'AITA for refusing to ski with child when it became clear they exaggerated his skill level?'
"AITA for refusing to ski with child when it became clear they exaggerated his skill level?"
I (48M) have a vacation house adjacent to a ski area. I've owned it since before I met my wife and had kids (11M and 13M). The kids have grown up skiing 25-35 days a year, do lots of lessons and as a result they are both excellent skiers.
My wife invited a colleague, "Annie", and her family, including a 12 year old son, "Tom", to come out after Christmas for a few days.
My kids aren't friendly with Tom(to my wife's chagrin -- she is weirdly invested in being regarded by this woman as a friend and having a friendship between the kids would help), largely because the boy cannot help himself from trying to "one-up" all his peers, often with obvious fabulism.
His parents tend to indulge his exaggerations. We've more than once heard how great he is at some skill or hobby, only to discover he is a notch above a tyro.
The parents want to spend their time out here cross-country skiing. My wife said she'd accompany them, and then "voluntold" me that I could take their son along with my kids when we were to go downhill skiing. My wife related that Jane told her Tom is a good skier. My kids both gave me a look. We all knew it is likely Tom is very far from a good skier.
I told me wife I was not going to sacrifice our holiday ski time babysitting the son of a colleague I didn't want her to invite in the first place. She insisted I take him. The compromise we reached is that I would show Jane and Tom what sort of terrain we intended to ski.
If they attested he could do it, I'd take him, but if it turned out he was not capable, she would need to pick him up and figure out what to do with him for the rest of the visit (for example, they could enroll him in skill-appropriate group lessons).
Just as my kids and I suspected, Jane and Tom told us he was an excellent skiers and would have no trouble keeping up. And likewise in line with our hunch, the moment we went to drop into a bowl, he freaked out and wouldn't do it.
I called my wife to come get him. She said they were mid cross-country and couldn't make it. I said that was not what we agreed.
I took Tom to the lodge and put him in kinder-care. (which usually only goes up to age 7, but since I know a lot of the staff at the mountain, they took him), and left a voicemail for my wife to let her and Tom's parents know. We skied for 3 hrs and never heard from them. We stopped by kinder-care on the way out and Tom was still there, unhappy.
Jane, her husband and my wife were not happy when they finally got in touch and learned what I did. I told them that Tom was not capable of keeping up, that it's not surprising or a bad reflection on Tom, because my kids have had a very unusual amount of skiing experience.
But the fact is that I was very clear about the difficulty level of what we intended to ski and we could have made other arrangements for Tom if they had been honest about his skill level. So, was this an AH move or reasonable?
OP came back and added these details:
To clarify a few things. I did mention to my wife the possibility of getting Tom an instructor for the day, but she was kind of like, "no, let's see how it goes first, Annie says he is a good skier." Given that a 3hr private now costs around $400, i can see why Annie might not be enthusiastic about that. There are some "youth groups", too, but they have been long fully booked up.
I did get a short opportunity to see Tom ski easy terrain (on our way over to the lift that serves the bowl and on the road to the bowl) and he seemed like an intermediate skier. The bowl we were trying is the easiest on the mountain.
Here's what people had to say to OP:
Why on earth did your wife get to have her fun skiing experience with her friends and dump a strange child on you? That makes no sense….
Now that I think about it: Why did the PARENTS trust this guy (who they barely know) to bring a kid skiing? There's a reason why there are qualified paid instructors at lodges. They are there to stop situations like this from happening.
Granted: I have skied (and learned) with non-qualified instructors. But they were relatives or friends of the family whom I have known for years. Not one whom I have barely known. Even an associate with the family.
I really don’t understand why more people aren’t enquiring about this. Seems a bit shady to me as well… OP, care to clarify?
The colleague is an academic colleague, who possibly due to ber demanding personality has a lot of influence. That's why my wife is so solicitous of her, I think. The cross-country facility is at the edge of cellphone range, so not that unusual to have trouble reaching a cellphone there. I see no mystery about why Annie and hubs want a day without Tom. He's annoying!
