When a well-meaning mom invited friends over to help her 9-year-old foster daughter socialize, things didn’t exactly go as planned.

The daughter struggled to share, refused to eat the same meal as the other kids, and barely interacted with anyone.

One guest decided to speak up about the situation, but now she’s wondering if she crossed a line by being brutally honest.

AITA for telling my friend she shouldn’t be hosting if her kid isn’t ready to be around people

My friend has a 9 year old foster daughter. They’re homeschooling the girl because she gets overwhelmed around big groups of people and because she goes to other programs and services during the day.

All of this means she doesn’t get many opportunities to be around other kids so my friend invited us and another family over and told us to bring our kids so her daughter could get used to being around other kids. Our kids are 12m, 10m, and 7f. The other kids were 11m and 8f.

Mission Get-Foster-Daughter-to-Interact in action.

She tried but the place wasn’t set up very well for the kids. She had a little marble run set, magnatiles, board games, and coloring set up in the living room for the kids.

Her daughter saw it and asked if those were her toys. My friend said no and that she got new ones for them to share with the other kids.

Then she asked about the games and my friend said yes, those were their games. The girl picked up the boxes and took them to her room.

My friend wasn’t able to talk her into sharing them and refused to tell her they were for everybody.

This isn’t going well for anyone.

The toys were also set up for younger kids so the boys started to get bored. I asked about turning on the tv and she told me that she can plug it in but she doesn’t have cable or streaming so the only things they can watch are whatever’s free on Roku or YouTube. We ended up sending the boys outside to play on her trampoline even though it was cold.

Her daughter only colored with the girls when her mom was with her, then after 20 minutes she wanted to play by herself and locked herself in her room.

She came out when dinner was ready and refused to sit with the other kids. There was pasta, chicken, buttered noodles, and salad available but she still refused to eat any of it so her mom had to get up and make mac and cheese and dino nuggets just to get her to eat.

This is just getting worse and worse.

After dinner she sat in her mom’s lap and refused to move until we went home. She was thanking us while we were leaving and saying this was great for her daughter.

I told her that watching her kid get special treatment and take things away from them wasn’t good for the rest of the kids so she needs to wait until her daughter can be around people before she hosts again.

She thinks I was extremely rude and didn’t need to say anything but someone needs to tell her that she can’t have other kids over if that’s how her kid behaves.

AITA?

Now the question remains: Was the feedback necessary, or was it just harsh criticism that missed the bigger picture of the child’s needs?

It’s not even a question. It’s unanimous: Reddit thinks OP is a heck of an AH.

This person is like, what did you expect, lady?

This person thinks she is way too judgmental.

And this person can’t get over how bad of a friend she is.

Sometimes honesty isn’t helpful…

Criticizing a foster mom for her child’s struggles is a fast track to being the real problem in the room.

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