December 31, 2023 at 1:53 am

Their Son Is Miserable At His Current School, So His Dad Enrolls Him In Private School Over His Mom’s Objection

by Matthew Gilligan

Source: Reddit/AITA/Unsplash/@schoolmykidsparenting

Things can get a little dicey when people get divorced and there are kids involved.

And that gets ratcheted up when it comes to money…

A man took to Reddit’s “Am I the *******?” page to ask if he was a jerk for spending a whole lotta cash to send his son to private school.

Check out the story below and see what you think.

AITA for paying 21K to send my kid to private school behind my ex-wife’s back?

“Our son is 8 and has an incredible curiosity about the world.

His first and second grade teachers gave nothing but glowing praise in regards to both his intellectual growth and his demeanor.

Things have been rough at school.

However, his third grade year has not gone well. His teacher has sent us several emails stating that our son does not pay attention in class and is cold toward his classmates.

When his mother and I asked him how school is going, he tells us he hates it.

He said, “All the teacher does is yell at the class to stop talking, then the kids keep talking and we never do anything and I don’t like being there.”

I can see the light fading from his eyes every day and every Sunday night mid-September on he cries because he doesn’t want to go to school.

He and his son made a decision.

My son lives with his mother and spends weekends with me.

We all live in the same town and I would describe the relationship between his mother and I as cooperative, but bad feelings persist.

I asked my son a few weeks ago if he wanted to change schools and he responded “God, yes.”

I asked his mother if she would have any issue with me sending him to a highly-regarded private school about 17 miles from our town. She reacted in a way that was not expected.

Things didn’t go too well…

She said I was being ridiculous and that it would be an undue burden on her to take him to a different school (fair) and it would be unfair to her other children if only one of her kids got to go to private school. I added that I would take him and drop him off everyday and pay for it 100% and she still said no.

I told her I don’t want our son to waste his potential, nor do I want to fail him as a father.

In essence, she responded that our son is just being a brat because he’s bored.

I registered him at this school and paid the tuition. He starts in August.

I told him what I had done and he was elated. Naturally, upon hearing this news his mother was apoplectic.

All I said was “Fine, you tell him he isn’t going because you think he’s a brat.”

AITA?”

Here’s what people had to say about this.

This reader said they think he might need to think more about the custody issue.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another Reddit user talked about fairness and opportunities.

Source: Reddit/AITA

One Reddit user doesn’t think he’s handling this the right way.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another reader said he’s NTA and said kids need to be treated as individuals.

Source: Reddit/AITA

And this person said the mother is the ******* in this story.

Source: Reddit/AITA

That’s a whole lot of money…

I probably would have done the same thing!

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.