Neighbor demands homeowner buy her 8-year-old son a new bike because her son left his bike in the homeowner's yard overnight and "ruined" it when his sprinklers turned on: 'She threatened to call the cops, and I said go ahead'

Bearing responsibility for your actions is one of the basal lessons of growing up, one on which our understanding of the world is based. Accountability is an important trait, understanding that we're responsible for our own actions and cleaning up our own messes. Parents play the most decisive role in teaching this, with the final say on all corrective behavior their kid faces. Ultimately, even teachers and other authority members at school won't be able to impart this if the parent is unwilling to enforce the lesson, or rails against the school for "daring" to punish their child.

Parents who attempt to displace blame for something their kids have done by accusing others are teaching the wrong lesson: that not only do their actions have no consequence, but that someone else will take the blame for any time something goes wrong in their life. While this might come from a place of the parent wanting to shield their child from "harm," but are inadvertently harming them more as a long-term prospect. A child who is never at fault grows up to be an adult who is never at fault, and having never learned the responsibility of their actions, you'd have to imagine that all responsibilities, like work and relationships, that depend on self-accountability, will suffer.

At the end of the day it stinks for this kid that he has a "ruined" bike, I guarantee he would have remembered the lesson of "I left my bike outside on my neighbor's lawn overnight, and it got ruined and I should take better care of my things" far better than the lesson here which is something along the lines of "I left my bike outside on my neighbor's lawn and mom said it was the neighbor's fault."

How a bike getting wet ruins it is a little perplexing, and it really just sounds like the foam that makes up the seat was wet or something. Not only that, but the very idea that the homeowner bears any responsibility here is wholly entitled and nonsensical on the part of the mother.