As an academic, your story finally 'clicked' for me when you mentioned this. Your wife is obviously trying to curry favor with this woman. Even in supposedly 'equal' relationships in academia, there are a lot of power dynamics and good reasons to win people over.
Your wife playing "the game" with her colleague isn't a problem, but she should be forthright with you about her intentions, and you should be able to decide whether or not it's worth sacrificing your time with your boys.
I'm going to go in a different direction from other comments and ask - do you feel that it's fair or unfair that your wife is expecting you to make sacrifices for her to achieve this relationship?
If you two regularly boost each other up and/or 'take the fall' to help the other and it's balanced, then - communication and acknowledgment from your wife should have been better, but I can see why she might have pulled this if it's a ladder-climbing attempt.
But if her putting you out like this is a pattern, then this sticking to your boundaries was necessary and you handled it perfectly.
You did a great job protecting your sons' experience, you're a good dad. And honestly, this is probably a good humbling lesson for the kid (tho whether or not it bounces off....).
Why would you have to put the kid in day care? He's 12, that's a middle schooler I'm pretty sure he would have been fine in the lodge left to his own devices.
Well, yeah, that was possibly me being an a^&%ole, to punish him. But also I didn't want to get in trouble for leaving him unattended.
Eh…. I hesitate on the, freaked out when dropping in a bowl part. I’m an excellent skier (or was when I was in better skiing shape) but when I was, I still HATED dropping into bowls and freaked out when I did. Eventually I calmed down after I did but I had to do it and pull off to the side in order to do so. There’s just something about it that bothers me.
Is it possible the kid actually can ski but he’s got that “skiing over a cliff” nerve thing? It’s very real. And given the responses here, OP, YTA. I feel officially validated at this point.
That's a good point. Watching him ski down the "road" to the bowl, he struck me as maybe an intermediate skier. Like someone whe gas skied 3 days of groomers a year for a couple of years.
NTA --- You probably saved other skiers from getting hurt. Annie is a fool. If her kid had gotten hurt while he was with OP, she might have tried to hold him accountable. At best, he'd have held them back and they'd have had to watch him all day.
People skiing on trails above their skill level are a danger to all other skiers. I knew a dozen friends and family members who worked ski patrol, and they said the teens to 20 ish guys, who wanted the bragging rights of "surviving " a triple black diamond, were the biggest danger in any mountain.
I learned that the hard way when 2 idiots suddenly stopped in the middle of a triple black diamond right around a sharp curve and I had to swerve to not hit them because when I came around that corner they panicked and moved further into the center of the narrow pass.
I'd lifted a ski and skirted their position before they moved further into the only available area around them, and by then there was nowhere else to go except into a wall of rock or try to straddle the edge of the cliff long enough to get past them. I caught an edge of ice and the last thing I recall is flying through the air.
As a result, I went off a cliff. I hit 3 trees, according to the guy watching from the chairlift tower. I got lucky, they were birch trees. Two surgeries, 8 months in a full leg brace, and I'm ok, ish.
12 years later, I made the last payment to the hospital, where I spent 8 days in traction. I'd have sued them, but they gave fake names to ski patrol before they took off their skis and walked down the rest of the way.
I'm side-eyeing your wife for putting her social aspirations over her own family's vacation. That's weird stuff.
Eta: Link to just one of the xrays they took after they used a blanket and 6 people to pull me back up onto the trail, skied me down on a stretcher with every mogul rattling the broken bones, and took me to the nearest hospital where they did surgery to insert a 14" titanium rod into my tibia.
Photo: https://i.postimg.cc/BbnjgTF8/Screenshot-20241230-201431-Duck-Duck-Go.jpg
Dude, that sounds horrible, and it was exactly the fear in the back of my mind. When I was a kid learning to ski, my mom got taken out by an inexperienced skier who idiotically tried to ski down a very icy and narrow trail. Luckily she didn't get hurt too badly. The guy who took her out tried to pull the "I'm an NYC cop" card, but the ski patrol tossed him instantly.