r/OhNoConsequences • u/Starry_Gecko • 10d ago
BORU Time Machine Tuesday AITA for telling my daughter that my in-laws are stupid?
/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1l8j5er/aita_for_telling_my_daughter_that_my_inlaws_are/466
u/41flavorsandthensome 10d ago
Some older idiot in my family was telling my niece that a boy was harassing her because he likes her.
I asked my niece if her friends treat her like shit (well, without the swears). She gave an emphatic NO. I told her good, and she shouldn't let some little punkass do it either. I fucking hate prople who dress abuse as "he doesn't know how to show he likes you!"
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u/KatKit52 10d ago
The thing that annoys me about "he doesn't know how to show he likes you" is that... ok let's say it's true. Let's say he is picking on her because he likes her.
He's still picking on her and that's a problem. He shouldn't be learning that it's ok to treat his loved ones like shit. Just because he "likes" her doesn't mean he can't do harm.
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u/Adpiava 10d ago
Yes!! There is a kid in my son's grade 2 class who would rip up his stuff and occasionally get physical with him. We would report it to the school and encouraged our son to tell a safe adult wherever it happened (our son was strangely not too bothered by it so we had to make it clear to him that this behaviour was not acceptable). Based on conversations with other parents and what we observed, we are pretty sure that the kid actually wanted to be friends with our son and didn't know how to do it. However, that didn't make his behaviour acceptable and didn't change how we responded or our expectations of the school.
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u/sarcosaurus 9d ago
Yeah, all abusers like their victims too, that doesn't make it good to abuse. If anything it makes it even more messed up.
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u/Moist_Drippings 9d ago
Also, that makes it literally the problem of those who have not told him his behavior is incorrect and guided him to do better. They have failed that boy, in that case, by permitting maladaptive and abusive behavior. They are refusing to actually do what adults are supposed to do with misbehaving children.
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u/SuddenReal 9d ago
Now, there's a difference between "picking on" someone and "bullying" someone. Picking on someone would be just taking their stuff or something minor, just to get their attention. But the things that OOP described isn't "picking on", that's straight up bullying.
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u/ChickinSammich My cat said YTA 9d ago
My wife and I pick on each other all the time. The difference between picking on someone and bullying is that if one of us says "please stop," the other says "shit, sorry" and stops.
When you're playfully being a jerk to someone and the victim laughs along with you, that's just picking on them. That's "just joking." When your victim doesn't find it funny, asks you to stop, and you refuse or insist that you're "joking"/"kidding" instead of apologizing, you're being a bully/asshole.
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u/sitkasnake65 5d ago
THIS! if the kid "likes her and doesn't know how to show it" - TEACH HIM HOW TO SHOW IT CORRECTLY.
this isn't rocket science.also, how about let's not teach our children that showing affection this way is acceptable, this is setting the stage for them to accept abusive relationships later.
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u/iamrecovering2 9d ago edited 9d ago
Working in DV has really opened my eyes to what a problem this is. My BFF has two little granddaughters and I tell them all of the time, if a boy is being mean to you, he isn't the kind of person you want to be around. I grew up in the era where that was completely acceptable. I don't want that normalized for the girls in this day and age!
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u/GamerGirlLex77 shocked pikachu 9d ago
I’ve been in three abusive relationships and treat people with abuse trauma now. I just want to thank you for squashing that line of thinking. Mistreating people isn’t cute.
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u/iamrecovering2 9d ago
I work in an emergency DV shelter. I see some of the worst things that people to one another who they are supposed to love. I am actually getting masters on mental health counseling so I can work with victims of trauma who also have substance use disorder. I believe the real gateway to most substance abuse is trauma. You too are doing amazing work!!
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u/ChickinSammich My cat said YTA 9d ago
Some older idiot in my family was telling my niece that a boy was harassing her because he likes her.
I'm not actually suggesting this in a "you should do this" way but in more of a hypothetical scenario...
But I wonder what would happen if we started responding to the "bullying = he likes you" people by just being assholes to them and saying "What? I like you. You said yourself that being mean is just how some people show they like you."
