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Strict or smart?
By Zayda Slabbekoorn — Written on Dec 29, 2022
Some parents dish out dimes for a clean room, others promise a dollar for an empty dishwasher. This TikTok dad has a much different approach.
“Don’t pay your children to clean their rooms,” he says in a podcast from early December.
The podcast snippet, stitched by another TikToker, is under fire in the comments suggesting this attitude about money will isolate a dad from his children.
However, this TikTok dad seems confident enough in his parenting approach to disregard all the negativity.
“I’m a dad, not an ATM machine.”
How this dad teaches his daughter the ‘importance’ of a dollar
The father explains in the podcast posted on TikTok that he doesn't give his daughter a traditional allowance.
“Daddy, if I keep my room clean,” the dad says recalling a conversation with his daughter, “can I get an allowance? I said, no ma’am.”
He continued on to say, “I can take everything out of your room, and you won’t have that. Now some people think that’s harsh. No, it’s not.”
Comments sway back and forth on whether or not they'd consider this to be 'strict'. A few recall their early childhood days when their parents gave them a dollar or two to keep their bedroom clean.
Others disagree — one commenter says, “I didn’t get an allowance. I was just expected to do my chores or not eat dinner.”
Is the old traditionalist approach to parenting completely out of the picture?
After his daughter gets her job paycheck, this TikTok dad takes a percentage from it.
“It’s like the government,” he says about his tendency to take money from her paychecks. “My daughter babysits. She makes $10 an hour, and I take $4 out of it.”
For what seems to be a valuable life lesson to this dad, many commenters seemed floored that he takes a percentage of his 14-year-old daughter’s earned money.
Many ask for clarification — some say it'd be okay if he was saving it for her, but if he wasn't, it'd just be straight wrong.
Others suggest he likely transports his daughter to babysit and therefore deserves to take his share whether or not he's saving it for her.
“She works for her money and he takes it?” one commenter questions.
“He shouldn’t be taking her money that she worked for,” another user agrees.
Children shouldn’t be rewarded for doing ‘the bare minimum,’ this dad says.
While chores and housework are out of the question, this dad does mention some rare occasions when he has gifted his children with money.
“She saved up to buy a pair of Golden Goose shoes,” he says, “I told her, “Sweetheart, you save up half the money, Daddy will pay the other half’.”
He goes on to say that, even a year and a half later, his 14-year-old daughter has kept the shoes in ‘pristine’ condition — because she “worked for them."
“You pay your children to go above and beyond,” he says, “not to clean their rooms.”
After laying out his unique stance on teaching his children the ‘importance’ of the dollar, he seems confident that this approach is the best way to nudge your kids into success.
TikTok users who say they had similar parents as kids flood into the comments — what they relay is far from an enthusiasm for their parents' choices.
TikTok comments seem confident that this dad is driving a wedge between him and his children.
One TikTok comment says, “This is AMAZING advice — if you never want your adult kids to speak to you ever again.”
Many others agree. One comment reads, “Dude. Let your kids enjoy that little bit of their life with no worries or stress before they hit adulthood.”
It’s clear that teaching kids life skills early on is fundamental to their later success — but is this TikTok dad taking it too far?
Is the so-called ‘importance’ of a dollar this integral to so many areas of a 14-year-olds life?
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a news and entertainment writer who focuses on pop culture analysis and human interest stories. Catch up with them on Instagram or TikTok.