A surprise birthday party for a 23-year-old should’ve been a joyous occasion, but when a little niece jumped the gun on blowing out the candles, emotions ran high.

Instead of laughs and hugs, the party ended in tears, awkward silences, and a mother-daughter clash.

Read on for the story.

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.

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.

Here it comes…

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.

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.

Oh dear.

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.

It’s not every day that birthday candles cause a family rift, but here we are.

Zara’s reaction might have been intense, but calling her a brat didn’t exactly help the situation.

Either way, most people on Reddit agree: Mom is the clear AH.

This person can’t fathom how “brat” was the first word used.

This person suggests the candles might’ve been a special moment ruined.

This person also can’t believe how Mom isn’t seeing this.

Looks like Mom’s reaction blew out the good vibes faster than those candles.

The whole scene warrants a conversation, not judgement.

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.