The Internet Taught This Particularly Cruel Parent a Lesson in Minecraft

Parenting can be hard. So hard that you question every life choice that led you here. But mostly (at least for me), it is rewarding and awesome to raise little humans. The worst thing about parenting is when it comes time to punish them. Yes, they did something bad and need to understand the consequences of their actions, but how do you know what will make the right impression on them?

Well, there is one “Am I the Asshole?” (AITA) Reddit post that shows how to not punish your child. The original post was from about three years ago, but it is making the rounds again on the internet because people will always be mad about something so heartless.

The “Crime”

A parent came to the forum looking to find out if they were the asshole for how they punished their kid. The story goes that their 9-year-old child had trouble getting up in the morning and often slept through their alarm “since school was canceled” (Remember this post is old so it would have been around the time of school closures from the Covid-19 pandemic.) They told the child that getting up on time was their responsibility.

To start out, the kid did well, then after about two weeks fell back into their old habits. So the parent gave a final warning. When the child slept in until 11 am, rather than the proper wake-up time of 7 am, the parent had had enough. They stopped playing around and laid down the punishment.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

At the beginning of the post, the parent noted that their 9-year-old “had a Minecraft world where he built quite an impressive castle on an island, which he was very proud to show to me.” This parent was out for blood and hit their kid right where they knew it would hurt. To punish their child for not waking up at an arbitrary time they “went on the computer and deleted his favorite Minecraft world. I also took away computer privileges for the next month.”

When I read this I audibly gasped. You deleted his Minecraft world?! Like it is gone? Forever?! If you know anyone who has played Minecraft, you know that these worlds can take ages to build and shape just how you want them. A project that you think will be simple could take hours to finish. My kid and I will spend whole evenings building up an area and for it to just be wiped away would be devastating. Even if this parent never watched or played the game with their child, they had to know the amount of effort that went into making their world.

And how do you think this poor kid reacted when he found out?

“When I told him, he started screaming and crying. He told me that he spent a whole year working on that world, and he’s very distraught that he’s never going to see it again. He has been crying and sobbing throughout the day, and has refused to eat any of his meals.”

How out-of-touch do you have to be as a parent to not know this would emotionally ruin your kid? Yes, some may say “it is just a video game,” but Minecraft (and games like it) is not like playing Super Mario Brothers. It takes planning, visualization, and creative skills to execute your vision. Imagine creating an entire city with Legos over the course of a year to have someone come in and toss it all in the trash.

The Verdict

In the 1500+ comments the post racked up before the comments were turned off, the internet let this parent know exactly how they felt about this. Overwhelmingly, people told the parent they were totally the asshole. Responses varied from “the punishment did not fit the crime” to people saying they would never do something so terrible and mean to their child. Many people compared them to their own parents who used cruelty as a parenting method. These people said they stopped showing their parents things that brought them joy because they knew it could be used against them. And now that they are adults, they no longer speak to their parents.

Don’t forget, this is all for the heinous crime of sleeping in during a global pandemic. I want to point out that kids need a lot of sleep, sometimes more than the standard eight hours, especially during growth spurts. Instead of talking to their kid or evaluating why their child might be sleeping so much, they literally destroyed this kid’s world. As a parent, you should help your kid succeed, not beat them down for every mistake. Sorry to tell you dude, but you are 100% the asshole. And I really hope you have learned from your mistakes, for your and your children’s sakes.

(featured image: Mojang)