Parenting comes with plenty of gray areas, especially when it involves someone else’s child.

So, what would you do if a stranger’s kid tried to take food from your family while you were out, and your partner thought sharing was the right thing to do?

Would you agree that you should share? Or would you stand firm and use it as a way to teach your own kids about consent?

In the following story, one mother finds herself in this exact situation and chooses the latter.

Here’s what happened.

AITA for not letting a kid eat my food?

The other day, I was at the mall with my boyfriend and our two kids (F5 and M6).

We were sitting, eating a bag of roasted chestnuts, when this kid (around 10 years old) started hovering around us.

Now, I admit I’m not the biggest fan of any kid that doesn’t belong to me, so this alone was already annoying me slightly, but I still smiled at him.

Then he called my son over and whispered in his ear, and I knew it was about the chestnuts.

She told him he had to ask his parents before having a chestnut.

My son nodded yes, and the boy came up to me and reached for a chestnut.

I moved my bag and said, “No, you have to go ask your parents.”

My boyfriend got upset, called me rude, and handed a chestnut to the boy.

The boy left, and I told my boyfriend he shouldn’t have done that, that you don’t just give food to a strange kid.

Unfortunately, her boyfriend did not agree.

The boy then hovered back around us and snatched two chestnuts from the bag that my boyfriend was now holding.

I stood up and said very firmly, “Sorry, but you can’t take our stuff like that. Go to your parents.”

He put them back and ran off.

I think the kid had no manners, and I wasn’t going to let my kids think it’s okay to accept anything from strangers or that it’s okay to be pressured into sharing.

My boyfriend doesn’t agree and thinks the kid trusted us because we have kids ourselves. He thinks I was just selfish.

AITA?

Yikes! There’s actually a lot more going on here than meets the eye.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit feel about what her boyfriend did.

This person encountered something similar.

Here’s someone who gets it.

According to this reader, they would’ve asked to see his parents.

This reader is allergic to chestnuts.

She was on the right track.

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.