Navigating grief can feel like the hardest thing in the world.

Some people cope with the confusing and utterly unprecedented emotions by talking out their feelings right away, while others choose to repress them, usually to their detriment later on.

And that’s the problem in this story.

When their baby died, this couple chose to repress their feelings.

So when, thirteen years later, their teenage daughter understandably wants to know all about her brother, it is throwing their shaky mental health into complete disarray.

Read on to find out how the mom tried to handle the situation, and what question from her daughter made her flip out.

AITA for asking my daughter not to bring up her deceased brother any more?

I am a 39-year-old mom with three kids: fifteen- and twelve-year-old daughters and a six-year-old son.

When my oldest was two, we had another child. He died suddenly at four days old. He had an undiagnosed congenital heart defect.

It completely wrecked me.

My husband and I both coped by not coping. He became a workaholic and I just tried to put it out of my mind.

Our family doesn’t bring him up, I don’t have any pictures in the house.

But eventually this method stopped working.

My fifteen year old has no memory of him and only recently started asking questions.

I’ve answered all of them, but she keeps bringing him up.

I have nothing more I can tell her, and she is just going over the same things repeatedly now.

Let’s see how these questions started affecting the mom.

Some of the questions she has are incredibly painful ones that have no answer, and I really can’t keep going over them.

She keeps asking why his defect wasn’t caught in time. At times she insinuates we could have done more.

It wasn’t caught at the hospital because at that time, pulse ox screening for newborns wasn’t standard. Even if it had been caught, he would have had a short, horrible life full of surgeries and pain.

It’s too hard for me to keep going over this with her.

And then the daughter asked something even more painful.

At one point she asked me what he looked like when I found him.

I snapped at her and told her it was not appropriate and none of her business. I was pretty harsh and her feelings were hurt.

Later I felt bad about shutting her down. He was her brother but I still feel like that was a really callous thing to ask casually.

She seems bothered that this is the way her father and I coped and has asked me repeatedly if I still care about him or think about him.

Read on to find out how this mom is considering approaching the problem.

I feel like I’ve answered every question she has.

Would I be wrong to ask her to stop, or at least only ask when I’m not in the middle of something else?

She pops up with this when I’m making breakfast or we’re in the car on the way somewhere, and it completely throws me off.

AITA?

The way that this woman’s daughter is constantly peppering her with questions is understandably traumatic for this mom.

But unfortunately, hers and her husband’s unprocessed grief is the stumbling block here.

Let’s see how the folks over on Reddit reacted to this.

This person agreed that the girl clearly had unprocessed worries of her own.

While this commenter encouraged the mom to get support.

And others encouraged compassion and communication.

They both need to talk to a therapist.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.