Mother accused of going too far for banning 13-year-old from once-in-a-lifetime middle school graduation trip as punishment: 'This is normal stuff for a 13-year-old'

As the saying goes, the punishment must fit the crime, and if the repercussions are too severe, no one is learning anything, and you're simply going to create a bad memory and lifelong resentment that will get brought up in 20 years at tense family dinners and when your kids attempt to talk to you about the trauma that you unintentionally caused them. 

Of course, as a parent, even if you have the best of intentions, you're not going to get everything right all of the time. And as teenagers, we've all been there, railing against the injustice of our parents' decisions—sometimes we grow up to see things their way and understand, whereas others, we remain certain that we were in the right well into adulthood.

This mother sought to punish her daughter for what she felt were repeated violations of her parent's trust, which included neglecting chores, texting her ex-boyfriend, and disappearing during the family's Thanksgiving dinner. As punishment, she sought to withdraw her daughter from her middle school's special graduation trip—a move that proved to be unpopular when she appealed to this online community to see whether or not she was in the wrong for using the trip attendance as punishment.