Son calls grandma when mom 'unfairly' grounds him, she takes his phone too. AITA?
Teenagers can be a handful.
Add to that, a newborn child and the stress skyrockets. One mother was upset when her son knowingly deleted all of her video games to make space for one of his. An annoying, inconsiderate move, but the woman's own mother isn't making anything easier. She says grounding him for this action is wrong and her 'precious grandbaby' should be allowed to play whatever he wants.
AITA for taking away my son's access to games for deleting all my progress from all of my games?
I(34f) have a very spoiled 13 year old son we will call Jr. In our home, we absolutely love gaming when we have the chance, so Jr has access to all of our game systems. He mostly plays the ps5 but occasionally will play the switch.
So a big rule I have for MY switch (he broke his on accident) is absolutely no Fortnite. He has it on every system he can get it on but I don't want it on mine nor do I have the space.
I am currently at home with a very needy newborn who won't nap unless I'm holding him. This is after 5 months of strict bed rest while pregnant. As you can imagine, I've been getting a lot of time to play on the switch, but when Jr asked to use it to play a game, I gave it up.
Upon getting it back this morning, I went to play one of my games (Stardew Valley) to find half of my games uninstalled and replaced by Fortnite. I was aggravated but whatever. I was stressed and just wanted to relax so I deleted it and it's data.
When I launched my game, all of my progress was gone. I checked my other games to find the same! Long story short, I had a stern talk with Jr and grounded him from all of the systems.
As you can imagine, he was furious. He yelled, went to his room and slammed his door. (All of which woke the baby) Next thing I knew, I got a call from my mom saying games are meant for kids and I needed to get over it and give her grandbaby his games back. I told her absolutely not and went and grounded Jr from his phone as well.
My mom is still blowing up my phone and threatening to 'come save her grandbaby' since I can't grow up and parent properly. AITA?
Readers overall seemed to side with the mom and had some harsh words for the grandmother:
13 seems like a perfectly good age to start learning accountability to me. I will not be “adding a judgment” due to the 50 people demanding one. Y’all need hobbies.
Yea holy sh*t. Thirt-f*cking-teen... He knew what he was doing btw...There are HUGE prompts telling you EVERYTHING is gone that you are deleting.
Literally trying to hurt his parent because you know he’d be hurt had the Same happened. And then run to grandma AND SHE TELLS HIM HES RIGHT?! Jr is acting out in a passive aggressive rage prob bc he doesn’t like the shift in baby family dynamics but Grandma is the real AH here.
Edit to add: “come save her gRaNdBaBy”? I obviously don’t know your family dynamics but your mother is NOT respecting you as an adult, a mother, or even that you gave birth to her new grandchild.
She doesn’t “agree” with how you parent, and your mom has most likely always had a poorly opinion of you and your competence because she’s coming from a place of narcissism.
A REAL grandmother wouldn’t divide her family, and instigate this type of behavior in a tween as well as put this kind of unnecessary emotional pressure on their daughter that JUST GAVE BIRTH to their second grandchild. She would instead be a mature adult helping any she could.
Oh no NTA. He broke his own switch, broke your rule of no Fortnite on your switch, and I’m honestly confused why he’d delete data from your currently installed games. He should see consequences for his actions. Hope you get some time to yourself soon.
NTA. He's 13, he knows better. He has access to fortnight on all the other systems so the fact he ignored your one wish about gaming is ridiculous. He's lucky you didn't just delete the games and his progress.
NTA. And I’d block grandma from visiting. She’s just enabling some very entitled behaviour. 13yrs old is absolutely old enough to know what he did. Password the sh*t out of EVERYTHING and parental lock it all when you give it back, and he has to ask for everything all over again. I’m all for flexible parenting, but trust is earnt.