At times, parenting teenagers can feel like a never-ending mix of tough love and damage control.

So when one mother learned her daughter got caught cheating on a practice SAT because her friend pressured her, she laid down a hard rule: from now on, her daughter would pay her own college testing fees.

But the minute her daughter came up short on cash, the extended family’s guilt trips started coming fast.

Keep reading for the full story.

I received a call to pick up my daughter ‘Lily’ because she had been caught cheating on her practice SAT.

After arriving, I learned Lily’s friend ‘Sam’ had also been caught cheating.

Her score was canceled, but, thankfully, Lily will still be allowed to retake the test, and this has not gone under any kind of record.

When he asked her daughter about it, she had a complicated story.

When I talked to Lily about what happened, she told me that Sam’s mother was going to punish Sam if she didn’t earn an exceptionally high score.

And Sam had, in turn, put pressure on my daughter to help her cheat.

This only confirms the worries this mother already had about Sam.

I have felt for a long time that Sam is not a genuine friend to Lily and has been trying to hold my daughter back to feel better about her own poor choices.

And I had spoken to Lily about this before, and to not let Sam manipulate her into anything she knows is wrong.

Lily told me that she had understood, yet did this.

So she’s determined to make sure Lily learns something from this.

I told Lily that, to prove she will take her education seriously from now on, she will need to come up with the fee for her future tests and college applications on her own.

I suggested she start working odd jobs (such as babysitting or dog walking for the neighbors) to save up early.

But soon, money became an issue.

Despite telling me she understood, the time to register for the next test is approaching, and my daughter asked me to pay because she is short on cash and her school will not offer the test again until spring.

She brought up the original excuse that Sam pressured her into cheating.

This mother was not willing to bend on this.

I told my daughter no.

I am not going back on my word, and she will learn to treat these opportunities with respect once she has to earn it herself.

I also told Lily that she needs to stop letting Sam manipulate her, and if she can’t stand up to her then maybe she doesn’t have the mental maturity for college.

So then the rest of the family got involved.

Our extended family became involved in the disagreement and are insisting that we cover the fee because it’s for her education and is important for college.

I am not allowing them to cover the fee for Lily because it’s undermining my lesson.

She worries that going back on her word could teach Lily the wrong lesson.

Inevitably, someone pretending to be her friend is going to pressure her to cheat again in college.

Then when she gets caught again, I will wind up losing thousands of dollars and Lily will lose her shot at a good education.

Her college journey won’t last long regardless unless she learns responsibility now.

AITA for putting my foot down with Lily and our family?

The biggest lesson here wasn’t on the test papers.

What did Reddit think?

Maybe Sam isn’t as much to blame as this mother might think.

This commenter agrees with this mother’s hard stance.

It’s clear to this commenter this daughter hasn’t yet learned her lesson.

This redditor worries this punishment may end up pushing her daughter even further away from college.

If her daughter wanted college-level opportunities, she needed college-level accountability first.

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.