A Teen Is Forced to Pay the Rent and Raise His Siblings—Then His Absent Mom Shows Up to Criticize His “Parenting”
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Family roles can blur fast when a teenager starts carrying responsibilities that usually belong to a parent.
At 17, one boy is juggling school, work, rent, groceries, and most of the day-to-day care for his three younger brothers.
The tension finally boils over when his rarely-home mother challenges the bedtime routine and insists that parenting decisions are hers alone.
Check out this absolutely wild scenario.
AITA for telling my mom that she’s doesn’t get to make the rules?
I (17M) live with my three brothers (15M, 13M, 10M), and my ma (40F).
We’re not very well off.
I pay almost half the rent, I pay for groceries more often than not, and I juggle having a job, going to school, and raising these three kids, one of whom is disabled.
His mom is hardly ever home.
I say raising, because my ma, between having two jobs and basically never being home, doesn’t contribute.
She’s gone by 8am, and usually not back before 10 or 11pm.
In the past year, she’s been home even less, getting home later and later.
I’m pretty sure she goes out drinking.
One night, she got home earlier than usual.
The fight went like this: My ma came home last night a bit before 9pm for once, instead of 11 or later as she’s been doing.
15M came out of his room to say hi, and 13M was already on the couch reading something for school, so she hugged both of them, and said hi, and said she’d stopped by the gas station to buy us all something and gave us all a candy bar, which was cool of her.
Then, she asked where 10M was, because she wanted to say hi to him.
He has his brothers on a schedule.
Now, I’ve practically raised these kids on my own for years now. And I do my best.
On the very rare occasion my mom comes home early, she usually just goes to bed.
I have 10M go to bed at 8pm, which I don’t think is unreasonable, and I let the other two stay up until 10pm, because they’re older.
We all eat dinner at 6, get home from school around 4, and have a pretty clean routine altogether.
His mom started arguing with him about this schedule.
Now, my ma was asking where he was, so I told her he was asleep.
She asked why, so I told her it’s past his bedtime.
She told me he didn’t have to go to bed that early.
I told her he did.
She told me no he didn’t, she’d said we could all stay up until 10.
His mom was upset that he was doing a lot of things a parent should be doing.
I said that doesn’t work.
And she told me she’s the parent, and it does work. And then she said it’s not my place to micromanage the other three.
She said, her kids, her house, her rules.
And then she exploded, that I could stop being such a control- freak, because it wasn’t my place to do that, or to have signed up 13M for soccer, or to have repainted the fence, or to have taken 10M to the doctor some weeks ago, or any of the things I’ve been doing without asking her.
He told her his side of the story.
I told her, it’s also my house, I pay a lot of rent, and they’re basically my kids, because she’s never around, so it’s more my house, my rules, if we wanna play that game.
I told her she wouldn’t know what works for 10M, because she’s too busy to know him.
I told her I might ask for her input if she was ever around, but she never is, so I don’t give a care how she thinks I should raise these kids, and she doesn’t get to have a say in it.
Not anymore.
His mom didn’t take that well.
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She broke down crying, called me ungrateful “for all that she does” said she “doesn’t know where she went wrong” and left the room.
She either went to her room or she left the house, idk and idc.
She’s an adult, it’s her life.
13M said I’m a jerk for making her cry, and 15M left the room a minute later, saying he was going to bed. So, Reddit, am I a jerk for telling my mother off?
He was brutally honest with his mom, but she needs to actually show up and parent her kids if she wants to make the rules.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
This person accuses his mom of child abuse.
This person feels bad for OP’s situation.
What does she spend all her money on?
This person reassures him that he’s a great brother.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a mom who can’t figure out why her babysitter quit after what she thought was a routine question.
Another person thinks he did the right thing by standing up to his mom.
He told his mother that her long absences had forced him into the parenting role, so she could not suddenly overrule routines she barely participated in.
She broke down crying after he said she no longer understood what worked for the younger kids, while one brother thought he had gone too far.
When a 17-year-old is paying rent and running bedtime…who’s the actual parent here?
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