Teenagers can be annoying sometimes.

Suddenly your sweet, impressionable children have strong opinions of their own, and they’re not afraid to express them.

When the father in this story became concerned about his daughter’s language, he took action right away.

When the children’s mom found out, she was livid and pointed out that his decision could have dangerous future implications.

Read on to find out where this father went so wrong.

AITA for saying my daughter can’t keep calling everything and everyone she dislikes “creepy”?

My daughter is fifteen and my sons are nine and six years old.

As a family we have some house rules about how we speak about others. This includes things like you can’t cuss at people or use profanity, but also stuff about speaking with kindness and not talking calling others “fat” or “stupid” or anything like that.

Recently, my daughter has practically had “creepy” as her favorite word. She will call everything she doesn’t like creepy.

Here are some examples of the things the daughter finds “creepy.”

Things that she’s recently branded ‘creepy’ include: our neighbor who keeps track of which cars are in our neighborhood and who they belong to. He doesn’t do this in a invasive way, and I like that he looks out for the community’s safety.

The pledge of allegiance, as a concept: she says it’s “creepy and culty” to “chant at the flag”.

A cashier in the grocery store who complimented her coat is “creepy”, as is a teacher who wants cameras on and virtual backgrounds off in zoom classes. She says that it’s “creepy” her teacher can see her room.

She finds anyone over 18 who still uses the TikTok app “creepy”, and so is the app “nextdoor” and anyone who uses it.

She even finds the main character in the book The Great Gatsby “creepy”, as well as our neighbor who sits on their porch and says hi when she walks the dog.

The parents aren’t on the same page about the word “creepy.”

Our younger ones are picking up on this too, and they are using it as a way to insult people without seeming to know what it really means. Like if they’re bickering they’ll just be calling each other that.

So I told all the kids, that “creepy” or “a creep” used as an insult to a person is going to go on the no-no list. And a few times, I chastised them for using it.

During this, my wife was visiting her mom and when she came back and we were talking about how I made “creepy” a new no-no word for the kids, she got furious with me.

She was angry because she said I was taking away our kids’, but especially our daughter’s, ability to express discomfort with anything in their lives.

She makes some good points.

My wife said that girls especially are taught to not make a fuss if someone is making them uncomfortable, and that giving those messages of “you’re not allowed to say you feel creeped out” is teaching her a horrible and dangerous lesson.

She said that we should be encouraging her to put words to her discomfort.

She wanted our daughter to always be ok saying she doesn’t feel good about something, and to learn how to communicate that effectively.

My wife said that I should have invited her to elaborate and respected her opinions, instead of shutting her down.

Let’s see how he responded.

I told her that it doesn’t seem like she’s talking about actual issues, she’s just using that word as a way to speak badly of people when the reasons are so petty.

My wife got really frustrated with me and said that if our daughter was saying this stuff, we needed to be teaching her that she should be able to express it, and that she should be taught that us as our parents will take her seriously.

We left the conversation at that point and I’m taking some time to think right now.

AITA?

Sure, it’s annoying when your teenage children are suddenly full of opinions, but this guy’s wife has got it right here: kids – and girls in particular – should never feel shut down when they are expressing their discomfort.

Let’s check out what the folks on Reddit had to say.

This person agreed, pointing out his adult male perspective as the problem.

While others encouraged him to take a more proactive approach in his parenting.

Meanwhile, this person stuck up for the wife and the guy’s teenage daughter.

No one should be censored when something is making them uncomfortable.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.