Kids gotta learn the hard way once in a while…

There’s no doubt about that!

And the little girl in this story who wasn’t too into the idea of wearing a seatbelt definitely got a wake-up call from her mom!

Read on and see what Mommy Dearest did to prove a point.

Don’t want to wear your seatbelt or sit in your car seat? Okay, enjoy some unexpected trauma for the next year or so!

“This particular case of MC happened back in 2003, when my little sister was just 3 years old.

Back then, she was pretty stubborn about most things. However, one thing she was particularly stubborn about was wearing her seatbelt/harness in her car seat.

Darn kid!

No matter how many times my parents tried to get her strapped in, she would either undo the buckle or scream and cry until they gave up.

As you could imagine, it’s pretty unsafe for a 3 year old to be riding around the busy Southern CA streets unbuckled and obviously my little sister didn’t understand the reasoning behind wearing a seatbelt yet.

Queue the MC: One day after a particularly fussy episode with my little sister, and my mom not getting very much sleep the night before, my mom decided she wasn’t going to fight the “wear your seatbelt” battle with my little sister when packing us in the car to run some errands.

Pile in, kids!

Instead, we all hopped in the car (I was in the passenger seat), my mom turned to me, winked as if to say “watch this” and began to tell my sister that she had better put her car seat harness on, which went about as well as you would expect.

Instead of continuing to argue with my sister, my mom simply said “okayyy” and proceeded to pull out of the driveway.

As we began to drive through the neighborhood my mom gave me another look as if to say “hold on to something.”

Here it comes!

Before I could realize what she was about to do, my mom somewhat violently shook the steering wheel back and forth to get our big, heavy Ford Expedition rocking from side to side in an attempt to scare my sister into wearing her seatbelt.

Now, I love my mother and she is an amazing parent, but I don’t think she realized how much momentum a heavy car like that has even when we were only going maybe 10-15 MPH.

Instead of playfully tipping my sister’s car seat to give her a small scare, my sister FLEW across the middle row of seats and smacked her head against the window.

Oops!

Prompting my sister to scream bloody murder and my mom to start crying thinking she just permanently gave her little girl brain damage. (Don’t worry, my little sister was totally fine but instead of getting a little scare, she was now terrified.)

Ever since that incident whenever my sister would get in the car to go somewhere my parents couldn’t even start the engine without my sister screaming out of pure terror that she didn’t have her seatbelt on yet and would begin to cry.

(Mission Accomplished, I guess?).

It actually became kind of an issue whenever we tried to leave the house because we had to assure my sister that she was safely strapped in for the journey.

After a little while my sister eventually got over her over-the-top fear of being in a car without a seatbelt on but now she’s definitely the most cautious driver I’ve ever seen.”

Check out what folks had to say on Reddit.

This reader shared a story.

Another individual spoke up.

This Reddit user shared their thoughts.

Another person chimed in.

A lesson she’ll never forget!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.