Birthday parties for small kids can often be the milestone events that shape their early memories most fondly. Though when you’re co-parenting, coordinating a successful celebration isn’t always an easy task.

How would you handle your ex showing up and railroading the perfectly nice event you put together for your child? One woman recently shared a frustrating example of this with Reddit. Here’s what happened.

AITAH for not being willing to negotiate my sons birthday party

My son’s birthday is coming up next Saturday.

I made plans with his dad to coordinate the event since we aren’t together.

I make sure to communicate exactly what is going on, so that way theres no confusion.

Those are famous last words.

I told him before I requested off work and asked if the 23rd would be a good day for the party and he agreed.

I also told him the games I planned for the children, the prizes I picked, and that I was getting him a special cake.

Cut to a week before the party, he asks if we can reschedule to the 30th (my son’s actual birthday is the 20th) because his mom wants to go on a float trip with friends.

What does that have to do with her?

I told him this wouldn’t work for me as I already scheduled off and payed for a special cake.

He basically said oh well we can just meet at the park, and do a small thing there, and do the other party on the 30th.

This is incredibly hurtful, suggesting because his mom cant be there due to a personal choice, they’ll postpone the big celebration for her, excluding me the mother entirely.

Co-parenting doesn’t seem to be this guy’s strong suit.

I said this wasn’t fair as we had this planned and I dumped lots of time , money, and effort in bc I thought we were doing a big party with a bunch of kids.

But now I’m feeling like I’m slightly being selfish to demand we don’t deviate from the original plan.

So AITAH for not wanting to negotiate on this?

Sometimes no amount of planning can account for stupidity.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a professor who missed a major funding deadline after they told their graduate student to leave them alone.

Let’s see how the Reddit community weighed in here.

The comments were pretty immediately on the young mother’s side.

And weighed in from personal experience.

One person put it all into perspective.

Another suggested the implications of changing the plan.

And someone else broke it down plain and simply.

Her only wish for the day is a competent partner.