Dad makes daughter sleep in backyard for disrespecting housemaid, asks if he's wrong

Editor's note: This article was originally published on September 29, 2021. It has since been updated.

It's basic decency to be kind to those around you, irrespective of their social standing. When one teenager violated a basic tenet that her father valued, she was punished and grounded. The concerned father took to Reddit, explaining why he made his daughter, a germaphobe, sleep in the backyard for disrespecting their house help. He asked if he was wrong to punish his daughter with what many considered such severity. He titled the post: Am I the a$$hole for making my daughter sleep in the backyard after what she did to our housemaid?"  

"My daughter (16) is a high school junior. I noticed recently that she's been behaving in a bad manner constantly commenting on other people's looks, belongings, calling them stuff that isn't cool, and just being insensitive," he wrote. "It's like she lost a filter or something because usually she's polite but my wife suspected that our daughter's sudden misbehavior occurred after she started hanging out with new girls from the school."

He said that she appeared to have befriended a 'mean type' of people and picked up on their behavior. "I've sat with my daughter and had many discussions about how her behavior has been negatively affecting everyone around her. Our housemaid is the person most affected here and my daughter has chosen her to be her target for hair, clothes, "etiquette" criticism," he wrote, before adding that the house help had complained of his daughter calling her offensive names such as 'filthy' and 'gross' for cleaning certain areas in the house. "I took a stand and explicitly told my daughter I'd punish her if she ever said stuff like that to our housemaid again. Last week my daughter had a party to go to, earlier that day she called our housemaid "filthy" so I grounded her by not letting her go to the party. She threw a fit and called our housemaid a liar saying she never called her that. That was the end of it."

A few days later, the 16-year-old complained that she couldn't find her iPhone. "She asked me to call her number and I did. My wife and I were stunned to discover that the iPhone was ringing inside our housemaid's bag. I had a confrontation with her immediately and she denied, and cried saying she never touched the phone nor had any idea how it got there." The teenager viciously called the househelp a thief repeatedly before her Dad intervened. "I told her to stop and go to her room. I checked the indoor camera before continuing the argument and saw my daughter place her iPhone inside our housemaid's bag, I was livid. I apologized to the housemaid and gave her the rest of the day off. I then showed the video to my daughter and she was absolutely speechless."

He couldn't believe the extent to which his daughter went to hurt the househelp. "I said what she did was immoral and straight-up offensive to tamper with that poor woman's livelihood over a petty party she couldn't go to. I told her she was grounded and will have to spend the night in the backyard (she is a germaphobe) but she cried begging me to not make her sleep with the dirt, insects, and hot temperature. I refused to discuss it or I'd make it 2 nights. My wife said I should go easy on her but I said calling people filthy and accusing them of stealing wasn't ok in fact it was the absolute worst, I then went through with my punishment," he wrote.

A majority of them sided with the Dad and said the house help didn't deserve such treatment at all. "You should pay the maid a week's salary and make your daughter do ALL the housework for a week!" wrote one person. The teenager supposedly refused to eat after being punished in such a manner. One Reddit user suggested therapy. "No, don't do this. Send her to therapy. Something is clearly up and pushing a kid to be self-destructive is unacceptable," they wrote.