For many people, birthdays are a fun celebration each year where they get to enjoy everyone’s attention being focused on them.

While there is nothing wrong with wanting your birthday party to be all about you, the 23-year-old girl in this story might have taken it a bit far.

That being said, however, the dad may have been a little harsh when he called her a selfish brat on her special day.

Let’s take a look at how it all played out:

AITA for telling my daughter she was being a brat after she cried about blowing out her birthday candles?

I have 4 kids, 23, 20, 16 and 13. This concerns my oldest, I’ll refer to her as ‘Zara’

We don’t normally do big parties in our family after double digits (and 18th/21st), but Zara has been going through a bit of a difficult time so we decided to throw her a surprise party.

This was yesterday.

Sounds like a great way to celebrate…But it all goes south soon enough.

It was a big family party and Zara was enjoying it.

Then the cake was brought out, I have a lot of young nieces and nephews so naturally they wanted to stand up with Zara, and she had no issue.

When she went to blow out the candles, my 5 year old niece blew most of them out before her.

Everyone laughed it off, my youngest actually put 23 candles on the cake and there were still a few lit, so I told Zara to blow those out.

She did, but she looked angry and started crying. She then walked off.

Can you imagine how awkward it was in that room after she stormed off?

After that it got quite awkward and my sister (niece’s mom) got upset/embarrassed, that her daughter is a kid and didn’t mean to do it, and she didn’t think Zara would act like this.

We all calmed her down that it’s not their fault.

It is nice to see that everyone consoled the 5-year-old child…

I talked to Zara and told her she was being a selfish brat and making a scene, she’s 23 getting mad about birthday candles.

She was still upset, and my other kids are telling me I wasn’t being fair with Zara.

AITAH?

While I am all for treating the ‘birthday girl’ special on her big day, this could have gone a little too far.

Let’s see if other Redditors in the comments agree.

I’ll admit, this Redditor made a good point.

Looks like a lot of people feel that the 5 year old needs to be scolded.

It was never actually about the candles dad.

After reading through the comments, I’m starting to agree that the dad may have been the AH here after all.

Even if it is a little immature for a 23-year old to cry over the candles, there is a lot more to consider.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.