It can be tough to have honest conversations with your kids sometimes, especially when you’re not sure how they’ll react. One mom worried that she handled a tough conversation badly and asked Reddit readers to chime in with their thoughts.
The mom, who is in her 60s, explained that she has three children, ages 30, 27 and 22. Her 27-year-old daughter currently lives at home while she and her husband save up to buy a house. The tough conversation came when her daughter started talking about having a baby shortly after her brother welcomed his first child. The mom, though, doesn’t want a baby in the house.
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Mom asks: “AITA for telling my daughter that she can’t have kids while she still lives in my house?”
“I love my daughter but I don’t want a baby in the house. I stopped at 3 for a reason,” the frustrated mom wrote. “I don’t want her to live here forever, I want her and her husband to have their own lives, while my husband and I have [our lives by ourselves].”
She decided to speak with her daughter directly about it, telling her that she didn’t want to have a baby in the house. Unfortunately, the daughter didn’t take the news very well, calling her mom “selfish.”
“For the past week, my daughter and son-in-law have been ignoring me [and] only talk to me when it’s necessary,” the mom wrote.
The majority of people agreed that the original poster was not an a**hole for being direct with her daughter – it’s her house so she gets to decide how she wants to live in it.
“OP is doing her daughter a huge favor letting her live there and doesn’t need to keep doing it forever,” someone wrote. “Plus, I’m sure the girl would assume her mom would be the live-in nanny in that scenario with a baby.”
Others pointed out that the daughter’s choice to ignore her mom after she was told something she didn’t want to hear indicates she might not be mature enough to handle a baby.
“After you talk to them about this very reasonable expectation for your home they act child by ignoring you,” one wrote. “Doesn’t seem like they are ready for children financially or emotionally.”
“This whole thing makes the daughter and her husband seem really immature and out of touch. They want to have a baby but can’t even afford their own place? Calls mom selfish for not wanting to house them and deal with a crying baby at all hours of the night?” said another commenter. “I daresay motherhood is going to be a real cold slap in the face for this girl.”