Mom trashes teen daughter’s things in an act of tough love after the girl who won’t clean her room
For some reason, most pre-teens and teens seem simply not to notice a mess when they see one. At the very least, they’re certainly not bothered enough by it to clean it up.
Alice Velasquez from Bargersville, Indiana was at her wit’s end after constantly asking her daughter Tahlia to straighten up her bedroom only to find that the mess remained day after day.
Tahlia’s room was strewn with clothing and other possessions (you know, like any teen’s).
There was simply no way the mom was going to continue to clean up after her daughter when the girl was able to do it herself, but with the situation at a stalemate, Valásquez decided to go with the nuclear option. She would, indeed, “clean” her daughter’s room one more time.
The mom went into her daughter’s room with a box of trash bags and picked up all of the items off the floor, bagging them along the way. She didn’t sort things – she simply dumped it all in.
When the teen walked back into her bedroom, she found it “trashed.” The garbage bags full of all of her things were piled up in the corner.
But that wasn’t even the most clever part of Valasquez’s plan.
Tahlia wasn’t given the option of simply unpacking her things. She had already treated them with such disrespect that her mom wanted her to see the value of what she had been simply throwing on the ground.
So Tahlia had to earn back each and every trash bag, not even knowing what was inside.
Her mom charged her $25 a bag.
But the kicker was she could simply be buying back a bag of stuff she didn’t even need or want.
Valásquez explained in her Facebook post:
“What do you do when you are DONE telling your teenage daughters to stop letting their room look like homeless people live there? You put everything (YES EVERYTHING) into plastic bags and you sell it back to them for $25 a bag (and they have to earn the money doing chores). The best part? The bags were collected as they were found in the room – random! So their $25 could buy a bag of dirty clothes, it could buy a bag of trash or it could buy their soccer gear.”
When Valasquez posted the photos and described the punishment on Facebook, it went viral, but reactions were split. Some parents applauded her efforts to teach her daughter the value of her possessions. Others called it a form of child abuse and threatened to call Child Protective Services! (FYI: That’s not a valid reason to waste CPS resources.)
After the viral post, Valásquez appeared on the show The Doctors where she described some of the reactions.
“It was crazy… There were some who were telling me how horrible I was, that I was psychologically damaging my kids.”
But Stacy Kaiser, the show’s psychotherapist, said it was anything but abusive and certainly not psychologically damaging. She called it “a creative way to take control.”
And the mom wasn’t having the blowback either. She stood up for herself with a scathing Facebook post directed at those who overreacted:
“FIRST OF ALL, MY PARENTING CHOICES ARE JUST THAT, MINE!! None of you nasty people know me or my children or a single thing about our situation. My children are all loved, treasured, very well cared for, social, active in band, choir, church youth group, soccer, track, swimming, scouts, study buddies, amongst many other family activities — so before you JUDGE ME, come spend a day with children who have been raised with respect, who have chores and responsibilities and who have parents that take an ACTIVE role in parenting and then form your own INFORMED OPINION!”
And not only did Tahlia earn back her things, but her siblings pitched in. Valásquez reported in the comments:
“…her super siblings all volunteered for extra chores to help her earn faster too. SO not only was is a lesson for my oldest daughter, but a great a great family building exercise as well.”
Be sure to scroll down to see the mom’s appearance on The Doctors.
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Source: The Doctors via YouTube, Alice Valásquez via Facebook