Dad Has Liam Neeson-Inspired Threat for Messy Teens
One Reddit dad drew inspiration from Liam Neeson to get his kids to clean their dishes. He tells Yahoo Parenting why he did it. (Photo: Imgur)
Few things scare teenagers more than threats from Liam Neeson and losing access to the Internet, as one dad proves in a recent Reddit post. “My teenagers refuse to put their dishes in the dishwasher,” dad Shane Labuzan, who goes by labuzan on Reddit, wrote on July 16. “So I put this above the sink.”
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The note mimics Neeson’s famous speech from the 2008 movie Taken, of which Labuzan says he is a big fan, and includes a photo of his character, a retired CIA agent named Bryan. However, the father of two doesn’t go as far as to threaten his kids’ lives. He simply threatens to take away their Wi-Fi and data plans.
The Reddit dad mimicked this popular quote from Liam Neeson’s character Bryan in the movie Taken. (Photo: QuickMeme)
The note reads, “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for a maid to clean up after you, I can tell you I don’t do that. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skill I have acquired over a very long lifetime. Skills that make me an expert in home WiFi systems and Cellular Data plans. If you clean up your own kitchen mess, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you… AND I WILL DISCONNECT YOU.”
“I put up the note because my fiancée and I both work all day and my children are home alone a lot since it’s their summer break,” Lazuran tells Yahoo Parenting. “So I am not here to police the matter when it occurs. My children are Internet savvy so I thought this would be an effective way to get my point across. It’s worked quite well.”
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Labuzan’s post had gotten over 350 comments and 3,552 votes on the subreddit r/Funny as of Monday morning. And it has generated controversy over his method of discipline.
“Rather clever and awesome! I will have to ‘borrow’ this idea for things other than dishes… i.e. doing their laundry, cleaning up the bathroom,” wrote Reddit user SS-IT2.
Another was quick to question the dad’s parenting skills. “This is what I fear about having kids one day. … How did they get that way? Is it your fault? Who is to blame? I don’t get it. Tell me, so I know what to avoid when I have them one day,” GlenCoco511 wrote.
But the father assured his audience that his kids aren’t bad, just messy. “Actually, my kids have their s–t together,” he wrote on Reddit. “My oldest graduated high school a semester early and then got a 30 hour a week job to save money for college. My youngest has a 3.95 GPA in all IB classes and picked up a summer job for 30 hours a week. When it comes to the ‘big rocks’ of life, they are squared away. They’re just f–king slobs.”
But he also uses more traditional forms of punishment. “When I need to, I have stern discussions [with my kids],” Labuzan tells Yahoo Parenting. “But this issues seemed minor enough that a goofy internet meme would do the trick.”
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