Kate Hackett
This is a tough AITA. I’m not a parent so I have no idea how hard it is to raise a kid and I personally didn’t have a big rebellious streak, so this story from u/Working-Force4192 is a bit outside my personal experience.
That said, it has to be incredibly hard on a family to send a child away in their teens. That seems like it would be a last, last, LAST resort kind of move. And I’m not entirely sure that this story suggests that it really was. Maybe we’re missing a piece of the tale that would help us understand the parental move here — but on its face… boy, this story seems like an overreaction.
I think it’s important to preface this AITA with the note that the members of Reddit’s AITA sub tend to be young and a bit anti-parent. There’s not a lot of understanding afforded to parents (and especially stepparents) in the sub, so the comments tend to be skewed pretty hard.
OP admits that he was a terrible tween — he got into fights, his grades were bad, and he started trying drugs. Pot, specifically.
I’ll (20M) admit I was a shitty tween. I got into alot of fights with my parents, my grades were shit, and I was generally a prick. When I was 13 some friends and I shared a joint one of them had gotten from their sister (It had just been made legal in our state at the time) My parents found out, and they went nuts.
The reaction from OP’s parents was to send him to a rehab facility for troubled teens — and these kids were into BAD stuff.
Now I get that weed isn’t for 13 year olds, but they took it way too far. I spent the next three months in an expensive rehab facility for troubled teens. I was by far the youngest and smallest, most of these guys were 16-18. And they weren’t in there for weed, most of them did hard drugs, and had mental issues on top of that.
OP was by far the youngest and was terrified while he was there. He certainly never tried drugs, so in that respect, I guess it worked.
My roommate was a 17-year-old who was detoxing from meth and pills, who also had unmedicated bipolar. A few nights he’d just stare at me and not sleep. We were in our rooms 18 hours a day, everything else was meals or shitty arts and crafts. It was hell, but it worked, I was too terrified to have friends, much less do drugs.
Now that OP is older, he is trying to repair his relationship with his family. His mother recently commented that she was glad she sent him to “get help”.
I wanted to go NC with my family at 18, but my therapist encouraged me to repair our relationship. We have a rocky one, which is why I moved out, but we’ve been working on healing and it’s been cordial. I was over there for easter with the whole family, and my mom congradulated me.
OP was furious and lost his temper at her. Now he’s wondering… was he wrong?
She said she was so thankful she had me sent to “get help” as a kid, otherwise I’d just be some junkie. But now I’m a perfectly functioning member of society. I lost it, I called her several things, including c*nt and left. My sister (18F) said that while she agrees, I’m just hurting myself by holding on to so much anger over what happened.
There is definitely some trauma here and this kind of explosion is the reaction to a lot of build-up.
“NTA. You were traumatized by your experience. This has clearly been building up for some time. You may not have reacted in the best way, but what she did was way too extreme for a single joint. Keep up with the therapy. Maybe NC for a while will be good for you,” said one Redditor.
