Kate Hackett
One of the oft-decried punishments parents try is to remove a teenager’s bedroom door. Most of the time, this is met with huge resistance from Reddit, but u/The-Compliment-Fairy had such a good story that her decision was actually lauded!
OP writes that she has three kids, the oldest of whom is the only girl and has her own room.
I (40f) have 3 kids. Maggie (14f), Levi (12m) and Charlie (10m). (**NOT THIER REAL NAMES)**Levi and Charlie share a bedroom and Maggie has her own room as the oldest and also only girl.
By and large, this girl is great — except for one thing: she slams the door. Constantly. It wakes everyone up at night and is very annoying.
Maggie is a great kid. She does her homework, helps with chores without too much complaint, doesn’t bug her little brothers (too) much. The issue is that she will not stop slamming her bedroom door. When she gets up to use the bathroom at night she slams her bedroom door on her way out and back in. When she gets up in the morning or goes to bed at night she slams it. Pretty much any time she enters or exits her room the door gets slammed. And it’s only her door, none of the other doors in the house. It shakes the walls and frequently wakes up everyone else in the house. Her brothers room shares a wall with hers and our bedroom is directly above theirs.
OP has talked about the issue with her daughter and tried being polite, tried being forceful, and nothing worked.
We’ve talked to her about it and asked her very politely to please be more mindful about it because it is disturbing the rest of us but it’s in one ear and out the other. We tried being more forceful about it saying that if she continues to slam her door there will start to be consequences. Still nothing changes.
So one night, when the daughter woke the house up one more time, OP went downstairs to talk to her. The daughter was very rude.
It all came to a head the other night when she got up to use the bathroom and all 4 of us were woken up by the slamming. I have to be up at 5am for work and I’ve had enough of the broken sleep and came downstairs and knocked on her door. She opened it and said WHAT?! with such attitude it took a lot of self control not to start yelling.
OP told her that if she slams it again, it would be gone. The daughter slammed it FIVE TIMES, so OP and her husband took off the door.
I told her as calmly as I could that if she slammed that door one more time she was going to come home and find it gone. She proceeded to yell at me to leave her alone and then slammed it 5 times as hard as she could.
They installed a heavy privacy curtain, but the daughter lost her mind and accused them of abuse. She sulked,
Well the next day (Friday) she went to school and my husband and I both had the day off so we took the door off the frame and installed a curtain rod with a nice heavy curtain over the door instead. She came home and freaked the fuck out. She said we’re being emotionally abusive and taking away her right to privacy. She sulked all weekend and won’t talk to us now. My mother says I’m the AH because I overreacted but she doesn’t have to deal with the house shaking.
This is not, OP wants to note, a privacy thing. They hung the heavy curtain and installed velcro to make sure the daughter still has her room, but can’t slam a door.
I want to add that we completely respect each other’s privacy in our house which is why we hung up a heavy curtain and made sure that we couldn’t see through it or around it. We even put little Velcro pieces on the walls and curtain sides so it stays in place. She still has her physical privacy which she is absolutely entitled to, but can’t slam a piece of fabric. We also have never and still don’t just go into her room unannounced and still knock on the wall to ask permission to enter. We’ve told her we’ll happily put her door back on once she agrees to respect the no slamming rule.
So AITA?
OP also added a few details about the curtain and the door.
Edit to add:
- The curtain is an industrial type that blocks sound and light
- The curtain is only meant to be a temporary measure. As soon as she agrees to stop slamming and be respectful of the shared space we will put it right back on.
- The door isn’t broken or malfunctioning in any way and there is no draft causing it to swing shut.
Definitely not an asshole! Reddit agreed.
One person said, “NTA. Interrupting everyone’s sleep is unacceptable. You gave her plenty of opportunities to change her door slamming behavior and she didn’t do it. Let her sulk it out for a set amount of time (let her know this amount. . 1 week. . 3 days. . whatever you choose), then return the door conditionally for a trial. If she can refrain from slamming it, she can keep it. If not, the door gets taken off again for even more time. Rinse and repeat until she no longer slams.”
