Most parents want to bring up well-mannered, kind-hearted, empathetic children who will mature into good adults. It can be difficult to tell if our children are genuinely understanding and applying the lessons we try to teach them, so sometimes we just have to hope for the best.

One mother reached out for feedback on Reddit, a a user-generated social news media site, after she made a bold parenting decision.Yeah She claims that she has made an effort to teach her two girls, ages 16 and 14, to appreciate everyone, regardless of their current socioeconomic status. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear like her youngest has learned the lesson as well as she had anticipated.

The mother made the immediate and firm decision to act, but some of her family didn’t agree with her choices. She shared the story below looking for advice from fellow parents.

I (34F) am a single mother to two girls, ‘Jasmine’ (16F) and ‘Jessica’ (14F). Their dad died when I was pregnant with Jess, and I had to work hard. We hit rock bottom, and I was barely making paycheck to paycheck but I managed to get a degree, become successful and we live well. Point is, I know how [expletive] hard it is to be at the bottom of society, and my daughters know this, which is why I was livid at my daughter’s actions.

Yesterday, Jasmine showed me a video of Jessica cussing a homeless man out and telling him, ‘stop asking me for money, you’d earn it yourself if you weren’t so [expletive] lazy and spending what you earned on substances.

When the homeless man complained about the cold (we live in NE England), Jessica responded ‘Yeah people camp for fun, even in December, you can’t complain, you’re living someone’s holiday.’ Fury was an understatement for what I felt, as I thought I had raised an empathetic daughter.

Along with finding the homeless man and making her apologize and help pay for a hotel room for a night for him (she paid £20), as well as signing her up to volunteer at a food bank – I decided to take her up on her offer of sleeping outside.

I locked her bedroom door so she couldn’t go in, put a sign on it saying Closed for the holidays, pitched a tent in the garden and filled it with blankets and the sleeping bag I used when I was camping in Norway on a family holiday as a teen (aka really bloody thermal).

I slept in the room closest to the garden for that night so I was nearby if anything was to go wrong.

She was reluctant to do it, but chose it over the option of not having access to her phone until the Christmas holidays are over.

In the morning, she was crying about how horrible it was to wake up on a cold mat and get disrupted sleep due to birds. After comforting her, I asked her would she like to do that everyday like the homeless man. It struck a cord with her and she was crying over her actions, while even after the £20 she was rolling her eyes and her apology was not sincere. This afternoon, I came home from work to Jessica making a big meal to donate to the homeless people who live on the road near our house.

I was proud of how she turned over a new leaf, and after taking the food to the people, my sister came over. Apparently, my nephew and Jessica were talking at school, and he asked her about her plans for the afternoon, and she said that she was going to cook for the homeless. My nephew asked what triggered that, and Jess told him everything, which he relayed back to his mum.

My sister said that my punishment was too harsh, and just the £20 and the food bank would have done the trick, and I was acting irrationally due to my past. Now I’m second guessing myself.”

Do you think this mom went to far, or did this punishment fit the crime?