It’s no secret that young kids use the Internet to explore their emerging sexuality, often in questionable, occasionally dangerous ways. (And yes, I am very much speaking from personal experience.) But when Louisville dad Kevin Jones discovered his 10-year-old daughter was chatting with anonymous boys on the Internet, he decided to teach her a lesson by dressing her up in pigtails and posting photos of her wearing a shirt saying, “I am 10 years old.”
A few weeks ago, Jones discovered that his daughter (whose name has been redacted due to her young age) was setting up various social media accounts, where she pretended to be anywhere between 14 and 18 years old. (As you can see from the above photos, Jones’ daughter looks fairly mature for her age; according to his post, she’s already 5’9’’.)
“She claims to be in love and going out with a boyfriend which is completely against my rules!!!!” Jones wrote in his Facebook post. “I uncovered that she has been doing this for quite some time.”
Instead of grounding her, or turning safe settings on, or even banning her from the Internet for a few weeks, Jones decided to teach her “the consequences behind her [actions].” So he dressed his daughter up in an “age-defining” T-shirt, giving her a Sofia the First backpack and adorning her hair with little-girl barrettes and bows.
As you can probably imagine, the responses to Jones’ unique method of punishment have been somewhat mixed. While some commenters were supportive, applauding the post as a “nice creative way to discipline” a child, others expressed concern that Jones was needlessly embarrassing his daughter, and that it would lead to her being bullied. “Lmaaoo she just gone act out even more lol,” one person wrote.
It’s understandable to have mixed feelings about this tactic. On one hand, it’s certainly far more creative than merely banning your kid from the Internet for a few weeks, only to have them log back on and start chatting with strangers all over again. On the other, it’s an understatement to say this kind of thing is an example of parental overreach, to the point where one can scarcely imagine how Jones will react when his daughter is actually old enough to be having sex IRL. (Also, doesn’t dressing her up in pigtails and princess bows make her more alluring to the type of predators he’s ostensibly trying to protect her from?)
One thing is clear from Jones’ photos, though: He better get some sort of financial compensation from this post going viral, because that is the face of a girl who’s gonna need decades of therapy.
H/T Elite Daily | Photo via Kevin Jones/Facebook