When a mother became fed up with her girls’ messy room, she devised what she believed was the perfect punishment. Unfortunately, not everyone agreed — and it resulted in some calling CPS.
Alice Velásquez, a loving Indiana mother, found herself growing increasingly tired of telling her children to pick up after themselves. With her children not listening, she knew she had to do something. Of particular concern was the way her teenage daughters left their room. After asking them over and over again to clean it up, Alice hit her boiling point and decided it was time to punish the girls for their unruly room.
Wanting to teach her girls a lesson once and for all to ensure they wouldn’t be revisiting this problematic issue again any time soon, the mom came up with an extreme solution, guaranteed to send a message loud and clear. It was so “severe,” however, that it led to some concerned citizens calling Child Protective Services (CPS), saying it went “too far” after the mom shared pictures of the punishment on Facebook.
“What do you do when you are DONE telling your teenage daughters to stop letting their room look like homeless people live there?” Alice asked in the social media post before explaining exactly what she did about the problem. Apparently, Alice’s solution was to tidy up the room herself — but not in a way that her girls would like.
“You put everything (YES EVERYTHING) into plastic bags,” Alice wrote, but the plan wasn’t to throw them away. Instead, “you sell it back to them for $25 a bag (and they have to earn the money doing chores),” Alice explained alongside multiple photos of her daughters’ belongings in more than a dozen trash bags, but that’s not all. What Alice referred to as “the best part” was yet to come: the buy-back option came with an ingenious catch.
“The bags were collected as they were found in the room — random! So their $25 could buy a bag of dirty clothes, it could buy a bag of trash or it could buy their soccer gear,” Alice explained before closing with the hashtag “#MayTheOddsBeEverInYourFavor.” Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for the post to go viral with sympathetic parents praising Alice’s form or “tough love” and saying that’s exactly how they were treated when they were kids and didn’t listen.
Of course, not everyone was a fan of the fed-up mom’s creativity. In fact, some said she went “too far.” One such social media user even sent Alice a message, claiming that they had called the authorities on her over the punishment. “I reported you to a social worker,” Lee Haze wrote. “Your neglect towards an obvious adolescent is child abuse,” Haze alleged, but he didn’t stop there.
“Don’t share your dirty laundry on Facebook if you don’t want to face the possible prison time,” the angered Facebook user warned. “You live in Indiana? They will be contacting you this week for a home investigation,” Haze concluded, but the no-nonsense mom didn’t take kindly to the criticism or the threat.
“FIRST OF ALL, MY PARENTING CHOICES ARE JUST THAT, MINE!! None of you nasty people know me or my children or a single thing about our situation,” Alice followed-up in a scathing post, lambasting all of her “haters” who had put her on blast. Setting the record straight, Alice went on to describe the life her children actually live, and it’s far from “abusive.”
“My children are all loved, treasured, very well cared for, social, active in band, choir, church youth group, soccer, track, swimming, scouts, study buddies, amongst many other family activities,” Alice explained. “So before you JUDGE ME, come spend a day with children who have been raised with respect, who have chores and responsibilities and who have parents that take an ACTIVE role in parenting and then form your own INFORMED OPINION!”
After the initial post, Alice said her daughters quickly “bought” back all of their belongings. And, this is what matters. They learned a lesson about responsibility and accountability. If you don’t listen, there are consequences, and kids these days aren’t taught this reality often enough. Sadly, moms like Alice are rare, and when one such mother emerges, complete strangers want to make disgusting assumptions. Discipline shouldn’t be considered child abuse — the lack of it, however, should be.
