A mom’s unique punishment for her messy 5-year-old has parents on the internet divided. The mom, who goes by Tabatha Marie on TikTok, recently shared a video explaining that she tossed all of her son’s toys into trash bags after he refused to clean up his bedroom. Now, some are accusing the mom of going too far while trying to teach her little boy a lesson.
Tabatha Marie says she spent two days asking her son to clean his room. His response? “No, you clean it, Mommy.”
She did the cleaning herself but not in the way her son expected. She bagged up all of his toys as trash, then showed TikTok viewers footage of his newly empty bedroom. “Momma is not raising disrespectful men,” she writes. “It is not a mommy’s job or a woman’s job to do anything. You make the mess, clean it up. You see a momma struggling, help her. Don’t sit there and let a woman struggle. My babies will learn this quickly.”
The video has gotten over 23,000 comments since it was posted on March 30, and it’s sparked a heated debate among parents. Some applaud the mom’s efforts and think she’s raising her son to be responsible and respectful.
“Good job, Mom,” one person writes. “People that don’t agree also have kids who don’t respect anyone, including their parents.”
“I’m 18, and my mom did that when I was probably 10 because I refused [to clean my room],” another person adds. “After that one week with no toys, I learned real fast to clean up my own room.”
Others say a 5-year-old isn’t yet capable of cleaning and organizing his things all by himself, and they think she was too hard on him. “Judging by the toys, he’s too young for that entire responsibility,” one person writes. “If you want it clean, start by helping him and then work up to him doing it alone.”
Some commenters even say their parents’ strict rules about chores and cleaning gave them lifelong struggles. “My mom used to do something very similar at a very similar age,” one writes. “It traumatized me forever, and in adult life, cleaning is still an extremely stressful task.”
Tabatha Marie responded to the comments in a follow-up video, and she explained that her son’s toys did not actually get thrown away. Instead, they’re stashed in the basement until he earns them back.
“Yes, his room is still cleared out, and no, your comments did not affect me,” she says in the video update. “All the negative ones didn’t affect me. As a matter of fact, they made me laugh because I think it’s really funny that you guys think I wouldn’t try to do activities with my son or try to offer to help clean the bedroom with him.”
The mom says her son has been cleaning his room by himself for at least a year, and he knows what he’s supposed to do. He was only punished because he insists that cleaning should be his parents’ job, and she’s not OK with that.
Whether you agree with her approach or think she needs to take it down a notch, every parent can relate to the struggle of messy bedrooms, too much clutter and kids who occasionally try to bend the rules. What’s important is handling the problem in a way that’s loving, productive and healthy for your child, and the responses to this video prove there are many different ways to do that. Hopefully this little boy’s toys make it out of the basement and back to his room soon.
