As parents watch their children get older, they like to think they can be more trusting of what they get up to behind their backs.
Should they demonstrate maturity and responsibility, they might give them increasingly more freedom with each year.
But until they reach the age of 18, they are still legally children, and must remember that their parents still have the final say in what they can and cannot do.
Redditor Old-Concept-7207 thought that he could trust his 16-year-old daughter enough to give her an ample amount of freedom.
But when he got wind of a dangerous plan she and her friends were concocting, the original poster (OP) felt he had no other choice to pull the plug on something he had previously given her permission for.
After this led his daughter to giving him the silent treatment, then OP took to the subReddit “Am I the A**hole” (AITA), where he asked fellow Redditors:
“AITA for not letting daughter go to music festival after I accidentally saw her texts?”
The OP explained how a technical snafu revealed some worrisome information of his daughter’s upcoming plans, prompting him to quickly pull a stop to them.
“I’m a single dad to 3 kids, oldest is 16.”
“Her and I usually get along.”
“For a dad and a 16 year old, I think it could be a lot worse.”
“Story starts when for umteenth time our Apple icloud got screwed up.”
“Apple support hasn’t helped me with this issue, or they haven’t given me a working solution.”
“I’m not a tech guy at all, but what happens is sometimes our texts would show up in each others inboxes sometimes.”
“But not on all devices.”
“I’ve had my younger sons text show up on my laptop, my texts show up on daughters phone, etc.”
“Now I’m usually a trusting dad and I delete these threads without reading them as soon as I notice they’re there, but this time it was different.”
“This may give away our relative location but whatever, my daughter is planning on attending a certain music fest this weekend with some friends.”
“She has a job and bought her ticket on her own. I originally had no issue, she’s usually responsible.”
“Well I saw an interesting message in a thread with her friend that showed up in my phone.”
“The message read ‘we should be able to sneak it in if we hide it well’ so… I snooped.”
“I opened the thread and read it.”
“I was shocked at what I saw.”
“She was talking about alcohol.”
“Her and her friends are planning on sneaking in alcohol, marijuana, and something I have personally never heard of called ‘molly’.”
“I legitimately don’t know what that is so as you can assume by this point I’m freaking out.”
“I scroll up to find the outfits daughter plans on wearing as well.”
“When I say ‘outfits’ that’s me being very generous because to me it looks like just underwear, not an outfit.”
“I decided that I wasn’t going to allow her to go to the festival.”
“I thought about letting her go but making sure she’s actually wearing clothes and checking her bag before, but even if her bag is clean when she leaves the house I know she will find a way to get the drugs.”
“I told her no it’s not happening, and I would have never okayed it in the first place if I knew her plans.”
“Her and I haven’t been speaking.”
“She thinks I’m wrong to take away something she spent her own money on.”
“I told her it’s not the concert, it’s what she’s planning on doing there I can’t possibly be okay with if I know about it in advance.”
“She’s asking me if I’m now going to reimburse her for the ticket if I don’t allow her to go.”
“I don’t think I need to do that either.”
“Maybe I’m being a crappy dad, but we are not that well off.”
“I make enough to provide for my family but not enough to where I can pull $300 out of my wallet to give her for a concert ticket.”
“Am I an a**hole for doing this?”
“I don’t think there’s a way I can let her go and be confident she won’t be messing around in stuff she shouldn’t be.”
Fellow Redditors weighed in on where they believed the OP fell in this particular situation by declaring:
- NTA: Not the A**hole
- YTA: You’re the A**hole
- ESH: Everybody Sucks Here
- NAH: No A**holes Here
The Reddit community agreed that the OP was not the a**hole for refusing to let his daughter go to the festival.
Everyone agreed that the OP was only doing what every responsible parent should do, and was saving his daughter from what could have been a very dangerous situation.
“NTA.”
‘People end up in sketchy situations at those festivals.”
“She has plenty of time to go when she’s not literally 16.”- crunchyleafs_
‘NTA.”
“She will likely hate you further, but I encourage you to talk to the other parents.”- DeterminedArrow
“NTA.”
“She’s underage.”
“Even if pot and booze are legal, they’re not for a 16 year old.”
“And molly is not legal.”
“It’s ‘unfortunate’ for her party plans that you saw her posts, but it is ABSOLUTELY best for her safety and health.”
