Daughter moves out after mom takes drastic steps to curb her online shopping

Parents have to set a lot of boundaries, but what metric can we use to know if they have gone too far? Turns out, Reddit has a pretty strong opinion on that.

Reddit mom Different_Tour_9932 took to the forums to ask if, in this situation, she was wrong to punish her daughter.

AITA for returning all of my daughter’s packages that she ordered?

My daughter (f31) is currently in the process of moving. She’s been living Brussels for the past 4 years and is now moving back to London as she was offered a better position.

She can move into her new flat in mid February so she asked if she could stay with me and of course, I agreed. I missed her. And I refused to accept any rent (she offered). It’s been great but one thing I’ve noticed is that my daughter has a habit of ordering online. A lot.

She runs out of toothpaste? She won’t bother going to the shop, she’ll just order it online with her other essentials like shampoo. Needs clothes or stuff for her new house? She’ll order it. She even bought her father’s birthday gift and wrapping paper online.

She even has groceries delivered because she insisted she pays for them because she lives rent free. She barely goes to shops and because of people like her our high streets are dying.

It’s unhealthy and every time for a week now, whenever a package came, I returned it which forced her to shop locally a few times.

But now, because quite a few packages never arrived, she realized what’s been happening and confronted me and she’s fuming. She accused me of treating her like a child and saying I had no right to return her stuff.

I told her that something had to be done and I tried explaining my point but she told me she’s done, packed her stuff and went stay at a hotel. Again wasting money. I asked her to move back, promised to not do it again but she’s stubborn and won’t listen. She told me she’ll stay at a hotel until she can move into her flat.

I only wanted to help her but she’s being so unreasonable. My husband stays neutral and I don’t know. Was I the a**hole here? Was I wrong for returning those packages.

Reddit users were all too happy to chime in with their opinions on this.

NeeliSilverleaf was quick to judge:

YTA. FORCE her to shop locally by stealing your adult daughter's mail? No wonder she spent the past few years in an entirely different country from you.

MarketingManiac208 piled on with:

Sounds like you value 'the shops' more than you value your relationship with 'your daughter.'

YTA OP

baneline2 goes wide with the argument:

Automobiles put whole industries out of business when people stopped buying horses and horse pulled wagons. Humanity collectively killed an industry because people selfishly wanted something new, easier, more convenient, faster, etc.

but hellhoundsden slammed down the hammer with:

Wow op is ordering an opinion of strangers online. Remember the days when you would actually have to go meet in real life for these opinions. The daughter should send us away and make op shop locally for opinions. Op YTA. And the above 100 percent.

Are you in agreement with all these comments or do you think that the OP's actions, as a parent, were warranted?