It can be hard to have perspective on what good parenting is sometimes, especially when you’re doing it on your own.
A single dad on Reddit with the user name u/illbreakuo wasn’t sure if he was overreacting to a relative’s criticism or not, so he went on r/AmItheA–hole to see what other people thought.
He sets himself up to sound worse than he is, writing in the title, “AITA for telling my sister that she’s sick and delusional.”
That does sound pretty harsh, but there’s more to it. The OP says he’s a single dad with a 16-year-old. He claims he has a bad relationship with his own family because “they’re upset that I decided to take responsibility of my son.”
He’s 32, so his son must have been born in his teens. His sister, who is about ten years older, has a daughter around the same age and they’re in occasional contact.
“Few weeks ago she told me that she was really struggling financially and couldn’t pay rent,” he says. “I told her she could stay with me for a bit until she got back on her feet.”
The mom and her daughter moved in a few weeks ago and met his son for the first time in 11 years. But things have been a little tense:
The daughter went straight to where I told her her bedroom would be and didn’t come out for dinner. She’s been acting like that ever since, I don’t know if it’s usual because my sister isn’t paying any attention to her.
My sister has also been acting snobby and I’ve been ignoring it thinking it’d go away. She “discussed” more like lectured me on my parenting styles and how “no offense” but it’s really dangerous to let 16 year old go out past 9 pm and have a boyfriend and give him so much freedom while he’s still a kid. I tried my best to ignore it.
Then, one evening his son was headed to a sleepover and came to say goodbye to his dad.
He came in to say bye, kinda jumped on me and hugged me, told me “love you, bye” and left. I think that’s pretty f–king normal, but my sister started looking at me weirdly and asked if he always does that, I asked her what he was asking and she straight up told me that it seemed creepy and perverted to have physical contact with my son.
I had it up to my neck at that point and I just snapped. I told her that just because her daughter has shitty relationship with her and refuses to talk to her doesn’t mean that it’s not normal to have close relationship with their child and she’s actually sick and delusional for even thinking about something like.
His sister got angry with him and walked off. They argued again later, and his sister told him she “had good intentions” and didn’t mean to offend him. She also demanded an apology for “insulting her and sticking my nose into her and her daughter’s relationship.”
They haven’t talked in a few days and the OP came to Reddit for an “unbiased opinion.” I don’t know if those exist on Reddit, but the opinions he got were that his sister is the one with a problem, not him.
There were also a lot of people who think she is likely homophobic and that part of her criticism was coming from that:
Hugging your kids is normal and good. Letting relatives you don’t know stay with you will likely lead to problems. These are our truths.