A mom revealed the list of family rules that her teenage daughter must abide by and her TikTok followers are split on how appropriate one of them is.
We’ll encounter a wide variety of rules, regulations, and conventions that we’re supposed to follow as we go through life but it seems that doesn’t stop the people around us from making their own.
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And granted, some of these lists concern specific occasions as it’s common enough for people to want their weddings to go a certain way . And while that’s often less true for funerals, it’s still not unheard of for those considering their mortality to have some specific expectations for their families when they pass away .
But we tend to hold people’s rules under more scrutiny when others are supposed to spend a much larger part of their lives following them. That’s why rules for potential romantic partners tend to ignite so much debate and as we’ll soon see, that’s especially true when a parent makes their rules for their children public.
If you take a look at Kat Clark’s TikTok account, you’ll quickly find that it documents her adventures with her two daughters, who are 11 and 19 years old.
But while they appear to get along well in Clark’s videos , it seems that this hasn’t come as a result of her trying to be her daughters’ buddy instead of their mother.
Because as she shared in a video uploaded on May 4 when her oldest was 18 , she has laid down some rules that she expects them to take seriously.
Although we can find that some of them are more flexible than we might have expected, others are fairly strict. This is particularly true of the one that split her followers.
But before we get to that one, we’ll find that her first two are some of the most straightforward.
The first is that she expects her kids to have their location data enabled on their phones. But since she said she’s unlikely to check this data unless they’re running late, this rule is more in place in case she needs it.
Similarly, her rule expecting honesty from them cuts both ways and she doesn’t intend to sugarcoat any tough questions they may have about her.
And while it’s common for some parents to try and prevent their children from going to parties, Clark has a simple rule in place that depends on her child’s age at the time.
As she put it, “General rule of thumb is if you’re in Grade Nine, you’re home by nine. If you’re in Grade 10, you’re home by 10 and so on and so on. Once you’re 18, I really don’t care when you get home.”
She also requires her children to engage in some sort of sport whether it’s traditional team sports, dance, skating, or surfing (they live in Australia). This is to keep them from being on their phones all the time.
And while she doesn’t consider it the end of the world if one of her daughters drops out of school, they have to secure either a solid business plan or a stable job before they can do so.
She also has no problem with either of them forming romantic relationships, but requires that they listen to her if she identifies a serious problem with these partners.
Finally, she inspired the most debate in her comments by saying, “My kids pay rent as soon as they’re 18 or have a job.”
Because while commenters found her party rule clever and largely agreed with her rule about sports, charging rent has always been a controversial parenting tactic.
For some, that’s just an unnecessary imposition on those who are only starting to make their own money.
But while some commenters suggested that this practice is unheard of in their families, others saw nothing wrong with it and felt that charging kids rent teaches them at an early age to budget their money wisely.
This is especially true if that rent goes to an account that the teen can access once they move out. And while some claimed that this is what Clark said she did in a follow-up video, that clip doesn’t appear to be on her account.
Naturally, it makes the debate even more heated when it’s unclear whether this is indeed her plan.
h/t: TikYok | @katclark86
