Love it or hate it, there’s no question that school plays a big part in making us who we are.

So it’s no wonder that it can be a very polarising time, with some people thriving in the school halls, and others desperate for that time to be over.

And the grandma in this story is certainly glad she doesn’t ever have to go back to school, since she found the whole thing to be a complete nightmare.

But her constant negativity towards school is having quite an effect on her daughter and granddaughter.

Read on to find out why she won’t stop.

AITA for telling my mom to stop villainizing middle school?

I am a single mom to an 11 year old girl. I chose to be a single mother by using a sperm donor.

My mom and I weren’t always close when I was younger, but we grew closer when I became a mom myself. She ended up moving in with me and has helped me raise my daughter.

In the early summer, I got a job transfer to a new state and my mom came with us. While the area we moved to is very nice, the issue is that the public schools are not great.

Prior to the move, I found an all-girls private school. My mom was not thrilled with this. Both she and I were bullied as teens, and my mom always said, “teen girls are just the worst.”

She felt I was really opening up my daughter to be bullied.

But the reality was very different.

However, when I did more research on the school, and all girls schools in general, I found there was actually less bullying and “mean girl”-ness.

The school itself also seems to focus a lot on uplifting women and focusing on building up women’s accomplishments rather than pitting them against one another. So, after my daughter and I visited the school prior to the move, I decided to enroll her.

She started in September and she loves it so much. She has a lot of friends already, and says what I thought was true: there seems to be less cattiness than a regular middle school.

She says she has noticed some bullying between other kids, but it’s not as much as she saw when she was at her public elementary school last year. She also says it’s handled in a much different way.

Grandma, however, failed to be convinced.

I’m glad she’s enjoying it. However, my mom continues to be a Negative Nancy on the situation.

She checks in with my daughter to ask how school is going, but then will start on her rant about how “pre-teen/teen girls are all so mean, they’re the worst, middle school is the worst time ever.”

I’ve talked to her before and asked her to stop.

Yesterday, my daughter got into an argument with one of her friends. It wasn’t anything big, just typical pre-teen stuff that gets kind of blown out of proportion.

I’m sure I had fights similar with my friends at that age. I was comforting her and validating her emotions, as well as giving her advice.

Then the grandmother stepped in, and made everything a whole lot worse.

My mom came home and asked what was wrong.

My daughter told her, and my mom went on her tirade yet again about how middle school are the worst three years of any young woman’s life and you couldn’t pay her to relive it.

I shut her down and said my daughter had one bad day. That does not mean these three years will be bad.

My mom kept insisting “girls are the worst.” I shut her down again and told her that isn’t true. Even my daughter was telling her some things she’s learned at school.

And then, the situation escalate.

My mom got irritated and told me that I am undermining her experience. I pointed out I had the exact same experience, but I’m not going to let it cloud my daughter.

I told her later on that she needs to cut out the comments. She said, again, that I’m trying to undermine her experience and that I can’t tell her how to react.

Am I wrong for wanting her to stop villainizing middle school?

AITA?

It’s clear that the grandmother’s negativity is having an effect on both her daughter and her granddaughter, and her refusal to stop is only making things worse.

She needs to understand that things change over time, and middle school back when she was young is very different to middle school today.

Moreover, she should be championing her granddaughter’s learning at middle school, not just moaning about how horrible the whole thing is.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about this.

This person agreed that the grandmother was being totally inappropriate.

While others explained that she had no idea what middle school is like today.

And this Redditor pointed out that her comments villainized her granddaughter too.

Grandma’s attitude is totally backwards, and unhelpful to anyone involved.

She needs to work through her own trauma and prejudices and stop dumping it on everyone around her.

She’s not helping here.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.