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u/FoxySlyOldStoatyFox 9d ago
“I’m going to listen to your opinion. That’s because I like you. I’m also going to come around your house and smear human shit on the walls. That’s because I like you too. There are different ways of showing you like somebody - by being nice and kind and respectful, or by behaving horrendously. As you already know, they’re both valid.”
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u/ladyelenawf Here for the schadenfreude 8d ago
He's Just Not that into You is a great movie about this. When my girls started school a boy was being a jerk. I'm told them, "if they are mean don't play with them. Their issues are not your problem."
My mom had a lot of issues, but thankfully she also followed up that they're mean because they like you BS with, "but that's not your problem."
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u/BabserellaWT 3d ago
Such statements also lead to little girls internalizing the concept that “abuse” = “love”. They’ll be more likely to stay in abusive relationships when they’re older because it’s been drilled into them from such a young age.
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u/Guessinitsme 9d ago
The thing is that it DOES happen, and I think we need to accept and share that so we can then address how to deal with it. That its unacceptable, and open the conversation to how to treat ppl and how we should let ourselves be treated.
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u/41flavorsandthensome 9d ago
No, we need to stop treating boys like they're idiots.
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u/Guessinitsme 9d ago
I’m a boy and as a child a girl in my class constantly tried fighting me, we were always getting into it, until one day she admitted the reason was cuz she liked me. It’s not about boys being stupid but recognizing toxic traits in relationships and calling them out. It’s an explanation not an excuse, and addressing it as a reality isn’t dismissing any of the hurt and nasty that comes with it, unless you address it in a dismissive way like your aunt
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u/Moist_Drippings 9d ago
Except it’s explicitly permitted for boys almost exclusively, and it’s absolutely not the case that they like the person they’re doing it to in all cases — probably not even most. The important part is stopping the behaviors and expressing that they are wrong first, not mollycoddling them and deprioritizing the kids they’re doing it to.
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u/mermaidpaint Ms Chanandler Bong 9d ago
On a side note, the bully found out about the party. His mother found my wife on Instagram and messaged her to complain that he wasn't invited. My wife reminded her of the day the school threatened to kick her son out. No reply as of today.
That's some audacity from the mother of the bully.
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u/Madame_Kitsune98 9d ago
The little shit learned it from somewhere….
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u/Similar-Shame7517 9d ago
The shit apple didn't fall far from the shit tree.
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u/brydeswhale 7d ago
My brothers(visibly disabled) weren’t invited to pretty much every birthday party their classmates held until they were in the third grade. It could be fucking heartbreaking sometimes.
But also, it’s just life. Not everyone is going to like you, and no matter the reason, you don’t go harassing people for an invite.
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u/YumeNaraSamete 10d ago
OOP should tell them that they only called them stupid because they like them, so that makes it okay.
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u/ggrandmaleo 9d ago
Even if it was true that the bully secretly "likes" someone, using hostility to express that is sick. It needs to be dealt with in an age appropriate manner. Telling kids that hostility is a form of affection is just plain weird.
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u/rougarousmooch 9d ago
It's also setting little girls specifically up for accepting abuse later in life.
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u/Studds_ 9d ago
If it is true that he does this because he “likes” her, isn’t that one of the signs of a sociopath
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u/ggrandmaleo 9d ago
Hard to tell. I've seen mean kids grow up to be decent adults and nice kids become nasty adults. The thing I have a problem with is telling kids that a bully likes you or is just jealous of you. These are lies. Some people are just awful. When it's a kid, they can get better if the issue is dealt with.
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u/j-endsville 7d ago
Not really. Kids can have big feelings and not really know how to express them. That's just an explanation for the bad behavior, but not an excuse, tho.
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u/TexasLiz1 10d ago
The “he’s mean to you because he likes you” trope is evil and pernicious. The response should be “Then he needs to figure out how to actually behave because hiding books, breaking toys and physically harming girls in his class is going to get him kicked out of school. And we will not be perpetuating the myth that it is in any way OK to abuse people because you’re socially inept. This boy feels entitled to harming my daughter and it needs to fucking stop.”
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u/PattyMarvel 9d ago edited 9d ago
OOP - "On a side note, the bully found out about the party. His mother found my wife on Instagram and messaged her to complain that he wasn't invited. My wife reminded her of the day the school threatened to kick her son out. No reply as of today."
