Teenagers are horrible monsters we let survive out of sheer fear and a tiny slice of empathy. They are as big as human adults but don’t yet have fully-developed brains and all too often are fueled by horniness and a desire to ruin literally every public place they wander into. Considering the obvious bias I harbor towards teenagers, it brought great joy to my dark little heart when I read about the parents who made their son sleep in a tent as punishment for being an unbearable teenage sack of hell.
The exhausted Albuquerque parents said their 16-year-old son had been relentlessly stealing from them, and they’re just trying to teach him a lesson. The tent is stocked with bedding and books, and he is fed. He’s actually allowed to use the bathroom inside, and they let him sleep in the house after 9 p.m. (honestly, it sounds like ideal accommodations for a teenager). Despite the civil conditions, neighbors have called the cops on the family with claims that it’s neglect — the cops, however, have found nothing abusive or illegal about the situation.
“We are not doing anything wrong, we’re just trying to teach our son a lesson,” the mom, Angela Boggus, told KRQE/CNN. “If we don’t deal with him now, he’s gonna be the whole world’s problem in a couple of years.”
Honestly, THANK YOU GUYS! If a teenager is actively stealing and invading people’s privacy it IS the parent’s responsibility to take action before their kid is a full-blown shitty adult. He’s still given food and survival amenities — and really, as we can see out there in the world, coddling shitty behavior is not the way to raise a good human being.
Unsurprisingly, the New Mexico parents aren’t alone in their creative form of punishment. Just a couple weeks ago, a 7-year-old Japanese boy was discovered in the forest after his parents left him there. Apparently, the kid, Yamato Tanooka, had been throwing rocks and misbehaving when his parents made him get out of the car and have a “time-out” in the forest (which is ridden with BEARS).
When the parents went back to the forest to find him, Yamato had reportedly left the specified “time-out” zone and wandered into a military hut kilometers away. The parents were unable to find him for a week (which is fucking terrifying), but he was luckily discovered by a soldier before he got into any real danger. As you can imagine, the parents regretted their decision to let their child loose in the forest.
Obviously, these stories aren’t truly comparable considering the fact that a shitty 16-year-old who steals and is forced to hang out in a fully-stocked tent is a very different scenario than losing your 7-year-old in the forest when trying to teach him a lesson. But nonetheless, these serve as two examples of parents getting creative with their punishments. Really, if the 7-year-old had stayed in his time-out spot, maybe that punishment would have seemed less insane.
Hopefully, the 16-year-old in New Mexico loses his taste for kleptomania in the same way Yamato will probably never throw a rock again.
Original by Bronwyn Isaac @BronwynIsaac