“Reimbursing her tickets would be kind, but, she’s being punished, this isn’t about you having to ask her to not go because something unexpected happened.”- peithecelt
“NTA.”
“I get you’re trying to protect your kid.”
“You should probably talk about the drugs an alcohol with her.”
“While I personally don’t think weed is a big deal Molly on the other hand is way more serious.”
“However with that being said she is 16 and you may have stopped her now but I guarantee she will get more sneaky and secretive if you don’t have a serious discussion with her.”
“I was a 16 year old girl once we have our ways.”- La_Villanelle_
“NTA.”
“It’s called parenting.”
“If you did not already know what Molly is; you probably should educate yourself about what kids are doing these days and how to protect your kids.”
“The scary thing is there is so much poison out there, fentanyl.”
“It only takes one time; one pill, and there can be an OD / death.”
“Kids are playing Russian Roulette.”
“They have no idea what they are really taking when ingesting a pill.”
“It could be a completely different drug than what the thought they were given or bought.”
“The dosage could be exponentially high and kill them.”
“Worse, they do not even need to willingly take this garbage.”
“Sometimes they are just coming in contact with the substance unknowingly or slipped in their drink from someone else.”- ResidentObligation30
“NTA and FYI Molly = Ecstasy.”-jameskidd04
“NTA.”
“And I cannot believe I’m saying this, because I’m not sure when I truly became old, but you should contact the parents of the other children she was planning on attending the concert with and update them as well.”- fzooey78
“NTA.”
“I have been to many music festivals and large concerts from the ages of 22-35 and once rescued a girl about your daughter’s age who was wandering around alone at a festival at 2 AM, extremely messed up to where she had no idea what was going on.”
“When I found her a group of older men were trying to lure her to their campsite and I shudder to think what would have happened had they succeeded.”
“I told the guys to leave her alone and grabbed her arm to bring her with my group instead.”
“She was hanging all over my boyfriend, asking if he was HER boyfriend, and trying to kiss him even though we all just met – that’s how out of her mind she was.”
“Her friends were nowhere to be found.”
“We brought her safely to the medics.”
“Young people dabbling in drugs and alcohol can be very dangerous, especially in high temperatures and outside of their comfort zone.”
“Not only are there people that prey on teenagers in that situation, but there is also the risk of overdose because they don’t know how potent the drugs are or how much they can handle.”
“Since they are, assumedly, new to this they won’t know how to take care of each other if one of them takes too much of something.”
“I have seen people puking on the ground barely able to move while their friends just laughed about ‘how f’d up’ their friend was instead of doing anything to help.”
“The party aspect often becomes more important than the aspect of being good humans to each other.”
“It’s sad, but it’s a reality.”
“Teenagers aren’t equipped mentally to deal with that nor do they have the experience to know when their friend needs a medic.”
“Molly makes you very thirsty, thus you drink more booze, and it makes you not want to eat which is a bad combo at a hot festival.”
“The comedown can cause depression and throw off your state of mind for a few days, also a bad combo for already moody teens.”
“Not to mention the risk of it not even being molly/MDMA and possibly being cut with any amount of other deadly drugs like meth or fentanyl which is so much more prevalent now than 10-20 years ago.”
“Absolutely do not let your daughter do this and I would alert the other parents like others have mentioned.”
“It doesn’t make you an a**hole.”
“It makes you a caring parent who could be saving one of their lives or saving them from running into the wrong people that could take advantage of them.”
“They won’t realize it now, but someday they may thank you.”
“I was ‘lucky’ that when I got into that scene I was with older experienced people and we all watched out for each other, and I had already graduated college so I had some life experience.”
“At 16 I would have been a mess in that situation.”-ShotsAndCleavage
The OP later gave an update, where he revealed that he took the advice of several Redditors and did indeed contact the parents of his daughter’s friends.
“I reached out to two of the girls’ parents I know.”
“I calmly explained what happened, and I would not be letting my daughter go.”
“I did not suggest what they should do with their girls.”
“One definitely took it better than the other.”
However these parents may have taken it, one can only imagine that they will be grateful down the line for alerting them of what their children were planning on getting up to.
And though it likely won’t be any time soon, one imagines that even the OP’s daughter will one day be grateful that her father was looking out for her, and stopping her from getting in a situation which could have landed her in much more trouble than she got in with him.