Her Boyfriend Thinks She Overstepped By Not Telling Her Neighbor’s Parents Before Helping Their Teen
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What would you do if a teenage neighbor knocked on your door and asked if they could come inside to clean up before going home? They are clearly a mess and have probably been up to no good with their friends.
Would you help them out or refuse? Would you tell their parents what happened or keep it between the two of you?
In this story, one woman is in this situation. She didn’t think it was a big deal to help a teenage neighbor out, but after talking to her boyfriend about it, she’s wondering if she really messed up.
Let’s read the whole story.
AITA for covering for my teenage neighbor?
So last night my (29/F) teenage neighbor Mark (15/M) knocked on my door at about 11pm. He was covered in mud and had obviously been crying, and at first I thought he was hurt or maybe there was an emergency at his house.
So I told him to come inside and asked him what was wrong and if he was okay.
Mark explained that he had been out doing Halloween stuff with his friends (which I think means drinking in a field somewhere) and then someone called the cops, and he had to run home through the woods. He said was afraid to walk into his parents’ house looking like a mess, because they’d grill him about what he’d been doing and he’d probably get grounded or something.
She agreed to help Mark out.
Mark asked if he could use my bathroom to clean himself up a little bit, and I told him sure.
I know this kid pretty well, he often goes door-to-door in the neighborhood offering to help people with yard work and has watched my dog for me a few times.
I know him to be a good kid who doesn’t get in much trouble, so I felt like it was reasonable to just help him out and not make a big deal of it.
It seemed like no big deal.
He washed his face and I gave him a sweatshirt to wear to cover up how muddy he was, and he went home.
I did tell him to make sure to be safe with his friends and sort of jokingly told him not to stay out too late on school nights.
I didn’t hear anything else from him or his parents so I’m assuming it all went fine.
Her boyfriend thinks she messed up.
This morning I told my boyfriend what happened thinking it was a funny story, but he got really annoyed with me and said I shouldn’t have covered for Mark and that I was probably enabling him and his friends to drink and do drugs when what he actually needed was a trusted adult to tell him better.
We got into an argument about it, and he said that if was actually a responsible adult I’d talk to Mark’s parents to make sure they knew what was going on.
So AITA for not telling Mark’s parents that he was out making trouble?
Yikes! That’s a tricky situation. She was nice to help him out, but was she actually enabling bad behavior by not telling his parents?
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
This person thinks she did the right thing.
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Another person thinks it’s fine since it’s not like this happens a lot.
One person shares their feelings about parents.
Everyone is on her side.
If Mark suddenly starts showing up at her door every week asking for help, then she should be concerned and talk to his parents. For now, it was a one off. She helped him out. He knows he can trust her. There’s nothing wrong with that.
However, if his parents find out she helped him, they might be upset.
It can be tricky to know when keeping a secret is the right thing to do.
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