16-year-old destroys 15-year-old stepsister's $6000 purse, parents force her to pay it back and she flips out

JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor

Jul 24, 2026 10:00 AM EDT

Is it right to force your children to pay for their mistakes?

When you're a teenager, everything seems so hugely consequential. Everything is turned up a million degrees, and it's either bleak or technicolor. This can lead to some pretty interesting decisions. You can mess up pretty badly and end up paying the price for it. That is, if you have parents who hold you accountable for your actions. Which is what they should do. Part of good parenting is not letting your child off the hook. If they never suffer the consequences of their actions, then they will never learn right from wrong. It's not always easy, though, in these moments, to let them experience the full breadth of it.

When you do something as drastic as ruin a $6000 purse just because you were jealous, then you better be prepared to face the full consequences of that action. You may ask, "Why would a teenager have a purse that cost that much?" But you would be asking the wrong questions. What matters is that it was destroyed in an act of jealousy, and that is not a good behavior to encourage. No matter what problems you have in life, purposefully ruining someone's stuff just to make them angry on a personal level just doesn't make sense. It's not how adults deal with their problems, and it isn't how children should either. And if they do, they should learn to never do that again.

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*^{Subjects are models representing story}*
*An upset teenage girl looks into the camera*

Am I in the wrong for making my daughter pay back 6000 dollars for destroying her step sister purse?

When my daughter was around 10 I remarried to her stepmom who had her own daughter who was 9. They got along for the most part until recently. In short my daughter is jealous. I'll call any daughter Ash. My stepdaughter ( Emma fake name) has recently reconnected with her grandparents on her father's side. The grandparents have money to burn and are retired.

I want to point out that before they came into the picture my daughter was the one to receive nicer gifts from my her mom side of the family. Example: they're have been a few time Ash went on vacations that my step daughter wasn't allowed to go on or got more expensive stuff. I can't stop my ex wife on spoiling her or her family.

So the issue has been Ash has been jealous of Emma recently because Emma's grandparents are giving her stuff. That stuff will sometimes be in our home. I'm not going to ban her bringing her gift to her place she lives at 50% of the time.

One example is Emma got the newest phone and my daughter wanted her iPhone upgraded. I told her we don't have the money at the moment and she said it was unfair his step sister got the newest phone. She wasn't very happy. We had a conversation and brought up the stuff she has gotten but Emma hasn't over the years.

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Well Ash decided to destroy the purse. She cut some of the leather and popped some of the seams. My wife's ex husband was ped and my wife replaced the purse with her own money (we really didn't have that to blow) I discussed it with my wife and we are making Ash pay back the purse. We already took 4000 that she earned this summer form her job and made it clear that for her next paychecks she is to give us 50% until it is paid.

Ash has been upset some and she ran to her mom. Who has had a lot of things to say about this She claims we are being too harsh.

This teenager had to learn a hard lesson and fast. It's tough that things are not always fair and equitable, and we should be upset about that where it's productive. And step-sibling relationships can be really difficult to go through, and there are a lot of conflicting interests at play. But they should never be solved by destroying stuff. That's a pretty childish reaction, and the type of lesson you should be learning in your teen years. That's what played out here, and keep scrolling to see what they had to say.