His Son Kept Oversleeping and Missing the Bus—So Dad Started Charging Him $5 for a Ride, and His Son Thinks That’s Cruel
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For many students, getting up on time and making it to school is a big challenge, but that is part of the overall learning experience.
What would you do if your son was chronically late in the morning and didn’t show any sense of urgency to ensure he got to the bus on time?
That is the situation that the Dad in this story was in, so he made a new rule that said if his son missed the bus, he would charge him $5 to bring him to school. Not surprisingly, his son is not happy about this rule, so Dad wants to make sure he isn’t crossing any lines.
Personally, I think it is a wonderful rule that will teach his son that there are real consequences to his actions. Read through the full story and see if you agree.
AITAH for charging my teen to drive him to school?
My teen (13m) has a hard time getting to the bus on time, basically every day.
Some kids have trouble getting up in the morning.
If he misses the bus, it takes me about half an hour out of my morning to drive him to school.
I liken it to two different kinds of toy trains. One moves on its own. One you have to push the whole way. He’s the second kind.
Not getting enough sleep is a big problem.
He has a loud alarm, set to go off over an hour before the bus comes… He sleeps through it. I manually wake him up multiple times every morning.
He falls asleep later than I would like (in bed, but not falling asleep), which adds to the morning wake up problem. (He’s still getting 7ish hours of sleep most nights, which isn’t terrible, but at least an hour below what is recommended and particularly concerning because he has such a hard time getting up).
No screens in his room.
This kid doesn’t seem to think it is important to get to school on time.
He usually has ~30 minutes to get ready by the time he actually gets out of bed. He showers at night.
While getting himself ready (brush hair, deodorant, teeth, clothes, etc), there’s no sense of urgency, even with repeated promptings of “three minutes till we need to leave!).” It feels very passive aggressive, but I may be reading into that.
His diagnosis can make it difficult, but he has to find a way to overcome that.
He has a younger brother who generally gets himself ready with 15 minutes to spare during the same period, so I don’t think it’s a matter of not having enough time, necessarily.
He does have an ADHD diagnosis, and lots of fun executive functioning challenges to go with that. I’ve tried to help him with a variety of different structural supports like checklists of things to do, automated lights that change colors based on how much time he has left, etc. he kind of ignores all of those.
Taking personal responsibility
We are a neurodivergent household, so we are not unfamiliar with the challenges that go along with this diagnosis.
His reaction to all of this is generally to blame me for a variety of things like not waking him up early enough. One of the most frustrating things to me about this whole deal is his lack of taking responsibility for his own actions.
Honestly, this seems really reasonable.
All that to say, after a few weeks of me spending about triple my normal energy trying to “push” him the entire way to the bus, I told him that I would start charging him $5 if I had to drive him to school because we missed the bus.
(This amount seemed like enough to create a “pain point,” but not enough to be overly punitive.)
Part of parenting is figuring out what works. This seems to be exactly what the kid needs.
The first day he owed me $5. The second day, he got his act together and got to the bus on time. (I saw genuine effort. Yay!) The third day he owed me $5 again.
Now he is irate and is sure that if he tells some adults about this, they will consider it wildly inappropriate.
This is a very good way to put it.
I’m certainly open to feedback, but from my perspective, I would much rather him learn to take responsibility for himself when he’s 13 and lose $5 than when he’s 23 and lose a job.
AITAH?
To me, this seems like great parenting. He is teaching his son that there are consequences for oversleeping and not getting to school on time. Of course the kid doesn’t like it, but that doesn’t matter.
Check out what the people in the comments have to say about this type of parenting.
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This is an important lesson that everyone must learn.
Here is someone who has lots of advice.
This commenter wants to focus on the fact that he isn’t getting enough sleep.
ADHD can certainly make things more difficult.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man who stops helping his neighbors out with his snowplow after they complain about his farm.
Sometimes a punishment is the consequence.
Teaching kids responsibility takes some trial and error. If this is what works for his son, then it is a great option. If not, he will have to try something else.
Anyone who thinks parenting is a ‘one size fits all’ activity is foolish.
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