A good friend will do anything for you if they see you are in a tight spot.
But a helpful favor that can have negative consequences is a tough situation that has no black-or-white solution.
A mother of a high school senior who is about to graduate faced a dilemma dealing with her daughter’s struggling best friend and made a decision that led her to the “Am I the A**hole?” subReddit to seek judgment.
Redditor throwragraduation12 asked:
“AITA for not forcing my daughter to do her friend’s homework so she can graduate?”
The original poster OP explained:
“I (42 f[female]) have a daughter, ‘Mia’ (17 f[female]) who attends online school, and her best friend is ‘Emily’ (17 f[female]) who she met in the 6th grade.”
“Last year, Mia started slipping with her grades a lot. She did have trouble in school before, but it was usually just math and science based subjects that she struggled with, and reached out for help when she needed it.”
“This was due to a mental health crisis since our house had burned down, and a lot of valuable things were lost. Also varying health scares and surgeries with close family members.”
“I put Mia into counselling and I worked out a deal with her school, where in short, she’d only have to keep her grades passing or above passing in order to graduate.”
“Mia improved a lot after that, and she has been keeping her grades above passing ever since then. Her graduation is next month.”
“‘Susan’ (45 f[female]). Emily’s mom had gotten the same deal, but Emily hasn’t bothered trying to keep it up. Emily also has struggled in school, but from what Susan and my daughter says, she doesn’t try to actually improve.”
“Mia herself has tried to help Emily in the subjects she does well in (English and History) in the past and it did work for a little bit, but then her grades dropped again.”
A turning came with a phone call.
“I was on the phone with Susan earlier, and she was venting to me about how if Emily didn’t complete her overdue work and get her grades up in the next two weeks ( May 17th is their last day to turn in school work except for credit classes), she wouldn’t graduate and would have to repeat senior year.”
“She then asked me if Mia could take on the responsibility of getting the majority of Emily’s work done, so that Emily can have passing grades and graduate.”
“I was really shocked that she would ask that and asked if she was joking. Susan confirmed she was in fact, not joking around and said it would be really nice of my daughter to help out her best friend like that.”
The OP continued:
“I gave her a hard no. Not only was that super against the school’s policies, and could get them both kicked out before graduation, but Emily has an insane amount of overdue work and Mia has her own work to focus on that would really hurt her grades if ignored in favor of Emily’s.”
“Susan tried to argue with, and plead her case to me but I hung up on her without thinking. Later on, Susan sent me multiple screenshots of Emily’s overdue homework (28 in total) and said that Mia would only have to do half of that.”
“I told this to my husband, thinking he’d agree with me that it’s an insane request, but to my surprise he said that I should consider it since Mia is doing way better in school than she was before, and Emily has been her best friend for 7 years.”
“He also that it would probably make both girls feel horrible if one graduated while the other got left behind.”
“I don’t think I’m an AH, but Susan and my husband seem to think otherwise. I would greatly appreciate outsider perspective.”
“Edit: The deal is that they get their half of the credits waived if they keep their grades at or above passing in their regular courses and credit recovery courses along with extracurricular work. Also their GPA gets a bump.”
Anonymous strangers weighed in by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
- NAH – No A**holes Here
A majority of Redditors thought the OP was not the a**hole (NTA) here.
“Good lord. NTA.”
“That’s completely unethical and a terrible idea. I can’t believe that your husband would think that it’s a good idea for your daughter to cheat in such a way.”
“This almost sounds made up.” – havartna
“I honestly only posted this to make sure I wasn’t tripping, and that others thought the same thing when this got suggested to me.” – OP
“It’s amazing that the other girl’s mom is the one pushing this. She should be the one saying “Absolutely not! You do your own work or suffer the consequences!” – havartna
“As a teacher, I’m certain Emily’s teachers know exactly how far behind she is. They are also familiar with her work. If your daughter would do this for her, I can almost guarantee you they will find out.”
“Also, your husband might feel like it will hurt their friendship if one is left behind, but facing the consequences of fraud will kill it faster than you can imagine.” – Linori123
“Mia is working her butt off to improve her grades, manage her mental and physical health after all that trauma, and her dad wants to jeopardise that by literally tripling her work load?!”
“Even if Mia did agree to it, to avoid plagiarism she’d literally need to rewrite anything she does for her homework so that Emily’s assignments don’t get flagged. It’s not a simply copy and paste situation.”
“The whole point of school is to SHOW your understanding of a subject, just not the end result. Husband is an absolute AH for not advocating for his daughter, Susan is a failure of a parent trying to outsource Emily’s problems and Emily frankly needs support to make her take her education seriously or suffer the consequences like everyone else.”
“NTA, but make sure to ram it home to husband that next time he’s asked to do a coworkers job for them without pay, recognition or compensation on top of his own job, he better agree to it so he can ‘set an example’ for his daughter on how to be exploited…” – I_wanna_be_anemone
“No no no NTA and a hard one at that! You cannot sacrifice Mia’s hard work for someone that doesn’t have the same eagerness to improve.”
“If Emily wants to graduate then she needs to put in the effort herself because in the world of grown ups Emily will in fact have to do her own work. What’s she gonna do then??”
“Susan’s problems are Susan’s problems, she shouldn’t be palming off her parental responsibility on ANOTHER CHILD (Mia).” – Narrow_Guava_6239
“I’m surprised Susan isn’t doing Emily’s work. Why is she going to outsource and force this on another child when she can’t get her own to do it? Wait no. Susan’s trying to get you to do it. Parents doing their kids work was prevalent with some of my classmates 30 years ago
I had two really close friends (who were not friends with each other) that were unable to graduate on time with me. We stayed friends but as all things, people can out grow one another in time.” – Neither-Entrance-208
“This is actually really bad for Emily. The jobs and colleges that require a high school diploma aren’t doing that arbitrarily. It’s required because the people who take those jobs or go to those colleges need to be able to complete work at certain baseline levels.”
“If Emily graduates high school without those skills and then goes to college or starts a job, she’s not going to have the basic skill set she needs to be successful and it’s almost certainly going to be a much bigger disaster than taking an extra year to finish high school.” – readthethings13579
“Mia wouldn’t even be genuinely helping Emily, she’d just be enabling her.”
“Then what happens next year? If she goes to college, it’s much more difficult and students are expected to juggle a lot more academic responsibilities than in high school.”
“If Mia does Emily’s work for her now, she’s just setting her up for failure next year. Better she deals with the consequences of her own irresponsible behaviour now, and learns to organize herself better, even if it means retaking the year.” – Sorry_I_Guess
“I teach high school, so I have a bias to my view point. But definitely NTA. You are correct that it could be grounds for both your kids to fail. Now honestly, if parents complain enough and magic hand waving happens over summer school.”
“The kid could graduate “on time-ish”. Because the school end of the day doesn’t want to hurt their graduation numbers.”
“But honestly Emily’s mom is setting her kid up for massive failure. This is how we get people who quit jobs after like 2 weeks and complain things aren’t fair. Emily will have no sense of urgency to do anything herself if mom comes along to bail her out.”
“You are NTA and also being a good parent to your own daughter.” – nomad5926
Overall, Redditors thought the OP was right by her decision not to allow Mia to extend a lifeline to her best friend.
Users also stressed the consequences of getting an easy pass would only set her daughter up for failure as she takes on more responsibilities outside the academic life.
While the prospect of repeating another year of high school will be devastating for Emily, hopefully her mother would eventually understand and be accepting of the circumstances.