A Mom Is Told 'She's Going To A Nursing Home' After Putting A Roach In Her Teen's Bed To Teach Her A Lesson
Interesting way to parent.
TikTok Teaching a child or teenager responsibility isn’t easy. Most of the time kids are going to do what they want to do. Trying to keep your child’s room clean is a hard task, so one mom tried to do something different to teach her child the importance of cleanliness.
The mom posted a video to TikTok revealing the controversial way she addressed her daughter’s messy room.
Captioning the video, “When your teenage daughter won’t keep her room clean you resort to what you gotta do to teach her a lesson," Somer LeeAnn revealed that she and her husband put a dead roach on her daughter's bed in an attempt to reinforce the important of keeping the space clean.
In follow-up videos, LeAnn explained whether or not her punishment proved her point.
After turning off the comments in the original video, LeAnn uploaded a follow-up video when someone asked what happened after she found the roach in her bed.
"We patiently waited for the Ring cameras to come in and then I heard her scream three separate times when she found the roach in her bed," LeAnn explained. Apparently, the prank did the trick, as LeAnn explained that her daughter finally cleaned her room after finding the roach.
"We immediately saw her taking all of her dirty dishes to the sink," she said, "So I'd say all in all it worked."
The mom explained that she worked for a pest control company, therefore, she knows the effects of living in an unclean environment. She also mentioned that her house is very clean and that they work really hard to provide her daughter with nice things so they “want her to treat it with respect.”
She received one particular comment that criticized her parenting style.
LeAnn uploaded a third follow-up video to address one comment that claimed LeAnn's form of punishment would land her in a nursing home.
"Have I caused you immense childhood trauma?" LeAnn sarcastically asked her daughter, who nodded while sitting in the car with her. "Are you gonna talk to me after you turn 18?" LeAnn asked, apparently making a reference to adult children who choose to estrange themselves from toxic parents, as her daughter shook her head "No."
Her daughter admitted that her room is still dirty and that it was just a funny TikTok that LeAnn and her husband had planned out.
No matter how funny the video is, it actually begs the question of where parents should draw the line when it comes to punishment.
Though a few parents thought LeAnn's form of punishment was too rough and would have used a different method of punishment, that doesn't necessarily mean that LeAnn was wrong.
According to Katharine Reynolds, PhD, a licensed psychologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado and assistant psychiatry professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, "consistent expectations, praise, and consequences" are key when it comes to effectively disciplining teens in particular. In an interview with VeryWell Family, Reynolds explains that having consequences that "fit the crime" as opposed to humiliating them are most effective.
In LeAnn's case, though a roach in the bed may be humiliating on some level, it's also a believable consequence for the crime of an overly dirty room.
Punishment, just like parenting, varies in all kinds of ways. It is unique to each and every family unit. They decide what fits their style. They know what is best for them.
At the end of the day, we should all just hope LeAnn's daughter learns her lesson before her parents move on to bigger insects to plant in her room.
Cortney Crowell is a writer and frequent contributor to YourTango from New Jersey who covers entertainment, news, and human interest stories