Shutterstock

Card games are a lot of fun, and teaching new people to play is a really nice thing to do.

What would you do if you were teaching your younger cousin how to play a game of cards, and as part of that you were pointing out poor strategy decisions, but after the game your mother said that it was rude?

That is what happened to the young woman in this story, but she was only trying to help her little cousin, who seemed to accept the advice well.

Personally, I think she was doing the right thing, and Mom was being weird about it. Check out the full story below and see if you agree.

AITA for pointing out my cousin’s mistakes while playing a card game

This is kind of dumb compared to the other stuff in life, and isn’t that big of a deal in my opinion, but I still want to hear what you think because if my approach actually was wrong, I do want to change it and I do want to hear what you think would’ve been a better option.

It takes a long time to get good at a card game.

I (17F) and my cousin (13F) were playing a card game that I’ve been playing for literally years, while she had just recently learned, so of course she doesn’t really have a solid strategy yet, and sometimes does dumb moves.

There’s nothing wrong in that, and I have also, of course, done a lot of dumb moves when I was still learning (and sometimes still do some dumb moves) because it’s normal.

Helping someone else learn the game is a nice thing to do.

So, that why whenever she did a dumb move, I tried explaining to her why that wasn’t the smartest move not to be like “lol you suck” because that’s literally a kid and of course doesn’t have the same level of experience as me.

Instead, I do it because I wanted her to learn from her mistakes and understand why it was dumb so she’ll do better in the future, because this is how you improve and she seemed to listen and understand and she didn’t seem upset, so of course to me everything was fine.

Everything seems to be going well.

For the most part she played well and just did a few small common mistakes that everyone does at first, and that I myself used to do before people explained to me why they were mistakes, and only one actually major mistake.

So, we eventually finish the game and get to the part where we have to count our point and I asked her if she remembers how to count her own points and she says no.

Counting up the points seems like an important part of the game.

So, I go and help her and I show her how I count and I count that the points she had to pay were more than the points she had on the table, so her score was of course gonna be a negative number.

I tell her that her score was gonna be negative and I then show her how I count my own points even if there was no need to just to show her how you count points.

She wasn’t being mean about it.

Everything was fine, and of course she wasn’t mad she lost and she didn’t show any sign of feeling hurt, but then when she left, my mom told me I shouldn’t have told her those things.

She was especially pressed about my comment about her score being negative, but I wasn’t like “ahah loser your score is negative!”

I was more like “you’ll have to pay these points for this and these other points for that and now let’s subtract these points from your score and it’s negative.”

Maybe Mom thinks that her cousin is sensitive.

I genuinely don’t know how else I was supposed to state this fact while showing her how I counted her score?

It’s not like there’s anything wrong with losing and making a negative score, especially if you’re still learning and I wasn’t trying to make a big deal out of it or laugh at her.

Nah, she didn’t do anything wrong.

I can win against people much more experienced than her, so what would be the point?

But maybe I did accidentally phrase that wrong and sound offensive while I genuinely just wanted her to learn, so was I in the wrong?

AITA?

It really doesn’t seem like she did anything wrong at all. If anything, she was going out of her way to be kind to her little cousin and help teach her a fun card game.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this situation.

If she doesn’t like the game, she won’t play next time.

This person thinks she was being mean.

Unsolicited advice isn’t always welcome.

This person says that her cousin is old enough to say something if she isn’t having fun.

If her cousin didn’t like it, she could say something.

Teaching young people to play a card game is a lot of fun. It seems like she was doing it nicely, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

Of course, we can’t see exactly how it was being done, so it is hard to make a judgment.