Parenting is hard, and for many parents, it can be hard to believe that your kids would do anything seriously wrong.

What would you do if your sister’s son was being very inappropriate at school, but mom wouldn’t believe any of it and was saying the teacher was lying about it?

That is the situation the Aunt in this story is in, and she isn’t sure if she was right in calling her sister delusional.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for calling my sister delusional for believing her son over a teacher?

I (27F) have a sister, Meredith (29F), Meredith has 5 kids (11M, 11M, 9M, 6F and 3F).

Her twins are polar opposites.

Her sons are Maddox and Steve.

Maddox and Steve are in separate 5th grade classes, but this year all of the 5th grade teachers at their elementary school are doing a research project for women’s history month where the students write about any famous woman of their choosing.

I am a 5th grade teacher at the other elementary school in the district and am doing the same.

I  am close friends with both of  their teachers.

Seems like a pretty normal kid.

Maddox loves basketball, he is on a league outside of school and for his reading log, he always likes to read either fiction books with a basketball story or nonfiction biographies.

One of their friends is autistic and will usually pick the books these boys read and explain it to them, he is on their team and is so smart it’s scary, but he’s a sweet kid.

Maddox and his friends are all doing WNBA stars for their projects.

Steve has different interests.

Steve absolutely loathes sports, to the point that he has degraded Maddox’s interest in basketball several times, he does not go to his games and is always in trouble for not participating in gym class.

On Friday, students in both of my friend’s classes submitted their rough drafts on this project, Steve submitted a draft about Lisa Leslie, who was a WNBA player.

My friend knew something was wrong when she saw who he wrote about, and even more so when reading what he had written so far seemed like it was copy and pasted from a book.

It’s never good when the teachers are talking.

Maddox and Steve’s teachers talked at recess and they called Maddox over.

He said he had Lisa Leslie’s autobiography and that basically confirmed their suspicions that Steve was plagiarizing on this paper.

Steve admitted to his teacher that he plagiarized and said he thought the idea of a project for women’s history month was “retarded” because “men are smarter than women” and said he knew this because men have won more Nobel prizes in science.

Let’s see how the boy’s mom reacts.

His teacher emailed Meredith about this.

Meredith emailed back when Steve got home saying that Steve told her that his teacher was lying and accused Maddox on being in on a scheme to get back at him for not supporting his “retarded interest in basketball”.

I was shocked when my sister called me to tell me what happened.

She told me the story of the email the teacher sent and how she responded and asked me why I would be friends with people who “clearly hate Steve”.

I asked her if she seriously believed her other son was seriously in cahoots with his teacher to make Steve look bad.

Yes, it seems like she believes Steve over the teacher.

She said it wasn’t his fault but he was being manipulated by them to do this.

I told her I would come over to speak with her about this in person.

I asked Maddox what happened and he told me his brother is a fraud and how he told Steve to get his hands off his books.

Maddox said he wasn’t lying and said his teachers did nothing to make him say this, and that Steve was just being “an idiot like he always is”.

I pointed out that Steve has said bad things about women right in front of me, including about his own sisters, who are only 6 and 3.

He once said that they should stop asking him about some science kit he got for Christmas because it wasn’t “for girls”.

You’d think as a woman, his mom wouldn’t be okay with this, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

She said Steve is entitled to his own opinions.

And I told her she was being ridiculous and that she needed to punish Steve for going in Maddox’s room and taking his book without permission so he could cheat on a project.

I also told her she needed to send Steve to therapy to work on how he sees women.

Meredith said that “all boys think girls have cooties at his age”.

The boys’ dad isn’t helpful either.

Meredith’s husband /the kids father came home and saying he wasn’t “getting involved in drama between the boys” and said that they can’t force the boys to like each other and to just let this play out without punishing Steve.

I left their house and haven’t spoken to Meredith since.

She is telling me I need to speak to her and also tell Maddox to stop giving Steve the silent treatment, which she thinks he learned from me.

I told her in the past that Maddox is his own person with his own morals, and pointed out how he’s called out Steve’s bad behavior before.

She just won’t believe that her son is misbehaving.

She said that Maddox was just doing that to “be cool” the last time this happened.

I said she was delusional for believing her son over his teachers.

AITA?

Mom is clearly in denial about her son and she needs to wake up.

Let’s see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about this story.

This is an important question.

Sadly, the sister is hurting her son in the long run.

This person has a good idea.

This commenter is very concerned.

The sister needs to step up and start parenting.

His behavior is very concerning.

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.