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Isn’t it frustrating when some people just make weird comments about appearances and think its okay to do that?

This woman shares how a Karen broke a child’s self confidence.

Find out what happened. 

Karen told 5yo “she’d be prettier without her glasses”

Yesterday I ran across said Karen again, so this story came back to my mind and I thought I’d share it.

In Germany, it’s quite usual that daycare is organized by a parents’ association, and mostly, it costs the same as state- or church-based daycare, but parents have to contribute as members.

She explains how the system usually works…

Most parents enjoy that, though, because it’s quite a nice experience to be able to know other parents rather well and knowing that you can trust them with your kids.

My older kids attended a private daycare like that, there were only 20 kids and three professionals. I was a board member and got along very well with our board leader “Jon” and his wife “Rose”.

Enter Karen. Her real name really is one you could translate “Karen” into, so I’ll leave it that way.

This is where it gets weird…

She was the kind of mom that demanded things like “these twowiöd kids keep getting into fights with my son, so why don’t the teachers keep them close to themselves during free play time in the garden so they cannot hit him?”

Neither were these kids that bad nor was her son an innocent angel.

They all were just a bunch of kids who didn’t yet have the skills to solve their conflicts verbally alone. The teachers were skilled and helped the kids learn that, but of course they couldn’t just permanently hover over Karen’s son (or the “bad” kids) to prevent any conflicts from happening.

I swear, if Karen had deemed it legal to chain the “rowdies” to the fence, she had demanded it.

UH OH…

The daycare boss “Janice” was getting married, so we parents thought about what kind of nice gift we could get her. Rose and I had the idea to dress all the kids up as brides and grooms and give Janice a photo book with pictures of them as couples.

So we collected nice suits, white dresses, curtains, flowers, some big picture frames to hold up (it was a fashion here in the 2010s to have guests hold an empty picture frame to take photos) and set up a date to take these pictures when Janice had to spend the day away from the facility to attend some daycare leader event.

Rose, who was a hobby photographer, brought her camera, and we started to get all the kids dressed up. Enter Karen. She was also a hobby photographer and felt kinda left out, I think, so she brought her camera, too. Unnecessary, but okay, one more person to coordinate the kids.

But. My daughter had a friend, “Lily”, that wore glasses. Lily was the only kid with glasses there. While dressing up, Karen said “Oh Lily, let’s take down your glasses, you look so much prettier without”.

That’s INSANE!

Complete rude 90es Mean Girl vibes, disguised as well-meaning. (Yes, I’m pretty sure Karen actually meant well. As Teenagers from the 90s, we all had been grown to learn that glasses were a necessary asset, but nothing that enhanced your looks in any way. But still, we all grew up and had the chance to review our teenage fashion convictions, right?)

Rose and I exchanged looks and spoke up, told Karen that the glasses belonged to Lily as much as her long dark hair and assured Lily that these glasses were very nice and she looked really pretty with them. But the damage was done, Karen had installed self-doubts in Lily and Lily flat-out refused to put her glasses back on for the photos.

With a few words, Rose and I came up with a plan to annoy Karen to the max. Because of the small size of our daycare, we knew the other parents well enough to know their personal opinions.

So, when we had had a lot of bride-groom combinations with most of the kids, we took some bride-bride and groom-groom pics with the kids. Including her son and his best buddy.

That sounds so weird!

They just had fun playing marrying their besties, but it was a joy to us to see Karen’s face crumble and try to hold her smile.

She didn’t photograph these couples with her camera, but that didn’t matter, because the photobook solely consisted of the data from Rose’s camera.

Small revenge, yes, but when we told Janice after her honeymoon why we included these same-gender pics and how we came to that setup, she laughed a lot. Janice was also very fed up with Karen’s antics…

WHAT? Why would a grown adult act like that around a kid?

Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.

This user has taught their niece a sassy reply for mean comments!

This user thinks this Karen’s comments are very offensive.

This user knows how to give these people a shut up call.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a disabled woman who confronts her neighbors about using her spot, only to have them tell her they can park where they want.

This user shares how they were made to believe that glasses are ugly.

This user has a wise comeback for this little girl.

Some people really need to get a life!