To tell or not to tell, that is the question…
Or, at least that was the question in this story from Reddit’s “Am I The A**hole?” page from a parent who had to dish out some truth to her son’s friend about his own mother.
Ouch…this one might be painful.
Let’s see what happened.
AITA for telling my son’s friend the truth about why his mom doesn’t want him playing with my son?
“My son and his friend are both in the second grade.
We moved into the area in the middle of covid and my son quickly made friends with a boy in the neighborhood. For the first couple months it was fine – they got along perfectly, I put the house in order, and was able to work from home so childcare wasn’t an issue.
The problem was when my husband got back from his deployment. He was the one to pick my son and his friend up from school that day (my son insisted, because he wanted to show off his other dad the marine.) My husband was also the one who answered the door when Friend’s mother arrived. She was perfectly cordial, and then left with Friend in tow.
The next Monday my son comes home looking forlorn, and when I ask him what’s wrong he tells me Friend’s mother doesn’t want Friend to play with my son anymore. I ask her what the issue is and she says that she “doesn’t want her son to get the idea that ‘our lifestyle’ is an acceptable one,” and that she “doesn’t want him to get confused with homos**ual ideology.”
Lo and behold, a couple days later Friend comes up to me and asks me why she doesn’t want him to play with my son, and I tell him “your mom doesn’t like the fact that me and Curtis’s [not real name] other dad are two men who are married and in love.” He asks why that is, and I say “because she;s prejudiced.”
Later that night I get an angry call from Friend’s mom demanding to know why I called her a bigot to her own son, why I’m “pushing my ideology” on him, telling me that I’m “an influence that will push [Friend] away from God,” etc.
She posts this long screed on the Parents of Generic Suburban Atlanta Elementary School Facebook group about how we should solve disputes among the parents and not drag the kids into it.
I replied on the group asking what I was supposed to do, lie to her son? She claims that by calling her prejudiced I was “disrespecting her religious beliefs,” and then went into this whole screed about her first amendment rights.
I told her not to make her prejudice my f**king problem, and sure as s**t don’t make it my son’s problem. Then the admin for the Facebook group took down the post because the other parents were piling on on both sides and it was getting heated.
AITA?”
Now check out how folks on Reddit reacted to this story.
A reader said that it’s pretty clear the woman is planting dangerous seeds in her kid’s head.
This Reddit user said that this particular mom might have a very rough road ahead of her because the younger generations just keep getting more tolerant than the ones before them and don’t stand for this kind of behavior.
And this person agreed!
And they said this woman won’t be able to shelter her son forever.
And lastly, this reader made a good point about people who believe that their kids are being indoctrinated at every turn.
False!
Now we want to hear what you think!
In the comments, let us know.
We’d love to hear from you!