As a parent you want to give your kids every good thing in life, but that isn’t always possible. Sometimes when you can’t provide them with something they want, they simply can’t understand why and they get upset with you, which can be heartbreaking.

What would you do if your eldest daughter got a full scholarship to a private school, but when your middle daughter applied, she only got a partial scholarship and you couldn’t afford to cover the rest?

That is what happened to the parents in this story, and their middle daughter doesn’t understand that even with the partial scholarship, the private school is still very expensive and they simply can’t afford it. While they would love to send her, they just don’t make enough money at this time.

They tried to explain it to her, but at this point, she is locking herself in her room and crying.

AITA for not letting my middle daughter go to private school?

I (45F) have 3 daughters, Laura(17F), Emma(15F) and Audrey(9F), however my youngest is not relevant to this story.

This is quite an opportunity for Laura.

2 years ago, my oldest Laura was accepted into a prestigious private high school in our area with a full scholarship.

The school covered all school fee so we only had to pay for the books and additional field trips, which totals to around $1000 a year.

Ouch, that is a lot of money.

Now my middle daughter, Emma applied for scholarships this year, but unfortunately she only received a partial scholarship.

The school fees after the partial scholarship ended up to be $18k a year.

Sometimes you just can’t afford to do everything you want.

I should also add here that our family is only lower middle class, and me and my husband’s combined income is around $6000 a month, and all the expenses in the month, we have about $800-$1000 left to put to savings.

If we end up sending Emma to the same school, the plan we made for our money will collapse.

Kids often can’t understand things like this. It is normal that she is resentful, even if the parents did nothing wrong.

When I sat my daughter down to talk about this, she blew up at me and my husband for not looking at the effort she put into applying for the scholarship and tried to say that I was favoring my oldest and didn’t care about her because she is the middle child.

However this is quite the opposite, I care deeply about her education, it’s just we cannot afford the extravagance the school requires us to pay.

Give her some time to calm down. It will be hard, but she will get over this.

Emma has locked herself up in the room she share with Laura, and refuse to let her to go in.

I have no idea how to handle this, please if you have any advice please leave it in the comments.

AITA?

I feel terrible for the parents in this story. They are doing their best, but in this case, it just isn’t enough to provide Emma with what she really wants. If handled correctly, they can use this as a life lesson for their kids. Learning about money and how to make difficult budgeting decisions could be just as valuable as the education she would get at the private school.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about siblings who treat every social outing like a weird competition.

Let’s take a look at what the people in the comments have to say about this difficult situation.

There isn’t much that the family can do.

I would think the school would do more to help them.

Hopefully they can save money for college.

They can’t ruin their finances for this, but it will definitely hurt.

This commenter thinks they should try harder to get Emma in.

Kids just don’t understand budgeting, and there is only so much you can do to explain it to them. Honestly, even if she 100% understands the reasons why she can’t go, it will still hurt and be upsetting to her. She will get over it eventually, but it won’t likely be soon.

If there is anything that this family can do to make it possible to send her to the school, that would be ideal. Even working with the school to come up with additional scholarship or grant money could be a good idea.