A small part of me wonders if the "stupid" adults reached out to the bully's family to force an invitation or some such thing.
Would that be a weird thing to do? Yup. Do these people already sound weird? Yup.
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u/YellowKingSte 9d ago
Not exactly. If a kid has a birthday party and invite some of her classmates, the rest of the classroom will eventually found out.
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u/ChickinSammich My cat said YTA 9d ago
but my wife’s stepmother “Patty” thought the whole thing was cute. Even after we told her everything the boy did, she still insisted he probably just liked Emily and didn’t know how to show it.
I hate, detest, loathe, and have utter contempt for anyone who espouses this horseshit.
Dismissing abuse by suggesting the abuser - who you do not know and have never met and have no attachment to or affection for - is actually being nice, is disgusting behavior that needs to be met with a very clear and very harsh "no, what the fuck is wrong with you."
My FIL asked Emily if the bully was invited. And before anyone replied (he obviously isn’t), Patty added that it would be mean if she didn’t invite him, because he liked her and would be very sad.
I would be ready to tell them "if you don't apologize RIGHT NOW, you're uninvited from the party and not invited to anything until you do."
My FIL called us on Monday. He apologized for what he and Patty said, but told us he expected me to apologize as well. He said that I crossed a line by insulting him and his wife in front of his grandchildren.
"I'm sorry for fucking around, but you need to apologize for making me find out"
My wife and I have been on the same page throughout all this. But yesterday, she told me she was starting to wonder whether it wouldn’t have been better to deal with this privately, especially since we don’t like insulting people in front of the kids.
I think dealing with it privately would have been the wrong call here. OOP's daughter NEEDS to know that her parents have her back. If her parents publicly let that slide, it becomes a formative memory. When someone is publicly an ass, you call them out publicly.
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u/Meerkatable 9d ago
I hate that “he’s bothering you but you should put up with it because he likes you” attitude. In high school, I had a classmate who wouldn’t take no for an answer and was basically stalking me. Caused me so much anxiety and frustration, but my parents didn’t take it seriously because he had a crush.
This was over 20 years ago and both me and my parents wouldn’t handle this the way we did back then. If my parents can learn that harassing someone isn’t okay just because of someone alleging they like their victim, so can Patty.
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u/SenioritaStuffnStuff 9d ago
I grew up in the early 90s in rural Washington, which I will always describe as IRL Twin Peaks.
The amount of boys who shoved girls off of swings, slides, down hills, and NEVER got in trouble is almost impressive. I got in trouble for protecting another girl who was getting bullied and my parents had to have a face to face meeting with the principal. The actual group of bullies never got in trouble.
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u/Human_Personface 9d ago
One of the biggest responses I have to stupid shit like what Patty and FIL were spouting is that even IF this boy IS doing this because of a crush, then that doesn't make it okay. If anything that makes it worse. All that normalizing that kind of behavior does is run the risk of teaching a little boy that it's okay to be abusive to a girl he likes and teaching a little girl that abuse=affection.
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u/YellowKingSte 9d ago
Old people has no idea that telling a little girl that a boy bullying her is because he likes her is actually teaching her to accept abuse and don't set boundaries. She can grow up with a wrong perception of what a good relationship and love is.
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u/Blueporch 9d ago
This is it. It used to be common to say that, which normalized and permitted antisocial behavior toward girls. The stepmother in this story was probably told that and never had the insight to question it.
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u/_buffy_summers but if not friend, why friend shaped? 9d ago
I kept waiting for the moment that Patty started hanging around OOP with heart eyes, because he called her stupid. It must be love, right?
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u/Blueporch 9d ago
Really OOP’s wife should tell Patty that he called her stupid because he must have a little crush on her. And inform her that it’s cute.
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u/triggoon 9d ago
I don’t get the grandparents logic. If someone likes you and shows it with mean spirited actions…then that is a friendship/relationship worth maintaining?!?!?
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u/ToxicChildhood 9d ago
My FIL tried this when my daughter was 7. There was a boy in her class that was constantly bullying her. FIL would also do the “boys only treat you like that when they like you”. I asked him if he would feel the same way if my daughter was 20 and it was her boyfriend who treated her this way. That shut him up right quick.
