Everyone knows kids are going to test boundaries. It just comes with the territory. And while parents might not always be able to keep their children on a short leash, they’re generally expected to know when to step in and rein things in. After all, part of raising a kid is teaching them where the line is—and what happens when they cross it.
But what if the parent is the one barking orders to cross that line? One woman on Reddit recalled a bizarre and truly horrifying childhood incident in which a simple trip to the park with her dad quickly spiraled after a 10-year-old boy demanded her money and snatched her new purse. Read on for her full story below, but be warned: some of the details are difficult to read.
Parents are supposed to teach kids where the line is, not encourage them to cross it
ClickerHappy / Pexels (not the actual photo)
One woman recalled a childhood trip to the park that took a horrifying turn
Rafael Jan Aguite / Pexels (not the actual photo)
Max Fleischmann / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
This wasn’t just a case of an entitled kid and his entitled dad
The poster shared this horrific story on the r/entitledparents subreddit. And sure, entitlement—a self-absorbed view of the world with little regard for how your actions affect others—might account for the boy demanding the girl’s money and snatching her purse, as well as his father scoffing at the idea of returning it. But this clearly isn’t just your classic case of an entitled kid taking something that didn’t belong to them while an entitled parent defends their actions.
And while simply being a bully might come into play, there’s another, perhaps more disturbing, layer here: according to the poster’s story, the dad wasn’t simply standing by while his son behaved badly. He actively encouraged him.
The entitled dad (ED) not only condoned his son’s stealing of the purse—which was pretty cruel to begin with—but, according to the poster’s account, actively escalated the situation by first scoffing at the polite request that he return it, throwing it over their heads, and, ultimately, setting his older and larger son on an innocent 3-year-old. More disturbing still was the violence that followed, with the son allegedly grabbing the poster by her hair, repeatedly slamming her head into the gravel, and shaking it while her face was down, ultimately leaving her blind in her left eye.
magnific / Magnific (not the actual photo), ai-assisted image
The boy was following his dad’s instructions
This is horrific enough, but perhaps the most revealing part of the story is the commands that allegedly came from ED himself. After taking the purse, the boy’s father reportedly laughed, threw it over their heads so it landed in the gravel, and told the 3-year-old, “Fetch!” Then, according to her father, he told his son to “sic ’em.” What had started as a dispute over a purse had apparently turned into something resembling what ED later called a “game”—with the 10-year-old being directed toward his much younger target.
Interestingly, the two fathers’ responses to the whole situation couldn’t have been more different. According to the poster, her father was calmly and respectfully trying to get her purse back, even telling her to “say please,” while ED was allegedly showing his son that the situation was something to laugh at and escalate. That matters because children learn not only from what parents tell them to do, but also from how the adults around them respond to conflict.
Research on children’s behavior has long examined this kind of modeling. Kylie Rymanowicz, writing for Michigan State University, explains that children can learn by watching the adults around them and imitating behaviors they see modeled, particularly if they get some sort of positive reinforcement for it. She notes that even laughter can act as “unintended positive reinforcement,” potentially encouraging a child to repeat a behavior.
Meanwhile, research specifically looking at aggression has identified parental modeling and reinforcement as potential influences on children’s aggressive behavior. One review notes that parents can model aggression “as a solution for interpersonal conflict, increasing the likelihood that children will behave similarly when confronted with conflict,” while parents who view aggressive behavior as normal or reinforce it may be less likely to intervene when their children behave aggressively.
Of course, we can’t know exactly what the 10-year-old took from his father’s behavior, and this research doesn’t establish that ED caused the attack described in the post. We also don’t know who ultimately pulled the boy off the toddler. But it does help explain why the father’s response is significant. The boy wasn’t simply left to figure out how to handle the situation on his own. According to the account, his father was showing him one way to respond—and then giving him explicit instructions to follow. And apparently, he did. Right down to the growling.
The poster shared more details in the comments and even joked about her eyepatch
Netizens were disgusted by the father and son’s behavior and felt they got off far too easily
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