Imagine having an extroverted child who likes to talk to anyone and everyone. It could be challenging to parent a child like this because while you want to encourage them to be social and friendly, you also need to keep them safe and make them very aware of stranger danger.

In this story, one little girl wants to talk to the construction workers who are working on the neighbor’s house. Her mom doesn’t think it’s a big deal, but her ex thinks these workers could’ve been dangerous.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for letting my daughter chat with construction workers?

My neighbors have been having some work done on their house. The same three workers came 3 times a week. They would eat lunch on my neighbors porch which faces our porch.

My daughter (6) saw them one of the first times they were there and sat on our porch and chatted with them. I was gardening at the time so I could see and hear them.

Over the last few weeks, my daughter would go out there and chat with them from our porch while they were eating lunch, and I would open the kitchen window (right behind her) and keep an eye on her.

The workers knew I was there and would sometimes chat with me through the window as well.

She didn’t think the chats were a big deal.

The workers were very friendly to her and would tell her about their kids and she would talk to them about her favorite tv shows and such. Very innocent stuff.

I would only let her talk to them for ~15 minutes so they could also have some peace on their lunch break if they wanted it, but they genuinely seemed to enjoy chatting with her.

I didn’t mention this to her father because it seemed like such a non issue. She’s a chatty kid and talks to everyone (yes, we have drilled into her head to go to off with any adults except for her parents and step parents) so her chatting with some construction workers next door just wasn’t even noteworthy.

She didn’t think it was a big deal to take a picture either.

However on the last day of construction, my daughter asked me to take a photo of her with the workers.

I took a very cute socially distanced photo of her on the porch and the workers in the background on the neighbors porch.

I thought it was very cute so I sent it to my ex and just said that she had been chatting with them and we took a cute picture.

For the record, my ex and I are the only people with the photo, the workers don’t have any photos of my daughter.

Her ex thinks the chats were a very big deal.

Well my ex accused me of allowing an inappropriate and unsafe relationship between my daughter and the workers. He thinks I should have discouraged her from talking to them at all because they could be dangerous.

I think that since I supervised the whole time and made sure it was all appropriate and also have repeatedly explained to her the difference between people we chat with and people we trust, it was fine. I told her also that she shouldn’t chat with grownups if one of her parents isn’t supervising.

I also think it was good for her to chat with people from different backgrounds and I don’t think it was inherently dangerous.

My ex is very angry though and is threatening to withhold child support unless I agree not to let her talk to any adults that aren’t family or close family friends. Am I a jerk for letting her chat with them?

Her ex is overreacting. He wasn’t there. All he sees is the picture, so he’s jumping to conclusions.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

He can’t follow through with his threat.

This person thinks she did a good thing not a bad thing.

Another person expected a completely different problem.

Nobody thinks the mom messed up.

The dad sounds overprotective.

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.