Teenager Punished By Holding Up A Sign In Traffic For 90 Minutes: Criticism Follows From The Florida Parents' Unique Punishment

A Florida teenager was forced to hold up a sign at busy intersection for 90 minutes as a punishment.

Gentry and Renee Nickell of Crestview, Fla. said they didn't think anything but teaching their daughter a lesson when they forced her to hold up the sign as her punishment.

It read: "I'm a self-entitled teenager w/no respect for authority. I'm also super smart, yet I have 3 'D's' because I DON'T CARE."

As people passed the daughter whose name has not been released, somebody called the police, Yahoo! reported. Crestview police records showed that the daughter was "aware of her punishment."

"I asked her, 'Were you scarred? Traumatized?'" Renee Nickell told the Northwest Florida Daily News. "She said, 'No mom, I knew it was coming'."

The police call didn't stop what the rest of the Crestview community was going to think about the incident. Yahoo! reported that photos taken of the daughter and the sign she was holding went viral on Facebook.

It caused criticism both negative and positive.

 "I wasn't even thinking about what the public was going to think," Mrs. Nickell told the Northwest Florida Daily News. "I was thinking about our daughter. It was for her to be in the public and recognize what she had done wrong."

Mrs.Nickell told the newspaper that her brothers was killed in Afghanistan in 2011. She said her kids were close to him, which includes the punished daughter. Since his death, the 13-year-old daughter's grades have dropped and according to Nickell, has become more defiant at home.

"We just felt like she just kind of gave up," Renee told the newspaper. There was no mention of counseling after her brother's death.

"We spend so much focus on not wanting to hurt a child's self-esteem that we don't do anything," the Nickells said in a statement defending the punishment. "Walk a mile in someone's shoes. We must undo at home what the world tries to tell her is better."

The Nickells said there was no cell phone to take away from the daughter because she doesn't have one and they continued to have her attend church because they said they wanted the Christian values to be instilled in her.