I am a mother of a seven-year-old girl named Anna. Since her father died, I have been raising my daughter alone and have to work hard to make ends meet.
That’s why my mother-in-law, my late husband’s mother, looks after Anna after school.
She lives five minutes away from us, and until recently I thought I could trust her.
That evening, as usual, I returned home late, around eight. It was already dark.
And then I saw something that literally paralyzed me: Anna, curled up on the rug by the door, with her head down, with a blanket on her shoulders.
She was sleeping… on the street. In front of the door of our house.
I rushed to her. Her little face was cold, her hands were icy. I gently woke her up, heartbroken. She didn’t cry. She looked at me calmly and simply said:
– My grandmother kicked me out because I didn’t listen. She said it was my punishment.
At first I thought I misheard.
Later, when I made her something warm, she told me what happened. She had been behaving badly during the day: she didn’t want to do her homework, she was interrupted, she was angry.
And instead of talking to her or taking the toy away, my mother-in-law decided to… throw her out on the street.
– She told me to wait for you. She closed the door and went to her room.
I didn’t know what to say. I was shocked, I was hurt. How could someone I trusted consider this method of upbringing acceptable?
A child, alone, on the street, in winter? She could have gotten sick. Anything could have happened to her.
The worst part was that for my mother-in-law this punishment was “normal”. The next day when I called her, she simply said:
– That’s how it was done in our country. It quickly puts children in their place.
No. Not with me. And not with my daughter.
Since that evening, Anna no longer goes to her grandmother.
I found another solution, albeit a more expensive one. Because now I would rather deny myself something than find my daughter again… on the street, alone, punished for being just a child.
