Bryan Thornhill is a father of two from Virginia, who can’t stand bullies. Even less so, when the bully is his own son.
A couple of years ago, his 10-year-old son Hayden bullied one of his classmates on the school bus. For this reason, he was suspended from riding the bus home. When Thornhill found out, he knew he had to do something about it before this bullying thing took over his son and he couldn’t help him anymore.
So, he came up with an idea to teach Hayden a lesson and he even filmed the process so that other parents could possibly be helped by it.
“My son has finally gotten in trouble on the bus enough that he actually got kicked off the bus for three days, because he was being a little bully, which I do not tolerate,” he explains in the video while we can see he is driving his car following his son who is running to school in the rain.
So, basically Thornhill’s punishment to his son was that he made him run to school every day after he got banned from the bus until he had learned his lesson. On that particular day, it was raining, but to Thornhill, this didn’t mean Hayden couldn’t run to school as normal.
Although this kind of punishment was unusual and, some might say, harsh, Thornhill also added humorous touches to his video to make it lighter.
“The good news is, I guess, he keeps up a pretty good mile pace at six miles per hour so far,” he said.
Now, what was the outcome of this? Did Hayden learn his lesson?
Well, according to his dad, since he had started running, his behavior had started improving and his teachers approved of it, which was a really positive sign that dad’s idea was indeed effective. As many people commented below the video that was later uploaded on YouTube, through this kind of punishment the boy both was taught that bullying is unacceptable in his family and school, while he also got a good workout.
“I’m with this father. Nothing wrong in this. Not at all. The Young boy is gettting healthy as well. The boy is gonna learn how to treat his coleagues properly from now on,” someone commented.
Indeed, as Thornhill shared in a later post on Facebook, Hayden, after he had the chance to run to school for so many days, decided he liked running and wanted to become a runner.
“Hayden now is curious to see exactly how fast he can run to school in morning. So we are gonna see what he can do and time and distance it. He know is motivated to become a gold medal runner,” he wrote.
However, not all the feedback Thornhill got for his idea was positive. In fact, there were people who disagreed with him and considered it a severe punishment.
“This screams bad power relationship. Your kid bullies some other kids, so in response, you bully him back?” wrote someone who disagreed with this dad’s practices.
However, Thornhill still had an answer for those who disapproved of the punishment, saying that it’s a healthy punishment since it involves exercise and that parents need to be actual parents for their children and not friends.
Whether one agrees with this dad or not, they cannot deny that it is a creative idea, and, in this particular case, it seemed to work.
You can watch the video of Thornhill explaining the situation below.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
