He Forced Her to Miss Her 8th-Grade Washington D.C. Trip for a Reunion—Then Realized She Spent the Entire Event Staring at a Wall
Shutterstock
It is impossible to do everything that you want in life because there are often conflicts and other obligations.
What would you do if your daughter’s big school trip and a family reunion/wedding combination were slated to happen in the same week?
That is what happened to the parents in this story, so they made her skip the school trip and attend the family event. This was years ago, and the daughter still hasn’t forgiven them.
Personally, I think they should have let her go on the trip with her friends if it was at all possible. Read through the full details below and see what you think.
AITA for not allowing my daughter to go on an 8th grade school trip.
This happened three years ago and my daughter “Mallory” still resents us for this.
School trips are a lot of fun.
I’m asking now because my son is going to be starting the eighth grade next school year, permitting that schools will reopen again and this event isn’t cancelled.
At my kid’s school, there is a big annual spring break trip to New York City and Washington D.C. It’s something that most of the kids, including my own, were looking forward to.
It is easy to see where this is going.
When Mallory started the sixth grade, she talked about wanting to go on the trip. We said she could, so long as she got good grades and didn’t get into trouble.
When she was in the seventh grade, her aunt Linda got engaged and set her wedding date for the following year. This was going to include a big family reunion with all the relatives because Linda was the last of my siblings to get married (big fat Catholic family), many of whom we haven’t seen in years.
Family is important, of course.
Unfortunately, Linda planned her wedding to take place the same week as Mallory’s 8th grade spring break.
We ended up having to tell Mallory that she couldn’t go on the trip afterall because everyone was going to be going to the wedding instead.
Like I said, this was going to include a family reunion, and it may be the last time we got to see some relatives including her great-grandparents for a long time.
It is completely understandable that Mallory is devastated.
Mallory was heartbroken. We offered to take a family trip to New York, but she turned it down because she wanted to go with friends and not family. Understandable.
Cut to the week of the wedding a year later. We flew out to New Mexico for the ceremony and crash at my sister’s (not the bride’s) house. Mallory is still upset about having to be in New Mexico when all of her friends are in New York.
Oh man, adding salt to the wound.
A few days before the ceremony was to take place, Linda called off the wedding.
Mallory was furious. I can still remember her blow up. She screamed, “so I missed my trip for nothing?” and stormed off into the room she was sharing with her cousins and wouldn’t let anyone in.
She is just lashing out, which is understandable.
It was a mess afterward. I tried to cheer Mallory up by offering to take her sight seeing or go see a movie with her cousins, but she refused.
I gave up after she refused to go to the movies with us, saying that she didn’t want to watch a ‘dumb kids movie with a bunch of babies’ (while she is the oldest of the cousins, the next nearest cousin in age was nine at the time).
There is no way to fully make up for this.
Mallory refused to speak to us during the flight back. To this day, she’s still angry at her aunt Linda.
I know Mallory was upset, but no one could have predicted that the wedding would be called off. We have tried to make it up to her, but she has refused every offer.
She will get over it eventually, but she’ll never forget it.
I know she wants a trip with her friends, but that New York trip is expensive and many of her friend’s parents were not willing to spend more money on another outing for the girls.
Because of this, Mallory thinks I am a terrible parent.
AITA?
While family events are important, so are school trips and making memories. Kids don’t really care much about family reunions, but school trips are things they often remember for a lifetime. Whether the wedding was canceled or not, they likely should have just let her go on the school trip if it was at all possible.
Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.
Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about it.
It really wasn’t fair what they did.
The school trip was planned years in advance.
This commenter wonders if they were even that close to the family.
Kids don’t really care about family events.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who refuses to change her 4th of July traditions for her in-laws, sparking a family feud.
This person thinks they made a mistake.
There is nothing they can do to fix what happened, unfortunately. The fact that the wedding got canceled is just salt in the wound.
In reality, they should have let her go on the school trip regardless of what would have happened with the wedding.
Enjoyed this story?
Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.
