AITA for my taking away my son’s car keys, and canceling his phone plan for the rest of the summer?

NTA, you definitely have the right to be upset and ground him as a punishment. I don’t have kids so I can’t offer parenting advice, but as someone who grew up with strict parents I can say that method of parenting isn’t always extremely effective. I was caught doing many bad things as a teen (drinking, smoking weed, asking strangers to buy me cigarettes, getting piercings without permission etc.) and while this is obviously deserving of punishment, sometimes my parents harsh reactions made the situation worse. I definitely didn’t stop doing these things because they yelled at me and took my phone/other privileges away it just made me come up with sneakier ways of doing them. Looking back now as an adult, it’s a bit scary the situations I was in sometimes and thankfully nothing bad happened, but I think if my parents were a little more understanding and willing to hear my side before going straight to yelling, I may have been more willing to listen to what they had to say instead of continuing to do what I wanted. I think cancelling the phone plan and taking the car away for the entire summer is a bit of an overreaction. You might be able to come up with an agreement where when he gets his phone back he’s not allowed to have Grindr and you can ask for his phone anytime to ensure he’s keeping up his end. Do you guys have the “find friends” option enabled on your phones? That would be helpful to allow him to still go out/use the car but would help ensure he’s not going to strange places to meet up with strangers. Maybe time restrictions on when he can use the car and how long he can be gone for could be a good step in regaining your trust of him? Again YNTA here and I’m not making any judgements of parenting styles, just from the kids perspective it might be more helpful in the long run to hear him out and come up with a solution you’re both on board with.

/r/AmItheAsshole Thread