'AITA for telling my friend our daughters are no longer doing homework together?'

Implying another parent is messing up is bound to cause some tension, even if it's done with the best intentions.

In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a woman asked if she was wrong for telling her friend she's responsible for her own daughter's grades. She wrote:

"AITA for telling my friend that our daughters are no longer doing homework together and her kids grades are hers to manage?"

My daughter has a best friend, name Sara. They are both in 4th grade. The two girls would do their homework together at the schools after program. School ended at 2:30 and I would pick my kid up at 4ish. So they had time to do work. The issue started when I got a call for the teacher about cheating. Both girls homework were identical. Even any sentence questions were word for word.

I explained that the girls do the work together and she made it clear that this isn’t just helping each it’s basically copying at this point. She can’t tell if either girls is struggling from the homework but she knows one girl is due to test scores. She told me she is going to talk to the other parent also. I informed my daughter that she needs to do her homework by herself.

That she can do it by herself after school or play and we will do it when she gets home. She decided to do it by herself. It’s been two weeks of this and overall seemed fine. The other girls parent confronted me today. She asked why the girls were not doing work together. I explained the cheating situation and I thought that the teacher talked to her.

She told me that they weren’t cheating and just helping eachother out. That her daughter math score has gone down since. I informed her the kids are no longer doing work together and her kids grades are hers to manage. If she is struggling now than she needs to deal with that. She called me an AH.

The internet was fully in OP's corner.

Pleasant_Test_6088 wrote:

NTA!

However, I do feel for that other child. She is experiencing difficulty and hopefully the teacher will quickly intervene.

OP responded:

Tbh I think mom just needs to help her out. I realized my own daughter reading skills weren’t great due to this.

Sara is a stronger reader and I’m sure she was helping my own daughter with what the questions were asking.

Fionaelaine4 wrote:

I’d honestly send the teacher a quick email letting them know about the convo you had with the other parent. Not expecting the teacher to necessarily reach out but the teacher should be aware that the other parent reacted to you like this as an FYI.

seregil42 wrote:

NTA. This parent was using your daughter (whether they realize it or not) so she didn't have to do any work in helping her daughter learn the material. You're right. It's her responsibility to manage her child through school.

Express-Chapter9429 wrote:

NTA. I would think there would be some sort of tutoring that this girl can go to or something. Is the afterschool program specifically for doing homework or an aftercare thing where they happen to do homework? I would think a teacher there would have noticed some kids copying like this.

Acrobatic_Increase69 wrote:

NTA if the answers were the same word for word then they’ve been copying and if her child’s score has now dropped then her child is the one cheating. Her mum needs to step up and help her child and not brush it off.

In one comment, OP shared a clarification about how grades work at the school:

Homework is graded so your score isn’t determine by only test because some kids have issue with the pressure. It balances out your grade.

If you f**k up a test you won’t drop that far if you did hwomework.

SpaceyScribe wrote:

So the other mom is completely aware that her daughter was copying your daughters work, and now that her daughters grades are going down because she's having to do the work herself she wants you to let her daughter copy your daughters work again? And she actually called you an AH for saying no? That mom is setting her daughter up for failure. You're doing the right thing. Keep it up. NTA.

thseeling wrote:

NTA.

Homework is a method to ensure a student has understood the subject that was taught in class previously.

School is intended to enable you to do it by yourself. It's bad parenting to support simple copying. If the friend's grades went down after being separated then they did not understand the subject good enough to do the homework alone. It's not "learn to pass the exam", it's "understand the question and apply your knowledge to solve it."

OP is NTA here, it sounds like the other mom needs to step up for her daughter's sake.