Mom Of 6 Says She Refuses To Do Christmas Presents For Her 'Selfish' Kids — 'We're Giving The Gift Of Truth' Instead
The mom is sparking criticism over her parenting methods and past allegations of child abuse.
@the_internet_is_foreverr / TikTok Ruby Franke, a mother of six kids and creator of the popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers, has recently seen one of her videos resurface online and has caught a lot of flak for it.
During an interview, she revealed the gift that she and her husband Kevin Franke would be giving their two youngest children for Christmas after “long patterns of selfishness.”
Ruby Franke said she would be giving her kids 'the gift of truth' for Christmas.
During the interview, she claimed that her kids have made some “egregious” choices that led her and Kevin to make this decision. “The two youngest are showing long patterns of selfishness. They have shown, through their choices, an unwillingness to repent, their unwillingness to feel sorrow for some pretty egregious choices that they’ve made.”
Included in this “gift of truth” that she and Kevin would be giving them this Christmas, she pulled up a graphic and claimed that they would be giving them the gifts of boundaries and repentance.
“We sat down with them and we told these two what our expectations were, again,” she explained, “and we let them know how deeply sorrowful we’ve been because of the choices that they’ve been making.”
They told their two youngest children that they would not be visited by Santa and that their four older siblings would have their own Christmas presents to open. “They will have the gift of love from their dad and I,” she explained.
She claims that they really want this punishment to hit them and teach them a lesson.
“We want them to really have a visceral experience that hits them,” she said. “So, up until now, I was really hoping that keeping them home from school and wiping the floorboards would like, really bring pain, like ‘oh my gosh I really want to change this behavior that I’ve been exhibiting.'”
That didn’t work, and instead they were excited by the prospect of being able to stay home from school if all they had to do was clean the floorboards. Since that plan hadn’t worked, Franke claimed that they needed something much more important in order to make them really feel the punishment.
“You’re not going to push a boulder with just your hands, you need some real leverage, and the biggest leverage that a little child has is probably Santa Claus,” she said. She believes this punishment is fair because it’s a “reflection of truth” to show them how they’ve been acting toward their parents and their teachers and everyone else around them.
Photo: TikTok
Parents in the comments were very critical of Ruby Franke’s method.
The top comment read, “These kids will play this clip to their trauma therapists in a few years.”
Someone else mocked her and joked, “‘Kevin and I have decided we LOOOVE old folks' homes.’”
A third argued, “This isn’t about the children, She likes the control and power!”
One comment brought into question what the little ones could have possibly done in order to deserve a punishment so hard, with someone else replying, “The fact that they are young enough to believe in Santa means they must be pretty tiny, what could they have possibly done?”
Although the more important thing to question is Ruby’s parenting method. The Franke family and the 8Passengers YouTube channel have been the center of scandals for a few years now with allegations of child abuse and one daughter even cutting off contact with them for the things she’s experienced.
It’s safe to say that this form of parenting has surely come back to bite her, and only time will tell if it continues to do so in the future.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.