Bedtime battles are a classic parenting struggle, but this dad decided to take an unconventional route with his 7-year-old daughter.

Instead of fighting, he let her stay up all night and face the consequences.

Spoiler alert—reality hit hard.

Read on for the story.

AITA for teaching my daughter the importance of sleep?

Just like any other kid, my (7 yo) daughter HATES bedtime.

If it’s ever 9:59 and we tell her it’s bedtime then she will make a huge court case about how we are depriving her of one minute of her life.

I always let it go but this week when I told her it’s bed time at 10:05 she protested.

Essentially she didn’t understand why she had to go to bed while the rest of us adults stayed up later.

It’s unfair that we get to enjoy the rest of our night while she has to go to bed early.

Kid logic: bedtime is negotiable, but fairness is non-negotiable.

I mean she’s not wrong, it definitely makes more sense for me to go to bed early as well since all of us wake up roughly around the same time.

But I needed her to understand the consequence of the trade off between sleep and early mornings.

So I told her okay…she can stay up as long as she wants.

If we go to bed she can keep watching tv all night till the next morning.

Her eyes glimmered and she did her little victory dance before sitting on the sofa and enjoying her little win.

My wife protested saying that she’ll be too tired for school tomorrow and I said “that’s the point.”

Nothing teaches life lessons like a little sleep-deprived regret.

I went to bed and woke up at 7am, sure enough my daughter slept on the sofa probably about 2 hours before I woke up.

Understandably, getting her to wake up and get ready for school was a battle that neither of us enjoyed.

I dropped her off at school and picked her up again after work, she was DONE with the day and slept in the car on the way home.

Once we got home she tried to go to bed and I told her she can’t because her swimming lesson is in an hour so she needs to get ready for that.

She cried but I still forced her to go with her mom.

Lesson learned: bedtime isn’t the enemy—exhaustion is.

She came back just barely able to make it through the day and tried making her way up the stairs again. I told her she forgot about her homework and she started crying again.

My wife said we should let her sleep but I was firm on my stance that if we let her off the hook right now then she will never understand the consequences of her decision.

Delaying responsibilities due to factors within your control isn’t okay and I don’t want her learning that it is.

I helped her with her homework and by the time it was 8 she was already in bed.

Staying up all night isn’t so “fun” when reality hits.

The next night when it was 10 she didn’t even protest, just started walking up to her bedroom and declined when I asked her if she wanted to stay up with us.

I thought the mission was a success but my wife questioned my parenting technique and said it was border line neglectful & manipulative.

I disagreed but after a few conversations with friends and family I’m slowly starting to doubt myself…so reddit AITA?

Was Dad’s “tough love” approach crossing a line?

Reddit agrees that Dad isn’t the AH, but do have an issue with the time of bedtime.

This person offers a better bedtime.

This person says the lesson was fine, but again, the BEDTIME!

This person is just overall impressed.

Well, what can we say?

Lesson learned.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.