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Dad gets bad parenting rap on Reddit for mishandling his kids' questions
Wife is upset at how husband handled key parenting task; now, the dilemma has gone viral
By Maureen Mackey Fox News
Published May 28, 2024 8:22am EDT
A father who shared his story on the popular Reddit page, known as AITA ("Am I the a--hole?"), has not been getting much love from others about what happened.
Some 5,000 people have so far reacted to his story in less than 24 hours, and the overwhelming verdict is that the hapless dad mishandled a key parenting task.
"I have two kids, who are 2 and 4 years old," wrote the father.
"And one thing I try to reinforce with them is that if Mom or Dad says ‘no,’ if they go to the other parent — the answer they will get is no."
He added, "Which means if they ask my wife, and she says no, regardless of how I feel on the matter, I'm going to back her up. And I expect my wife to do the same."
Then came the problem.
"Well, this morning," wrote the dad, going by the username "Acrobatic-Garbage-52," "we were getting ready to leave and [our] 4-year-old asked my wife if she could get out a game that always makes a mess."
The man added, "So my wife said no."
Immediately, however, the 4-year-old then "turned to me and asked the same question."
So the dad replied, "No, your mom told you no."
The father wrote that this answer "upset my wife, and I don't quite understand why." and he then asked others for their opinion of how he handled it.
"The way you phrased it had an undertone of, ‘Mom is a killjoy and I might have said yes.’"
They delivered their verdicts.
In the top "upvoted" response on the platform, a commenter tried to explain to the man why he botched things.
"I think, ‘Your mom already answered you,’ is much better," this commenter wrote.
Others also weighed in to help the dad see the light.
"I get what you were trying to do," wrote another person, "which was teach your child that if they get a ‘no’ from one parent, they shouldn't ask the other parent. But the way you phrased it [had] an undertone of, ‘Mom is a killjoy and I might have said yes.’"
Another person responding to the dilemma put it this way, "The problem is not with what you are doing, but how you are phrasing it."
This person said, "Your phrasing can be taken to mean, ‘I might have said yes, but your mother said no’ — thereby making her the bad guy."
The person went on, "Your kids are too young to understand the kind of ‘united front’ setup that you want to emphasize, therefore you need to stick just with something that is more like ‘No.’ or ‘No, you were already told no.’"
Another person on Reddit who commented shared a thoughtful message with the young father.
"Talk with your wife. Find out why this upset her," the person wrote, in part. "Make a plan of action of how to deal with it in the future."
Yet another commenter shared a similar but far more pointed message.
"You should be asking your wife why she's upset, not Reddit," said this commenter.
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