It’s not always easy to balance family time when the kids are different ages.

So, what would you do if your youngest child begged to join a movie night she wasn’t ready for? Would you let her stay up and make her feel included? Or would you stick to the rules and risk leaving her out?

In today’s story, one father finds himself facing this very decision and opts for the latter. Here’s the scoop.

AITA for excluding my daughter from a movie night?

I, 40m, and my wife, 39f, have 3 great kids, 13m, 12f, and 9f.

Our youngest daughter doesn’t handle horror very well. She can only handle Scooby Doo, and even that is sometimes too scary for her. But she, of course, wants to see scary stuff and throws temper tantrums when we say no.

Last night, my wife and our two older kids wanted to watch Alien, so we figured we’d watch it after our youngest daughter was in bed (since it’s summer, we’ve bumped her bedtime up to 9:30).

He carried her back to bed, but she was still arguing.

After my wife and I put our daughter to bed, we went downstairs to start the movie.

After the movie had started, our youngest daughter came down and asked what movie we were watching. We asked her why she wasn’t in bed, and she said she heard her sister mention that we were gonna watch a movie and asked if she could watch, too.

We told her no because it was too scary for her, but she kept insisting that she could handle it. I eventually firmly told her no, but she kept insisting that she could handle it.

So I picked her up and carried her back to her bed. She screamed and protested the whole time, saying, “No, daddy, I want to watch the movie!”

When she wouldn’t stop, he threatened she’d be in trouble.

When I tucked her back in bed, she kept protesting, saying it wasn’t fair to have family movie time without her. That’s when I said to her, “This is not family movie time; this is a time for people who are big enough for scary movies, and you’re too little for scary movies.”

She said, “No, daddy, I’m big enough for scary movies,” and tried to get out of bed.

That’s when I raised my voice and firmly told her, “No, you’re too little for scary movies, and it is past your bedtime now. If you get out of bed again, you’re in trouble!”

I then tucked her back into bed and kissed her goodnight.

They watched the movie, but his wife was upset.

Then we all watched the movie as planned. For a while, we could hear our daughter screaming and having a tantrum from upstairs, but we ignored it, and it did stop.

I thought I handled it well until today, when my wife came to me very upset with me for how I handled it.

She said it would’ve been better to just let her watch a movie that was appropriate for her with us and then put her to bed and watch Alien because then she wouldn’t have felt excluded.

I disagreed because our daughter knew it was past her bedtime. But my wife still thinks I didn’t handle it right.

AITA?

Wow! It’s easy to see both sides of this, but she may be a bit young for scary movies.

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit had to say about it.

This person thinks he handled it wrong.

Here’s some great advice.

Yet another person who thinks family movie night should be a double-header.

For this reader, rewarding a tantrum is not the right thing to do.

He was not wrong. However, next time, I agree that the family should watch a kid-friendly movie first, so she doesn’t feel left out.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.