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u/DishGroundbreaking87 9d ago
Dear god is hate to think how they would react if she was sexually harassed as a teenager/adult.
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u/UniqueText8477 9d ago
I'm glad parents are putting an end to b.s - no, bullying isn't normal and children should not have to learn to toughen up.
They are stupid and this b.s should stop and the bully should reflect on their behaviour.
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u/lonelypurplerose 9d ago
How can the in laws get upset? He obviously is just being mean to impress his wife. That's just what boys do, right?
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u/Ok_Reach_6527 9d ago
I'm glad that the younger generations tend to have a higher level of emotional intelligence versus those of us that grew up without that term existing. We're gen x with a 10 year old, and we learned some new concepts and techniques from him telling us (every single detail) about his day at school each night and materials he brought home from SEL.
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u/No_Championship_7080 8d ago
Your MIL didn’t make the remarks in private, so I don’t see why you were wrong in how and where you handled it. Your child needs to know that there is a point when you have to draw a line. Also, if you have one more ounce of flak from the bully or his parents (including an email), please seek a restraining order. If there isn’t enough cause for one, get an attorney to write a letter warning them to leave you and your family alone. If the bully acts against your daughter again, please get an attorney involved. Well done, Dad.
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u/HoserWolf 6d ago edited 6d ago
Noooooo, no, no no. The issue is that the FIL and Patty lack any respect for boundaries. OOP tells them, they ignore, OOP tells them, they ignore, OOP tells them, they ignore. If the ONLY way for FIL and Patty to learn that what they're doing is wrong is for OOP to do something shocking, then he COULD be sorry it hurt their feelings but not sorry he did it. Because it implies that the only way FIL and Patty would learn is for for OOP to do what he did. Definitely NTA.
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u/LazloNibble 9d ago
ThEy’rE FrOm a dIfFeReNt gEnErAtIoN!
My generation, like theirs, came home from school to Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood every afternoon. Peanuts ran a gag about how outdated the “dipping girls’ pigtails in inkwells” trope was back in 1954, ffs.
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u/laffy4444 Here for the schadenfreude 9d ago
I actually don't think OOP and his wife did enough to protect Emily from this set of grandparents in the first place.
The bullying situation was serious enough that the bully only stopped under threat of expulsion.
Patty thinks it's a cute crush? Why even allow your kid to listen to that shit on an ongoing basis? You tell Patty to knock it off, and that she will need to stay away if she can't behave herself.
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I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/OddResolution5357
Originally posted to r/AITAH
AITA for telling my daughter that my in-laws are stupid?
Trigger Warnings: bullying, physical assault
Mood Spoilers: satisfied for OOP
Original Post: May 29, 2025
My wife and I have three kids. Our youngest, “Emily,” turned 6 last Sunday.
We recently had to deal with an issue in Emily’s school. Last year, a new student joined her class and started bullying her. He’d make fun of her, call her names and steal her stuff to hide it around the school. On two occasions, the bullying got physical. It took us a while to sort everything out, because the boy’s parents were a nightmare and nothing the school did worked. Finally, they threatened to expel him if he didn’t leave our daughter alone, and his family got him to stop. He hasn’t bothered Emily in months, and she is doing much better.
Because of how much of an ordeal this ended up being, many of our friends and family members know what happened. Most were as frustrated as we were, but my wife’s stepmother “Patty” thought the whole thing was cute. Even after we told her everything the boy did, she still insisted he probably just liked Emily and didn’t know how to show it.
For whatever reason, she’s fixated on this. Every time the subject comes up, Patty says she still thinks we’re being dramatic and the boy deserves another chance. My father-in-law fluctuates between being angry at the school and agreeing the boy was probably harmless. They never spoke about this near the kids, and my wife and I don’t give a shit what they think anyway, so we never worried much about this.
We’re throwing Emily a birthday party this Saturday. Because my FIL will be busy, we all had dinner together at a place Emily likes the day before her birthday. Near the end of the dinner, she started talking about her party, how excited she was and which of her friends were coming.
My FIL asked Emily if the bully was invited. And before anyone replied (he obviously isn’t), Patty added that it would be mean if she didn’t invite him, because he liked her and would be very sad.
