'Angry' Dad Follows A Mom And Her 10-Year-Old Son Home After School Pickup To Confront The Boy
“Who does that?”
slobo / Canva Pro Kids do strange things, but weird behavior is an inevitable element of childhood.
After one kid dared a boy to lick his hand and touch another kid’s water bottle at school, the boy’s mom was in for a rude transgression from the parent of that water bottle’s owner.
The mom took to Reddit to express her concern about an ‘angry parent’ who followed her home to confront her son after picking him up from school.
In the r/Parenting post, the mom explained that she picked her 10-year-old son up from school one day and hadn't suspected anything at the time, but when she pulled into her former apartment complex to reminisce, another car pulled into the spot beside them. A girl around the same age as her son and her dad exited the vehicle, and the dad was not happy.
"Did you know your son licked my daughter's water bottle in school today?" the dad asked the mom, according to her post.
Clearly stunned and confused, she answered honestly and apologized for her son’s actions.
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The dad then turned to her son and directly confronted him, asking why he would do such a thing. The boy, likely fearful, wasn’t able to respond, so his mom promised to talk to him and told him to apologize to the girl.
After the dad and his daughter drove away, the boy explained to his mom what had happened. Another boy dared him to lick his hand and touch a random water bottle. The mom explained her son struggles with impulse issues due to his ADHD in her post, which may have contributed to the situation.
The boys didn’t get away with this behavior, though, and their school made sure to talk to them and issue consequences.
The mom was disturbed by the dad’s aggressive response to a relatively harmless act.
Kids can be easily influenced by their peers, and daring one another to do unusual things is fairly common. While it can certainly be interpreted as odd behavior, licking a water bottle is not exactly the strangest dare reported in elementary school.
Regardless, it doesn’t quite justify the dad’s decision to follow another parent, and she was relieved she hadn’t driven to their actual home.
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“After I had time to process, I realized how creepy this was. Like, the dude followed us," the mom expressed. "Would he have followed us all the way back to our real home, like 10 minutes away? Thank god we pulled over at a different complex.”
While it’s natural for parents to intervene when they suspect their child is being bullied, following another parent home is certainly not the right approach.
Of course, the dad was likely beset by anger and protection over his daughter and reacted out of poor judgment. Perhaps there is also more to the story that would trigger such a threatening reaction.
Many Reddit users agreed the man’s response was ‘unhinged.’
“Although licking a water bottle is gross behavior, it strikes me as the kind of weirdness that dumb 10-year-olds do,” one person pointed out. “Unless it was a part of a pattern of bullying his daughter, not the kind of transgression that would cause a reasonable person to snap into ‘follow that car’ mode.”
Others advised the mom to reach out to her son’s school, find out what’s going on, and inform them of the dad’s unusual decision to follow her after school. They emphasized the importance of the mom reporting this dad’s behavior to the school to ensure it’s on record in case the situation escalates.
Other individuals were curious about whether the mom’s son had been bullying the girl, explaining the dad's reaction.
Even if the boy was bullying the girl, as one person pointed out, there are several other approaches the parent could have taken to confront the boy’s mom that wouldn’t have involved harassment.
“Following your child home from school is aggressive and threatening,” the person wrote. “I understand not wanting to get the school involved and making the situation more tedious, but he could have found your number in a school directory. He could have found your social media and sent you a message so that you (his parent) can decide the appropriate way of handling it.”
Parents have a right to defend their kids, but is following another parent home really the answer?
The mom updated her post, explaining she informed the school of the incident since it made her feel unsafe. She added that her son tends to get bullied, which could imply that he likely hasn’t bothered the girl other than with the single water bottle dare.
“As the parent of a child who is often on the receiving end of bullying, I get the parenting instinct to protect your child,” the mom wrote, empathizing with the dad. “But I also don't feel safe letting [the man’s behavior] slide.”
While confrontation is sometimes necessary, there is a time and place for these conversations. Approaching another parent in a way that causes them to question their own safety over a minor incident is unacceptable, and the mom was right to report the situation to the school.
Francesca Duarte is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team based in Orlando, FL. She covers lifestyle, human interest, adventure, and spirituality topics.