Dad gives away daughter's pet lizards while she's at school. AITA?
'AITA for giving away my daughters pet lizards to a shelter?'
My daughter (16f) has two pet lizards. She’s had them for about two years. They’re her responsibility and hers only. She usually fed them and refills their water whenever she comes home from school.
Two months ago she got her first job. She works some days after school and on weekends. So I understand she’ll have to adjust their feeding routine a bit. When she’s not at work or school, she’s out with her friends.
Since she has started working she’s been forgetting to feed her lizards. There’s even been instances where she has went days without feeding them. Even when she’s home I remind her constantly and she still doesn’t feed them.
About two weeks ago I did tell her if she didn’t keep up with feeding them regularly, I was giving them away to a shelter. Fast forward she’s still “forgetting” to feed them, leaving me to do it. So I kept my word and gave them away to a shelter.
Now she’s mad at me, she says I could’ve fed them for her. She says she doesn’t have enough time on her hands and a lot on her plate, so she forgets to feed them. I do agree that she has to adjust to her new schedule, but she does have free time. The one minute it takes to feed her pets, she chooses to spend it with her friends. AITA?
Here's what people had to say:
NTA. You gave several warnings before you pulled the trigger. If the lizards were on a daily feeding schedule before, then forgetting to feed them for days is extremely concerning neglect, possibly cruel to the animal. Just because your daughter had an understandable reason for forgetting doesn't make it any less sh*tty for the animal.
This is a tough one tbh. I'm going with YTA. At her age her lack of responsibility is kinda a parental failure. I absolutely agree that she needs to step up but 2 weeks isn't a lot of time to correct this error. Forbidding her from visiting her friends until she improves would have been a better option. Those lizards aren't getting adopted.
Can’t blame every child’s mistake on bad parenting. It sounds like good parenting. OP informed her child of the problem and what the consequences would be if the child continued. And she did not set unrealistic expectations.
Asking her to feed her own pet is the absolute bare minimum for pet ownership. Daughter has shown that she is not worthy of owning a pet, so she doesn’t get to keep the pet.
The daughter is sixteen. Old enough to know living things must eat to survive. She did it for two years, all of the sudden she can't remember? This is just her not prioritizing things. I don't know how you feed lizards, but before she went to hang with her friends or before bed, she could not do it? NTA.
I'll go YTA too but only because pets aren't gifts, please don't buy them strictly for your children. That's not a rare outcome when parents buy pets for their children, and it's the animal that suffers.
Letting an animal not eat for days is not a punishment for the child, it's a punishment for the animal.
YABTA: The lizards had no say in this you just dumped them off on a shelter and who's going to adopt two lizards? Nobody, they won't even try. You might as well have let them go out back or bashed their heads in with a rock. Your daughter is irresponsible and lacks empathy towards other living things. So are you.
NTA. You can point out to the 16 tear old that's animal abuse/neglect and you are thinking of the lizards that are dependent on her for their food. You did the right thing.