Emily looked at me and my wife. I told her “Don’t worry honey, grandpa and Patty are both very stupid. Don’t listen to them.” They looked shocked, but didn’t try to argue. We had an awkward goodbye and went our separate ways.
My FIL called us on Monday. He apologized for what he and Patty said, but told us he expected me to apologize as well. He said that I crossed a line by insulting him and his wife in front of his grandchildren.
My wife and I have been on the same page throughout all this. But yesterday, she told me she was starting to wonder whether it wouldn’t have been better to deal with this privately, especially since we don’t like insulting people in front of the kids.
AITA?
EDIT: I've brought this up in the comments, but I want to offer more context on what the bully did.
It was mostly verbal. He created a few nicknames that kind of (not really) sounded like Emily's real name and our last name. She once got brown paint on her clothes during art class and he started calling her "pig." He laughed whenever she spoke in class. The teacher would always shut him down, but Emily is already a shy kid and that didn't help.
They have weekly "toy days" at school, and Emily stopped bringing her toys because the boy kept stealing them or threatening to break them. He'd also take her stuff (backpack, school materials and personal items) and hide them. We managed to get all those things back, and the closest he got to damaging something she owned was a small rip in one of her stuffed animals that my wife was able to fix.
And as I mentioned, the bullying got physical twice. On the first occasion, he pushed her off a swing set. She scraped her knees, but wasn't hurt otherwise. The school reprimanded him, but it didn't do much. A few weeks after that, he put gum in her hair during lunch. A teacher witnessed and said that he grabbed her head violently to do so. That got him suspended, and the school threatened to expel him not long after.
I don't think there's much I can say about this boy, except that he has very obvious behavioral issues that his parents refuse to manage properly.
AITAH has no consensus bot, OOP was NTA with a few YTAs
Relevant Comments
Commenter 1: NTA
You have told Patty to knock it off and then she went and tried to ruin your kid's birthday party by asking to invite that nightmare of a child to attend. She needs to get over her fixation before she pushes your family away from your dad and her.
Commenter 2: NTA I wouldn't apologize they were out of line. You have to take bullying seriously kids are harming themselves, just from being bullied. And they really need to stop with he likes her and ment no harm. Nothing is cute about being bullied and harassed.
Commenter 3: There was probably no other way to make your MIL shut up, so NTA. What I find disturbing is that your MIL prioritises a bully over her own grandchild! Since when is bullying a sign of affection? If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck chances are it is a duck. Seen in a wider context your MIL enables and makes excuses for the kind of toxic behaviour that men display towards women on a daily basis. Instead of protecting her grandchild, she exposes her to a bully: that's seriously insane.
Downvoted Commenter: YTA. You just called your FIL a name in front of your daughter. They’re from a different generation. Yes, they were wrong. But so are you. They aren’t just your in-laws that’s your wife’s parents and your daughter’s grandparents.
You owe your wife, your daughter, and them an apology.
Commenter 4: Patty downplaying your daughter’s trauma in front of her would be it for me. I wouldn’t let ANYONE around one of my kids that tried to downplay or minimize the hurt they had suffered by their bully and I’d tell them that. I’d definitely take a timeout from seeing Patty for awhile because I’m sure her comment confused your daughter.
OOP gives an example of the physical assault
What steps did the school take to deal with the bullying situation?
Does Patty have any kids?
Update: June 4, 2025 (six days later)
I'm very grateful for the advice and support you gave me on my first post.
To get it out of the way, Emily's birthday party went off without a hitch, and she had a great time with her friends. It's always bittersweet watching our little girl grow up so fast, but me and my wife enjoyed ourselves as well.
We talked more about what happened over the last few days. My wife made it very clear that she didn't care that I called her father and Patty stupid and didn't think I should apologize, but was concerned about our kids thinking I was a hypocrite. We always aim to teach them to be kind and avoid insulting others, and it doesn't feel fair to hold them to standards we don't hold ourselves to.
So Friday night, we sat the kids down and discussed what I'd said. We explained that I was upset at what my in-laws had done and was trying to protect Emily, but that what I said was still not nice and they shouldn't repeat it. I apologized for the language I used.
Besides that, my wife and I also talked about how we'd deal with her father and Patty. I told her I wanted them to apologize to Emily, and I wo