Mom Teaches ‘Ungrateful’ 6-Yr-Old Daughter A Valuable Lesson For Throwing Her Present In Trash

A Florida mom’s post has gone viral after she posted a “long mom rant” on Facebook. Haley Hassell uploaded photographs of her daughter crying after she threw a LOL pencil case in the trash. Apparently, her mom had to go to three different stores to get her daughter the pencil case she had been dying to get. Instead of being ecstatic like Haley expected, her 6-year-old daughter Presleigh seemed less than pleased.

She threw it in the trash stating that the case was stupid and that everyone in her class had the same case and she didn’t want it anymore. Her mom was livid and thought Presleigh was being ungrateful.

She realized perhaps her daughter needed a lesson in gratitude. Haley had an idea to give her daughter a new pencil case that was a bit more minimalistic: a plastic sandwich bag with the words ‘Presleigh’s pencil bag’ scrawled on it, according to The Daily Mail.

Haley wrote: She lost her mind! Suddenly the LOL box she just trashed was good enough and the ziploc bag was horrible…but it’s too late for all that.

The LOL pencil case instead went to a child who’d be happier to get it, according to the single mom who donated it. In her “long mom rant” post on Facebook, she wrote: Mrs. Presleigh learned a tough love lesson today. I went to 3 different stores to get that LOL pencil box you see in the trash there. When I surprised her with it this afternoon (just knowing she would be ecstatic) she stared at it and threw it in the trash and slammed the bedroom door. She yelled “that’s stupid, everyone in my class has that..I don’t want it anymore!”

“..WHHHHAT STOP COME AGAIN? OK So by this time there was Probably smoke coming out of my ears and I’m trying real hard not to completely lose it on this kid that I have worked so hard to completely take care of financially on my own & make sure she always gets what she needs and then some. BUT I thought I had always taught her to be grateful & know how lucky she was but apparently sis needed a small wake up call!! SO before completely going Madea mad on my child I check myself and say, “okay that’s fine, let me go get the one you’re going to use”…came back with her new pencil box, which is the ziploc bag. She lost her mind!”

“Suddenly the LOL Box she just trashed was good enough and the ziploc bag was horrible…but it’s too late for all that. I told her to get the LOL out of the trash and we would be finding a child to give it to tomorrow..one whose mommy and daddies don’t have money for any school supplies or someone who may not even have a mommy or daddy. I explained to her she’s not entitled to anything special and she is taking for granted how lucky she is… So for now she will be using a ziploc bag & will personally be delivering the nice box to a child that could benefit from it. Maybe I over react sometimes but I would’ve done anything to have all the things she does as a child. I truly believe Changing your perception & just being grateful can turn around any situation in life. 

Her post did receive tons of praise. Ty Harris found the whole thing funny and wrote:  lmao this is so hilarious while Facebook user Sherrie Liechty Salem praised Haley’s parenting, stating: So cool! People want to see moms and dads teaching kids those valuable lessons, and you did it so well!

But not every comment was kind and welcoming. According to Good Morning America, Haley said, “I got personal messages in my inbox saying that I was a monster mother … they were saying I was a bad parent and bad parents raise bad children,” she said. “I was just on a rant when I wrote it. I didn’t think people were going to share it. People were saying I was publicly shaming my daughter, which I don’t really agree with.”

Hassell said the mother and daughter ended up mailing the pencil case to a 5-year-old girl in Utah and sent over a few other school supplies. How did Presleigh deal with the whole incident? “Presleigh thought that was really cool. She understood once we were shopping for other children,” she said, adding that it gave Presleigh “perspective.”