Most parents want their children to have the best experiences in high school possible, but some parents can take that desire too far.
A woman on Reddit found herself in this situation when she tried to force her video game-enthusiast daughter into going to a school dance. She wasn’t sure about how she handled things, so she went to the AITA (Am I The A**hole) subReddit for perspective.
The Original Poster (OP), who goes by Thorwaway-Loqu-4579 on the site, asked:
“AITA the a**hole for forcing my daughter to go to a party?”
She explained:
“I(F[emale]44) have 3 girls who I’ll call, May(21), Jessica(19) and Diana(16), of course I’m bias but all three of them are genuinely beautiful and charming however Diana isn’t as social as her 2 big sisters, it’s the classical teenage sitcoms differences.”
“May and Jessica were social butterflies in high school, they had lots of friends and were very well know. Diana on the other hand, has had the same 5-person group of friends since middle school and spend most of their time playing videogames, particularly ‘league of legends’ and ‘smash bros’, sometimes they stream, in general they are more on the geek side, like I said a very cliché difference.”
“Diana has had bad luck and thanks to lockdown, she hasn’t had the full high school experience her sisters had but she doesn’t seem as affected as one would think, on one hand it makes sense, despite the worst part of lockdown last year she pretty much played with her friends online quite often so I’m guessing she didn’t feel as isolated as her sisters during this times but still it concerns me a little, teenage years are a lot about being social and adventurous and even without this global situation she chooses to stay indoors.”
“She literally has all the time in the world for videogames but a limited amount of high school events and she’s just ditching them for irrelevant videogame tournaments.”
“I usually try to be supportive of her hobbies, but this crossed the line and I told her she couldn’t go to the tournament and if she didn’t go to the dance, then she won’t go out that day nor play videogames for the weekend, and argument started, she said she just preferred other activities, but I stand firm in my punishment if she at least doesn’t give it a chance.”
“Like I said, my girl is as beautiful as her sisters I’m sure she wouldn’t have a difficult time making friends, she doesn’t have anything to be insecure about.”
“When May and Jessica had this dance, they start prepping in September, trying new styles, finding the best costumes, all of that. I would drive them around and help them in anyway possible to prepare I wouldn’t call it a tradition but it’s a moment that’s also important for me to have with my daughter.”
“After the argument my husband told me I was being an a**hole and if she didn’t want to go that was on her, but what if she regrets not going when she’s older? she can always play videogames, but time won’t stop and she won’t be in high school much longer, still my husband is rarely this upfront, so I wanted to know. Am I the a**hole?”
Redditors were then asked to judge who is in the wrong in this situation based on the following categories:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
- NAH – No A**holes Here
Unsurprisingly, they were pretty emphatically not on OP’s side.
“YTA”
“‘my daughter isn’t performing the steretoype of femininity so I am punishing her'”
“fixed it for you…”
“apologise to your daughter and offer to help her out with attending the LoL tournament. Your daughter is awesome, I hope her team wins.” —AeronwenTrewent
“YTA you are bullying your daughter because she isn’t performing her young girl teen duties like her sisters did to your satisfaction.” —ArwensRose
“YTA and working on isolating yourself from your daughter completely. She’s different, that’s beautiful. Let her be her and stop forcing her to be what you want. Otherwise she’s going to make her own non-blood ‘family’ as soon as she can, and leave the judgemental one behind.” —littlebluefoxy
After reading her fellow Redditors’ takes, OP returned with some updates.
“UPDATE:”
“Thank you all for your kind and not so kind comments alike. While I did expect some YTA I didn’t expect it to be this overwhelming. This along with a more in dept conversation with my husband gave me a lot to think so I will act accordingly.”
“The comments explaining that my daughter might grow up thinking something’s wrong with hit way to close, I sincerely thank everyone for that.”
“Needless to say I will apologize and lift the punishment, she will be attending her tournament with her friends, this tournament will be live streamed so I will share the link in my personal account, for privacy reasons I won’t give details here or from this account but if possible I might update this again with the results.”
“A lot of assumptions were made about if I peaked in high school and while I did like it a lot, college was definitely better but after a lot of comments I get where all this is coming for.”
“As for Diana’s videogame we do support her and even played some league of legends as a family, unfortunately I’m not that good with games so I found it to complicated, I prefer Mario kart and smash brothers, still I did make myself appear to distant from my daughter and her world so that I also get.”
“Finally the biggest eye opener was that the first DM I got for this post was a creepy dude asking about my daughters bodies, this in combination with the most upvoted comment does made me think a lot and honestly I’m still in shock for this.”
“(And sorry for the spacing I didn’t notice that until I posted it.)”
“I take the YTA and will do better, thank you all.”
Hopefully OP can be more accepting of her daughter in the future.