Parenting is tricky business when kids reach a certain point in their lives where you simply can’t control them anymore!

This guy’s wife didn’t want their son to have a cellphone.

Find out how things got bad when he went behind her back, because this relationship doesn’t seem like it’s on the most solid footing.

AITA for getting my 15 year old son a phone when my wife told me multiple times not to?

I (54M) have 3 grown children and one teenager, Kyle (15M).

With my 3 kids out of the house (26F, 20M , and 18F), Kyle has been feeling lonelier than ever.

This kid hasn’t been at his best in the past few months…

He has lots of friends at school, but he enjoys spending time with his siblings more, especially 20M.

Now, Kyle didn’t have a phone yet and he has been expressing how he’s tired of being the odd one out of his friend group and how much he hates being the only one without a cellphone.

He also has said he hates not being able to have easy access to communicate with his older brothers and sisters and his friends.

My kids have all had cell phones when they were 13 mainly because they had after school activities.

His wife has strong opinions over a kid having a cellphone!

However, my wife was strongly against Kyle having his own cell phone at that age so it was brought up again last year when he started high school.

Well, my wife shut that down and was visibly upset and told me not to bring it up again.

I tried to reason with her but she wasn’t budging and she said her “only baby” shouldn’t have a phone.

They needed to talk this through…

One thing about me and my wife is that we believe decisions such as when our kids should have cellphones is something that should be mutual.

So I respected my wife’s wish at the time.

However, I feel like my wife was just being unreasonable and wasn’t giving me real reasons as to why our teenage son couldn’t have a phone.

Now that he’s in 10th grade, Kyle has been feeling more upset than ever because he still doesn’t have a phone.

UH OH!

So sometime last month, Kyle has begged me to just get him a phone but I said that his mom doesn’t agree.

He said that she was being unfair and it’s been hard for him to get ahold of us whenever he needs to be picked up at school, the gym, etc.

I agreed and said I’ll get him a phone only if he doesn’t tell his mother and can keep it a secret.

He agreed.

He got the phone and was very very happy.

Things were smooth at first…

It’s been easy for me to contact him (I mainly drop him off and pick him up from school) and he’s been a lot happier.

Somehow this weekend (after keeping the phone a secret for a month), my wife found out and went ballistic.

She screamed at me, told me I “betrayed” her and how dare I give our son a phone when he could easily do “bad things” on there.

Whatever that meant.

He wasn’t able to understand her point of view…

I told my wife she was being unrealistic and hasn’t been giving me proper reasons as to why Kyle shouldn’t have a phone.

She tried to confiscate Kyle’s phone but I told her since I paid for the phone, she doesn’t have a say.

My wife said she’s told me many many times not to buy our son the phone and said she felt like I betrayed our mutual agreement.

She is still very furious with me.

AITA?

That sounds like a problematic situation!

While the wife was only being protective of her child, she might have been overreacting a bit!

But let’s find out if folks on Reddit agree.

This user thinks the wife might have untreated mental health issues.

That’s right! This user thinks the wife needs some professional help.

Makes sense! This user knows that someone had to be the good cop!

This user thinks the wife is a difficult person to deal with.

Exactly! This user believes the wife might ruin this child’s mental health!

He wasn’t right to go behind her back.

That said, it doesn’t seem like she gave him much of a choice.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.