If you give a mouse a cookie he’s going to want a glass of milk to go with it. But if you give a cookie to your toxic brother-in-law every time he’s being ill-mannered, impolite, or generally audacious—you’re going to end up with a bad-tempered brother-in-law who isn’t happy about being finally called out on his behavior—even if it’s in a way that is so incredibly delicious. 

Some people never grew up and it shows. But that’s because growth takes effort and self-reflection and some people are incapable of either of those things. So you end up with these «adults» who are weirdly frozen in time with the maturity and wisdom you’d expect from someone much younger. It’s as if the world is passing them by and they are just along for the ride doing the same thing year after year. And that’s fine you can live your life how you want—generally. But the exception is when it negatively impacts other people 

The trouble is, that people will generally put up with bad behavior to a point in order to keep the peace and when no one is confronting them and others are actively enabling them it becomes this thing where their behavior becomes increasingly emboldened and out of control.

This 17-year-old found a way to confront her brother-in-law’s bad behavior in a way that shamed him and put him in his place by giving him a cookie every time he was impolite to others. The exchange sparked a rift in the family which prompted her to share her experience with this online community to see