Man refuses to stand up for son who bullied old lady, defends being a father straight out of ‘Adolescence’

Parenting doesn’t come with a manual, so when you are faced with a challenge, everything you thought you knew about raising a good kid goes down the drain. One father faced a similar dilemma when his son was arrested for harassing an elderly woman. What happened before and after that moment left him wondering if he still recognized the boy he once raised. The story, posted by Reddit user u/Mental-Department-87, describes how his 16-year-old son used to be a model teen who "volunteered at school events, was close with his grandparents, and never gave us real trouble."

Everything changed when his son started hanging out with kids from the football and wrestling teams who are loud, ill-mannered, and generally disrespectful. "Since then, his grades have dropped, his attitude has gone downhill, and he has stopped spending time with family," the father noted. Things got worse when his son and those friends trashed a movie theater "just for laughs." The father then decided to ground him and talked with other parents to keep the boys apart — however, it didn't last. One day, the son stayed back home from school on the pretext of a doctor’s appointment, but, much to the parents' shock, he later snuck out and met those boys.

"They ended up loitering in front of a TJ Maxx, bothering customers going in and out," the father noted, when an elderly employee came out with hangers and asked the boys to leave if they weren't going to purchase something. "My son joined in, booing and saying, 'Relax, nobody’s getting hurt,' and 'You’re ruining the fun,'" the father wrote. When the lady, Ms. Pearly, tried to call security on her walkie-talkie, "one of the boys slapped it from her hand. Then my son tried to yank the clothes from her grip. She didn’t let go, and in the struggle, she lost her balance and fell backward to the ground." They all laughed at her, with one of them even calling her out for playing a victim, insinuating that she was "faking" it.

That's when a bystander stepped in and asked, "Did you just push that old lady?" The boys denied it, and without another word, the man punched three of them, including the son. The phone recording the scene hit the ground, but the fight sounds continued. When the father arrived, the man was still there, so he interrogated him over the punch. The stranger gladly came forward and asked, "Are you the father of the boy who thinks bullying an old woman is funny? What kind of man are you raising?" following up by showing him the video of the incident. The father had to hang his head in shame, shocked to see his son's reality play out in front of his eyes. As he was the only parent present when police arrived, his son was arrested on the spot , while the others were picked up later from home. Once he had returned home after this harrowing ordeal, his wife accused him of "letting our son get beaten and arrested like he was some criminal." 

Even his mother insisted he should have defended the boy "no matter what." Despite all of it, he remained firm in his decision, writing, "After what I saw in that video, I couldn’t bring myself to shield him from the consequences." He concluded, "I just don’t know where I went wrong as a man and father." Reddit users responded in support. u/Bankzzz wrote, "Wife is in denial. Maybe she should be made to watch the video before she makes an opinion." u/1quirky1 wrote, "There was no stopping that arrest. The son was beaten long before OP showed up. What exactly was OP supposed to do?" u/DamonDD added, "'Because right now, I don't know how to feel as a father...' NGL this statement reminds me of the ending of Netflix's Adolescence. I'm sincerely sorry for you, man..."