Mom slammed for grounding her daughter after she allegedly ‘ruined’ family vacation (2024)

One mom was slammed for the decision to ground her daughter after she “ruined” their family vacation.

Taking to Reddit’s popular confession forum, Am I The A**hole, the candid woman anonymously opened up, questioning whether others thought her daughter’s punishment was fair. She started by giving background information on the so-called transgression that took place.

The Redditor explained that she, her husband and his two daughters (13 and 16 years old), and 15-year-old daughter all went on a two-week family vacation together.

“My daughter is very smart and is very good at a lot of things. She’s also very competitive. My husband is also very competitive,” she prefaced the situation. “My daughter started off this vacation by telling my husband there was sudoku on the plane and explaining how to play. He didn’t know that she’s been playing sudoku for months.”

The original poster continued: “She made a bet with him that if she finishes the hardest level first, he’d buy her wifi for the flight and if he finished first she’d share a bed with his younger daughter on the trip.”

Her daughter beat her stepdad in sudoku and “pressured him” to buy her the flight wifi. The competitions didn’t stop there. As soon as they got to the resort, the Reddit user’s daughter continued challenging him to races in and out of the pool.

“Every day she’d challenge him to something, win, and he’d have to buy her something from the resort or local shops,” the frustrated mom noted.

This did not sit well with her or her husband’s two daughters. His kids were upset that their father was spending so much time and money on their stepsister. So, the Redditor gave her daughter an ultimatum – quit making bets or let her stepdad win.

The Reddit user said: “She decided to tell her stepdad that she wasn’t allowed to compete with him anymore because he couldn’t handle losing.”

“This made them start to argue so I told her that if she didn’t keep it up she’d be grounded to the resort for the rest of the trip (a little over a week at this point),” the writer continued. “She decided to test me so I stuck to my word and she was left at the resort while the rest of us went out every day.”

Without her daughter with them every day, the Redditor described the vacation as being “much more enjoyable”. However, when they returned home, her daughter went straight to her father, telling him what her mom had done.

“She told her dad when she got back that we grounded her and he’s mad at me now for leaving her there and excluding her from the vacation because my husband couldn’t act like an adult,” the mom confessed.

Unfortunately, her ex-husband was not pleased and he demanded that their daughter stick to their pre-arranged custody schedule. Before, they had been letting their daughter come and go as she pleases. Now, the ex-husband wants to follow the schedule of every other weekend. Additionally, he’s allegedly threatening the Reddit user “to go to court for child support and back pay”.

Honest readers stormed the Redditor’s comments section, confessing they thought she and her husband were in the wrong.

An opinionated individual said: “YTA and unfortunately, so is your husband because he can’t stop accepting competitive bets from his 15-year old stepdaughter, then being upset when he consistently loses to her. You should have told him to simply tell her, ‘no thanks,’ whenever she offered to race him.”

“YTA. First off, on your husband being sick of losing. Come on, he is the adult, act like it,” another reader agreed. “Secondly, on your stepdaughters. You could have handled this so much better. If this was unfair, why didn’t you suggest to your daughter that if she wins, your husband should get something for all the kids.”

“YTA Of course you are. The easiest fix was to tell you[r] husband to stop competing with his stepdaughter. Issue resolved,” a blunt person remarked.

A fourth added: “Punishing your daughter while letting your equally responsible husband off the hook was also wrong. Given how badly you and your husband botched this, her dad SHOULD go for more custody.”