Why is she taking his video games away instead of addressing the underlying problem? 

Many parents think their kids should be directing their own lives. They think their 3-year-old will let them know when they’re ready to be potty trained, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Kids need their parents to plan their lives and work with them on hitting milestones. Some milestones, like speaking in full sentences, will come naturally to a kid, but if your kid isn’t speaking in full sentences and they’re 4, it’s your responsibility as a parent to get them some help. A child cannot always teach or help themselves. Oftentimes, they can’t do either of those things, even if they desperately want to. 

Most kids are potty trained by age 3, but throughout childhood, they will have some accidents. The reason isn’t that kids are particularly undisciplined, but that the muscles that allow adults to hold it in for a 3-hour meeting aren’t fully developed in kids yet. Kids don’t want to wet the bed, but they sometimes do, and there’s no use in screaming at your kid about it because you’re mad that you have to wash their sheets. If it happens once a year from ages 6 to 13, you have nothing to worry about as a parent. If your kid regularly wets themselves while fully awake and is in 8th grade, you should take further action with a professional. 

The mom in this story, u/Optimal-Sherbet8836, took to Reddit to figure out whether she’s the bad guy for taking away her son’s video games as punishment for his bathroom accidents. Unsurprisingly, the online community of judgment-makers said she was a bad guy for punishing a probable medical issue.