'AITA for telling my mom to stop villainizing middle school because of her trauma?'
"AITA for telling my mom to stop villainizing middle school?"
CoffeeAdditional2638 writes:
I am a single mom to an 11-year-old girl. I chose to be a single mother by choice using a sperm donor. My mom and I weren’t always close when I was younger, but we grew closer when I became a mom myself. She ended up moving in with me and has helped me raise my daughter.
In early summer, I got a job transfer to a new state, and my mom came with us. While the area we moved to is very nice, the issue is that the public schools are not great. Before the move, I found an all-girls private school.
My mom was not thrilled with this. Both she and I were bullied as teens, and my mom always said, “Teen girls are just the worst.” She felt I was opening up my daughter to be bullied. However, when I did more research on the school and all-girls schools in general, I found there was actually less bullying and “mean girl” behavior.
The school also focuses a lot on uplifting women and celebrating their accomplishments rather than pitting them against one another. After my daughter and I visited the school before the move, I decided to enroll her.
She started in September and loves it so much. She already has a lot of friends and says what I thought was true, there seems to be less cattiness than at a regular middle school. She says she has noticed some bullying between other kids, but not as much as she saw at her public elementary school last year. She also says it’s handled in a much better way. I’m glad she’s enjoying it.
However, my mom continues to be negative about the situation. She checks in with my daughter to ask how school is going, but then starts ranting about how “preteen and teen girls are all so mean, they’re the worst, and middle school is the worst time ever.” I’ve talked to her before and asked her to stop.
Yesterday, my daughter got into an argument with one of her friends. It wasn’t anything major, just typical preteen stuff that got blown out of proportion. I’m sure I had similar fights with my friends at that age.
I was comforting her and validating her emotions, as well as giving her advice. My mom came home and asked what was wrong. My daughter told her, and my mom went on another tirade about how middle school is the worst three years of any young woman’s life and that you couldn’t pay her to relive it.
I shut her down and said my daughter had one bad day, which doesn’t mean these three years will be bad. My mom kept insisting “girls are the worst.” I shut her down again and told her that isn’t true. Even my daughter tried explaining some things she’s learned at school. My mom got irritated and told me I was undermining her experience.
I pointed out that I had the same kind of experience, but I’m not going to let it cloud my daughter’s. Later, I told her she needs to stop making those comments. She said again that I’m trying to undermine her experience and that I can’t tell her how to react. Am I the bad guy for wanting her to stop villainizing middle school
Here's what people had to say to OP:
smallishbear-duck says:
NTA. Technically I have the “right” to talk about my (hypothetical) hemorrhoids, but that doesn’t mean it’s helpful or appropriate to have that conversation with all people at all times. I was bullied throughout much of my school life, but I don’t rant about it to others any time the topic of school comes up.
Coxal_anomaly says:
NTA. As my therapist once said “your trauma is valid but that validation must come from within at some point. Trauma dumping it onto others will not solve anything”. I love my therapist.
Suspended_Accountant says:
NTA but your mother needs therapy to deal with it in a healthy way. Unless she wants to end up resenting her granddaughter for having a better time in middle school than she did.
gigpig says:
Obviously NTA. Your mom needs to stop unloading her own emotional baggage on a child. Your daughter isn’t responsible for holding space for her grandmother’s middle school years and she needed you to set that boundary for her.