Mum's tough ultimatum to son goes viral

The letter posted to Facebook. Photo / Facebook

A single mother fed up with her son's bad behaviour penned a letter to him and posted it to Facebook - with a huge response.

After lying about his homework, telling his mother she wasn't the boss of him and declaring he could pay his own way with earnings from his YouTube videos, Estella Havisham responded to her 13-year-old son with a note outlining expenses he should contribute to.

"Since you seem to have forgotten you are only 13, and I'm the parent, and you won't be controlled, I guess you need a lesson in independence," she wrote.

The following letter, which Havisham says she accidentally made public, received mixed responses of support and criticism.

Read the original post here.

She says at first her son screwed up the note but eventually was remorseful, apologising and asking what he could do to retrieve items removed from his room.

As the post garnered attention, she added a follow up post: "An explanation to the Open Letter to my Son."

Here she clarifies her initial letter and her parenting style explaining:

"...I am not trying to make a buck off my kid; otherwise I would have sold him to the circus a long time ago ;) This came down to a 13 year old telling his mother she had no right to enforce certain rules, and had no place to "control" him. I made the point to show what life would look like if I was not his "parent", but rather a "roommate". It was a lesson about gratitude and respect from the very beginning. Sometimes, you have to lose it all to realize how well you really had it."

What do you think of the letter?