You’re about to read an interesting HOA story where the drama and conflict are not at all caused by an HOA board, the HOA president or HOA rules. Instead, all the drama is caused by the neighbors.

Imagine going to the community gym in your HOA neighborhood, and a teenager is there by himself. He’s pretty chatty and tells you a lot of things about himself and his family. If you later met his family at an HOA BBQ, would you feel it was your place to stand up for the teen to his parents, or would you mind your own business?

In this story, one couple is in this exact situation. They decide to stand up for the teen, and it doesn’t go well. As you can imagine, most parents don’t like having their parenting criticized, especially by a younger couple who doesn’t have kids of their own.

Yet, the couple thinks their comments may have been helpful after all. Keep reading to see if you think they made the right decision or if they should’ve stayed out of it.

AITA for “causing a stir” after a HOA event?

My husband (26M) and I (25F) moved into our new home about 6 months ago, and we live in a HOA.

This is the first time either of us have lived in a HOA and we’ve been trying to adjust and learn more about it.

We’ve been starting to get more involved in the community as time has gone by.

This story involves another family.

One of the families in our community is a family of 4, the mom Jen (33F), the dad Manny (32M) and their two boys, Rayce (13M) and Murray (11M).

My husband and I have met Rayce a number of times in the past 6 months, always in the fitness center.

The minimum age to use the fitness center alone is 13, so he’s just old enough to be there without parents, so we hadn’t met his parents or Murray yet.

Rayce would talk to us sometimes, about a variety of things like his girlfriend, school, ect.

Here are some more thinks Rayce shared about his family.

He only brought up his family a few times, and the main thing we remember about his family was that he told us he hated his brother, he told us this was after Murray had been mean to one of Rayce’s friends, so we could see why he was mad.

He mentioned his brother was “introverted and nerdy” and was glad he never wanted to go to the gym.

Rayce also mentioned he was not a natural blonde one day. He was talking about how he and his baseball teammates dyed their hair blonde for some tournament he was in, and when Rayce saw the blonde, he liked it better than his natural dark brown hair.

Rayce has a fairly normal fluffy, fairly short haircut that I’ve seen a lot of middle school boys have.

They finally met Murray.

On Saturday, our HOA had a “winter block party”, so we decided to go.

We ended up running into Rayce and his family, my husband made a comment about how Rayce didn’t look related to his family bc he dyes his hair.

Then Murray said “like a ***”.

My husband and I were shocked and didn’t know what to say, but we could see Rayce was uncomfortable.

They decided to try to help Rayce.

Murray and the parents had walked to a different booth at the party, when Rayce apologized to us and told us Murray will regularly make mean comments and it embarrasses Rayce but the parents do nothing.

My husband asked Rayce if he needed help, he said he didn’t care either way.

My husband and I went to the parents and told them we were concerned for Rayce.

They told us to mind our own business and said that the boys “already hate each other and don’t need more division”, she said that “you Gen Zers are so judgy when you’re not a parent yourself and told us to back off.

The drama continued on social media.

After the fair ended, the mom went on Facebook and posted about me in the HOA group.

I explained my side of the story online to.

Since then, my husband and I have gotten dirty looks from some people in the community.

However, on the upside, Rayce told me that hes thankful for us because other members of the community have called out his parents for their parenting and now his parents feel pressured to punish Murray. AITA?

I feel bad for Rayce too, but was it right to interfere in his parents’ parenting tactics?

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a family living outside the HOA who refuse to remove their tree or lights despite their neighbors hating them.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say.

This person thinks they overstepped.

Another person criticizes the parents.

This person thinks going to social media was immature.

Another person calls OP delusional.

They were trying to help, but criticizing people you literally just met about a problem you only know about from one perspective probably wasn’t a wise decision.

I do feel bad for the boys though. It seems like their parents need to be more hands on with their parenting. Letting their sons criticize each other without any consequences doesn’t seem like good parenting.

When and if they’re parents some day, they’ll probably understand what it’s like from the opposite perspective. In the meantime, I do hope the parents punish Murray.

If they want to be good neighbors, they may need to learn to mind their own business.