Let’s be real, very few kids have ‘perfect’ childhoods.

But if you feel safe in your home, have parent(s) who love you and who you can be yourself around, you have the basis for a stable and happy life.

Unfortunately, these factors are not the case for many kids all over the world, and the lack of love or consistency can be really troubling to deal with.

The kid in this story has worked hard to be positive in the face of a lot of odd and destabilising decisions from their mom.

But she’s been unfair one too many times, and for this kid, this is the final straw.

Read on to find out what landed the whole family in such an awful situation.

AITA for making my mom pay me back for something I bought?

My mom has made a lot of risky decisions for us to keep us afloat, and one of the biggest decisions was moving in with a man she’s sort of seeing. I can’t say this was a good thing.

He promised my mom and us (me and my two siblings) a free stay for however long she likes as long as she cooks for him.

It’s sort of like a pretend marriage – they had no plans to actually marry.

They were older people and didn‘t believe in dating, and they saw nothing much from marrying again, so they agreed on this weird companionship where they rely on each other for different needs.

Let’s see how this situation worked out for the family.

She sold our old house and bought one near his to rent out to make ends meet.

But she relied on him too much.

The house she bought had an unfinished basement and she was planning on making another floor for tenants, fitted with a kitchen, two bathrooms and three rooms.

She let the man handle all the floor plans, contracting, and construction for it, since “he was more informative of this matter.” The end result was less than savory, lets just say.

And things really didn’t go well from there.

Many things happened and my mom and that man had a falling out. We had no choice but to move into the basement that was just finished. The level floor was leased out already so we couldn’t stay up there.

My mom did her best to make the basement look homey, but she knew it took some growing used to. My siblings were very upset about this change, but I tried to make the best of it.

The room I share with my sister there was only one thing I didn’t like. The blind on our window had been there since the old homeowners; it was stained and dusty, and exuded some kind of smell.

I don’t know how to describe this smell other than “old”.

So this sibling tried to fix things up the best they could.

I asked my mom if we could change it out, to which she responded, “If there’s anything you don’t like and you can change it, just do it.” I figured she felt bad that we ended up here and was letting us do as we please.

I did as she said and I changed it for a blackout blind that rolled down.

But when my mom saw the blind she hated it. She hated that it was blackout, and she hated how it looked.

I don’t think she knew how to roll it up when they it down, but she also said “It’s really difficult that I have to roll it back up when they are down to get some sunlight in here.”

But the mom really wasn’t being reasonable about this.

I showed it was a simple pull up but she didn’t care. She told me to switch it back to the old one. I was angry because she said I could change it, and she pretended she never said that. It was hard to put up (for me at least) and I knew it would be frustrating to take down as well.

I was also disappointed that I believed I could genuinely change anything about my room that I didn’t like, but apparently she didn’t mean that at all.

I didn’t say this to her, but we ended up here because of the man she met and the fact that decided to put her entire family at the mercy of this man.

I told her that because she falsely led me to believe I could change the blind, then she’d have to pay me back the money I spent for it. It was $85, but now I’m thinking I was too much.

AITA?

It’s clear that this wasn’t an ideal situation for anyone involved, and the mom was likely feeling foolish and ashamed for having to move into the basement flat that she’d bought to rent out.

But the mixed messages she was giving to her child, who was just trying to make the best of the unfortunate situation she’d put them in, was completely unfair.

Perhaps it was an offhand thing that she said but regretted, but her child took it seriously – and to make them put the old, gross blind back up in their bedroom just because she didn’t like the one they’d picked is a whole new level of neglectful.

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

This person agreed that the mom should pay.

While others thought that the child would be best to move out as soon as they can.

Meanwhile, this Redditor urged them to be more upfront with their mom.

It must suck to be at the mercy of your mom’s decisions, particularly when you can see that they are doomed from the start.

The mom should be commending her kid for trying to make the best of a bad situation while their siblings are complaining, not being unfair to them for doing so.

It’s her kid’s room, that they’re just trying to make habitable, and she’s sabotaging it.

Mom needs to do better.

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.