they truly were in the wrong.

Some side with the poster, some can't decide what's right or what's wrong and some, like in this case, absolutely obliterate the person for being awful.

A father recently posted on the forum, not necessarily because he was worried he had overreacted, but because his wife was disagreeing with him. His father-in-law had passed away and had had a close bond with the couple's 8-year-old son.

"In the days leading up to the funeral, my son was obviously upset about his grandfather's passing, but nonetheless we asked him if he wanted to go to the funeral and he said yes," the post said.

"On the day of the funeral, as I was driving us there, one of us mentioned it being open casket," the dad continued. "My son freaked out and suddenly went into hysterics about not wanting to go as he didn't want to see the body."

This is not an unusual reaction, considering the son is only in second or third grade and he had a close relationship with his grandfather. Commenters on the post empathized with the young boy's reaction, some saying that they were much older when they went to their first open casket funeral and were not emotionally prepared at all.

"I'm 22 and was not emotionally prepared to see my grampa in an open casket when he passed last September," one Redditer commented. "Logically I knew exactly what to expect. An 8-year-old doesn't truly have the capacity to emotionally or logically understand what's happening, especially if it's their first funeral."

While the mom tried to calm him down, the dad went in an entirely different direction.

"After his constant wailing, I got pissed off and slammed on my breaks and turned the car around to drop him off. I was yelling at him for changing his mind the whole way back while he sat there doing his crying act," he continued.

This meant that the couple missed most of the speeches for the funeral, and the poster's wife was understandably upset. When the couple returned to the house after the funeral, the dad said he punished his son for three weeks — no TV or video games, just schoolwork.

The poster's wife disagreed with the punishment, but the dad insisted that his son should have known better than to change his decision about attending the funeral while they were on the way.

"Normally I wouldn't be as harsh but since my wife is in a vulnerable state and she missed most of the funeral, I essentially blame my son 100% for all of this," the post concluded.

Reddit was wildly unimpressed.

"As a parent, you failed to prepare him by telling him what to expect until you were in the car on the way to the service," one person wrote.

"You’re taking away everything he enjoys when he needs it most," another commenter replied. "All as punishment for him not being ready to see his grandfather’s dead body (a detail you had failed to mention to him until you were literally on the way there)."

"You're mad at a child for not controlling his emotions in a situation you did not equip him to deal with when you're still not even controlling your own emotions here," someone else explained.

Hopefully the discussion talked some sense into the father and he was convinced to have a proper, empathetic talk with his young son and lift the punishment.

Check out this other story on Reddit's "creepiest" unexplained encounters.

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