As you are well aware, family dynamics are complicated at the best of times.
So what happens when your own daughter tries to exert some influence over her son that she didn’t raise?
Hmmmm…sounds like quite a conundrum…
Read on to see what happened.
This is a wild one, folks! Hold on tight!
AITA for holding my parental rights over my daughter?
“So my (49M) daughter got pregnant when she was 18, she didn’t want a kid, especially not that young, so after some serious talk, I said I would take in her child, but she said she didn’t want any responsibility for the child so ended up signing away her parental rights and I adopted her child as soon as he was born.
She went off and finished college, travelled, and I fully supported her.
My son (my daughter’s child, but I will be calling him my son) is now 16 and is an amazing kid.
And my daughter has barely come seen him, and if she does come round, she just ignores him.
He knows that she is his bio mother but after a few failed reconnection attempts when he was younger, he’s given up on a relationship with her.
These last few weeks a few things happened, my daughter got engaged to her long term boyfriend, my son came out to me (i fully support him), and my son also won a small local skating competition.
He been skating since he was 9 and loves it, it’s his preferred mode of transport and he is known by the local skating community and skate shop.
When my daughter got engaged, she said she didn’t want any secrets, so told her fiance that she has a child, but that I have adopted him. his kids (I’m not sure age but they are young), not understanding that my daughter and my son are estranged, wanted to meet their ‘new brother’ even after days of refusing and kid-friendly explanations they didn’t give up, so they brought the kids to meet my son.
My son was friendly with the kids and their dad, and was civil with my daughter. my son and the kids went off to play and my daughter and her fiance sat with me to talk.
After a while, the fiance noticed my son’s trophy on a shelf and asked about it, when I explained his look interested but my daughter looked horrified.
She sent her fiance to check on the kids then asked me what I was doing, letting him do something so dangerous.
She said that skateboarding was for ‘delinquents’ and that as his mother she doesn’t want him skating anymore.
When she said mother, I have to admit I did laugh, I reminded her that I had parental rights over him and that she has no say, she was clearly upset by this and called me cruel, saying that she was a child when she got pregnant and that she’s a different person now and is even trying for a child with her fiance.
I told her that that doesn’t matter and that my son is MY son. she then got really upset and grabbed her fiancee and his kids and left.
At first, I didn’t think I was in the wrong but now that I think about it, it might have been rude to laugh and hold my paternal rights over her head like that, these past few weeks have been emotional so maybe I overreacted, so AITA?”
Here’s how folks responded on Reddit.
This person said he’s NTA and that he was right to correct her.
And this Reddit user agreed he’s NTA and her opinion doesn’t matter.
Another reader said that calling her a “birth mom” is actually kind of a stretch in this situation.
And another individual said he’s NTA and that she doesn’t get to try to act like a mom suddenly out of nowhere.