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Kids are curious, and it can be hard for them to understand that some things are off limits or aren’t safe.

Ideally, when someone in charge tells a child not to do something, the child’s parents would go along with that, understanding that there must be a good reason for this rule.

In this story, a mom does the opposite. When her son is told to stop doing something, she argues that he should be able to do it.

She quickly learned her lesson the hard way, and so did her son.

Let’s read all about it.

Parent says it’s not our business what her son does on the community garden, so we let him get up to his neck in waste… literally.

Happened just a couple of hours ago, this story is so fresh you can still smell it!

On our community garden we get teams of kids from the local school come to help and it’s often the case that they turn up on a Saturday morning as well.

They’re almost entirely well-behaved which is a good job as there’s not a lot we can do about bad behaviour beyond a stern voice (although one time a lad kicked one of our rabbits so a girl brained him with a shovel, rough but effective justice).

This story is about one boy who showed up at the community garden.

There’s this one lad who came for the first time last week, don’t know him but we made him very welcome.

He only lasted half an hour before storming off in tears after his THIRD telling off for spinning round and round holding a tool and then letting it fly off at head height.

This morning his mum (I assume) came with him, I saw him point out my friend and me, but he didn’t ask to join in so after shouting hello we let them be.

After about ten minutes he started wandering and my friend shouted to him “don’t go round behind the greenhouse mate, it’s not safe round there”.

His mom didn’t like that.

Well, his mum had obviously been waiting for this because she went 0 to 100 in two seconds flat, demanding to know do we OWN this garden, and if not what business is it of ours where her son goes?

We explained we just want him to be safe and she replied that she’s quite capable of taking care of that herself, thank you.

Fine, on you go.

Yuck!

Off he went, exploring behind the greenhouse, which is not safe because it’s the compost heap, which is very unstable, and the muck mound, which is a giant pile of horse manure we get delivered every autumn.

By the spring the inside is all nice and rotted down, and the outside is hard, crusty… and less strong than you think.

After a minute there was a crunch, a squeal… and I think we did very well to drag him out without saying “I told you so” or breaking into guffaws.

He was absolutely black from chest-height downwards, and although well-rotted manure doesn’t smell really bad it is very thick, and sticky, and slimy.

I doubt that they’ll be back.

His mum grabbed him without a word and they headed for the gate.

He started bawling as soon as the surprise wore off.

My friend said “would you like some bin bags to spread out in your car” and to her credit she did say thanks when he handed them over.

I wonder if we’ll see them again next week?

I don’t think this boy is really cut out for the community garden!

Let’s see if Reddit agrees.

It was more than karma.

Another person comments on the same part of the story.

This person would’ve loved to see one minor change to the end of the story.

This person has questions about community gardens.

I’m not exactly sure how community gardens work either. It doesn’t sound like OP owns the garden or necessarily works at the garden, but maybe he works there. Or maybe he volunteers there. Either way, it seems that he knows a lot about the garden, and the mother should’ve taken his advice.

Sometimes you have to learn the hard way.