Two Florida parents decided to punish their 13-year-old daughter for "disrespectful behavior" recently by forcing her to hold up a handwritten sign at a highway traffic intersection for over an hour according to Yahoo News.
The handmade sign read "I'm a self-entitled teenager w/ NO respect for authority. I'm also super smart, yet I have 3 D's because I DON'T CARE!"
Gentry and Renee Nickell from Crestview, F.L. said they made their daughter hold the humiliating sign at U.S. Highway 90 because they "didn't know what else to do" according to a report by the Northwest Florida Daily News.
"We got to the point where we just didn't know what else to do," Renee Nickell said, adding that a Christian counselor gave her the idea years ago according to Northwest Florida Daily News. "We just felt like she just kind of gave up."
The sign, seen by dozens of drivers, caused such a commotion that someone felt the need to alert the police.
The teenager's behavior had become "increasingly out of hand" after her uncle was killed in Afghanistan back in Dec. 2011 according to the Northwest Florida Daily News. The entire family was left devastated, but their daughter was the one who decided to start acting disrespectful towards her family and teachers after the incident.
After trying many different methods, which included grounding the teen, the couple eventually decided to try a sign, feeling that the embarrassment would be enough for her to get her act together.
The family was not expected people driving by to take photos of their daughter and post them on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. The photos have since gone viral and become a topic of debate throughout the U.S. as to whether or not the family went too far.
"I wasn't even thinking about what the public was going to think," Renee Nickell said according to Northwest Florida Daily News. "I was thinking about our daughter. It was for her to be in the public and recognize what she had done wrong. I asked her, 'Were you scarred? Traumatized?' She said, 'No mom, I knew it was coming.'"
The sign has already had a positive impact on the teenager, as Gentry Nickell told the media after the incident that she hugged him in front of a police officer and told him she was sorry for everything she's done.
In 2012, another Florida family made their teenage daughter stand at a busy street corner with a sign that read "I sneak boys in at 3 am and disrespect my parents and grandmother" according to Yahoo.
The Nickell family understands why people are so upset, but also feels that it is nobody's business regarding how they teach their children the difference between right and wrong.
"Walk a mile in someone's shoes," Gentry Nickell said in a press statement. "We are a family that has been (through) recent trauma and it took a desperate attempt to show our daughter we are not letting her go, just like our Lord did for us."
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