Is it wrong to call the police on your own child?
That’s the question one dad asked the Reddit community after he discovered his 16-year-old daughter was hiding drugs in her bedroom.
“Daughter is 16,” this father wrote in the “Am I an A**hole?” subreddit, where people crowdsource responses about their own behavior. “Her mom and I are divorced. Daughter has been caught smoking pot several times from the age of 14.”
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“Her mom and I have collectively punished her several times for this,” he continued. “The last time we caught her, I started drug testing her. Her mom doesn’t agree with it, but we have caught her so many times now that I think this is the best way to prevent her from doing it.”
The teen’s father decided that he’d had enough when he discovered additional drugs in her room.
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“When I go into her room, I found a mushroom cap on black paper hidden underneath her desk. I look up what the hell it is and it is a spore print for magic mushrooms.”
He then contacted authorities to report his own daughter.
“Obviously I am enraged, so I wait for her to get back from school, and I called the police. She was arrested, booked and released into her mother’s custody.”
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“Her mother is pissed, and saying that I may have ruined the kid’s life for no reason, but we have tried to correct her drug abuse several times to no avail, and it has escalated. She now has a court date and can answer to the law since she doesn’t take the rules in my house seriously.”
He then asked the online community for their feedback. Some commenters felt that he overreacted and his actions were damaging to his daughter’s future, while others felt that a little tough love was exactly what she needed.
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“YTA [You’re the a**hole]. Getting your child a criminal record over mushrooms is most definitely not going to help her,” the top commenter responded.
Another commenter wrote:
“There are so many better ways to handle this situation. You could have first figured out why she had the drugs. A lot of teenagers who abuse drugs have underlying issues going on that need to be addressed. You didn’t try to do that. You could have found help with a family therapist, or even a personal therapist for her, that could have helped her through this time. You could have sent her to rehab. All of those things would have potentially helped her. You did absolutely nothing but make it clear that she can’t come to you if she’s ever in trouble.”
And while more people felt this dad was in the wrong, some people disagreed.
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“There are so many people completely out of touch with how the world works,” one user said. “This isn’t some over-controlling parent trying to control their kid. This is a parent who’s tried doing everything in their power to stop their kids escalating relationship with drugs.”
What do you think: Is it wrong to call the police on your own children in a situation like this?
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