I Use Strict Discipline With My Kids — My Parents Say I’m Traumatizing Them the Same Way They Traumatized Me

A father of two thought he was teaching responsibility. Instead, he ended up in a heated argument at home and a harsh public reckoning after sharing two punishments he says were meant to enforce discipline.

In his telling, it started with typical parenting friction: a kid pushing limits, a parent trying to hold a line, and a spouse furious about how that line was enforced. But the details of what he did—and how far he was willing to take it—turned the conversation into something much heavier than a disagreement about screen time or chores.

A late-night phone turned into a painful morning

The dad said his oldest son stayed up late on his phone the night before school, even after being told not to. When morning came, the child woke up with a headache.

Rather than letting him stay home, the father sent him to school anyway. He framed it as a direct consequence: if the headache was the result of staying up too late, then missing school would be an easy escape from the lesson.

But he also admitted the decision didn’t land the way he expected. He wrote that it “ended up hurting him real bad,” and that he felt “really guilty” afterward. At home, his wife “berating” him wasn’t a side note—it was a sign that, in their household, this wasn’t viewed as tough love. It was viewed as him pushing punishment past the point of sense.

The chores fight with the younger child escalated fast

His second example involved his younger son, who he described as refusing to listen to him and being a “mamas boy.” When his wife was away, he said he “could NOT get him to do anything at all,” including chores.

He described the child “slouching on the TV,” ignoring instructions. The dad’s response wasn’t taking away privileges or ending screen time. Instead, he used the television itself as the punishment.

He said he cast his phone to the TV and played something he knew his son was afraid of: the Michael Jackson “Thriller” music video. Then, by his own description, he “held the door shut.”

His wife’s reaction was immediate and blunt. She told him he was “extremely out of touch for such a punishment,” suggesting that whatever point he was trying to make, the method crossed a line.

He asked if he was wrong—and got an answer he didn’t expect

After describing both episodes, he asked outsiders for judgment: was he wrong for parenting this way?

He later returned with an update that made it clear what he heard back. “Welll the general consensus is I am a asshole,” he wrote, acknowledging that most people didn’t see these as reasonable consequences.

He also said that reflecting on the responses helped him see what his actions “may have caused.” That’s a notable shift from the earlier framing, where the focus was on obedience and “learning lessons.” It suggests he started to see a broader impact than just whether the kids did chores or got to stay up.

Still, the update didn’t read like a full reversal. It read like a partial one.

The apology split showed where he’s drawing the line

In his update, the father said he spoke with his youngest son after reading the responses. That implies he recognized that fear-based punishment—especially while “holding the door shut”—could have left the child feeling trapped and unsafe, not simply corrected.

But when it came to the older son, he drew a hard boundary. “As for my eldest I did NOT apologise,” he wrote. “The kid needs to learn his lesson!”

That one decision reveals the core disagreement still sitting in the home: whether discipline should be enforced through discomfort no matter the cost, or whether a parent should acknowledge when a consequence has caused more harm than intended.

In practice, that kind of split approach can create whiplash inside a family. One child gets a talk, the other gets doubled down on. And the spouse who already felt “berating” levels of anger may see it as selective accountability—changing only where the criticism is loudest.

People zeroed in on fear, control, and the “held the door shut” detail

Even without a full comment-by-comment breakdown included in the source material, the dad’s summary of the response makes it clear where the sharpest reactions likely landed. The younger child’s punishment wasn’t just “strict.” It was deliberately frightening, paired with physical control of the environment.

That combination is what tends to alarm people: not a parent shutting off a TV, but a parent using a child’s known fear as leverage and then preventing them from leaving the room. Read plainly, it’s a moment where discipline blurred into intimidation.

The older child’s story also raised red flags because the father acknowledged it “hurt him real bad.” That’s not a typical outcome of a normal consequence like losing phone privileges. It suggests a mismatch between intention and result, which is often where strict discipline stops being “teaching” and starts being something else.

At minimum, the responses pushed the dad to reconsider how his actions landed emotionally and physically—something his wife was already trying to get him to see in real time.

At home, the bigger problem may be the parenting gap

What’s left in the wake of these two punishments is more than a question of who was “right.” The father and mother appear to have fundamentally different instincts about consequences, and the kids are caught in the middle of that mismatch.

The dad described the younger child as more loyal to his mom, and the dynamic he painted—obedience struggles when she’s gone—suggests the children may already be navigating two different rule systems. When one system includes fear-based punishments and the other rejects them, kids learn quickly which parent feels safer to resist and which parent feels scarier to cross.

In his final line, he called the experience “rather enlightening,” surprised that it was public feedback that got through. Whether that changes what happens next is unclear. But the household argument he described—his wife furious, him feeling guilty but also refusing to apologize to one child—doesn’t sound resolved. It sounds like the opening chapter of a much bigger fight about what kind of authority he wants to be, and what kind of home his kids are growing up in.

You can read his full account in the original post.