Mom Asks How To Handle 'Remorseless' 15-Year-Old Son Who Fed Sisters Food They're Not Allowed To Eat While Babysitting
She says this is not how he usually acts.
cottonbro studio / Pexels A mother was left feeling conflicted after her teenage son disobeyed her rules while babysitting her two younger children.
When she confronted her son, he appeared “remorseless” over his actions. Now, she is seeking the advice of other parents regarding how she should handle the situation.
Sharing her story to Reddit's r/AmITheA–hole, the concerned mom is wondering if she should have handled the situation differently.
She began her post by revealing that she has three children, a 15-year-old son and twin eight-year-old daughters.
“They all get along well and my son loves his sisters and vice versa,” she wrote.
When the woman and her husband have to leave the house, they usually ask their son to babysit his sisters and he usually obliges — unless he has plans.
One evening, her son babysat his younger sisters while they attended a late-night event. When they arrived home, they were surprised by what they walked into.
“We came back at around midnight and I went to check on the kids and my son was fast asleep while one of the twins was puking her guts out and the other one was crying,” the mother wrote.
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Her son gave his sisters peanut butter — which is forbidden in their home
His sisters aren't allergic to the spread but it does make them sick. Hence, they are banned from eating it.
Initially, she believed that the girls had just gotten sick and her son was not to blame.
"They weren’t really making any noise and were clearly asleep before all h–l broke loose," she wrote.
However, her twins told her a shocking version of events that had transpired while their parents were gone.
"I manage to calm my girls down and they end up telling me how their big brother was really mean and grumpy all day and when they asked for food he gave them a jar of peanut butter," she revealed.
While the woman’s daughters are aware of their peanut butter intolerance, they had no choice but to eat it since their brother would not feed them anything else.
Her son appeared to be 'remorseless' over what he did.
The next morning, she asked her son if what his sisters told her was true. “He just made a noise and was all like “the little snitches... yeah so they had a little peanut butter what’s the big deal?” she wrote.
“I told him that he knows they can’t have it and not only that but I also don’t like how they described his attitude.”
The boy claimed that he “forgot” peanut butter makes the twins sick and told them that they had to eat it since he “didn’t feel like” cooking or ordering in.
The mother argued that what her son did to his sisters was “cruel” and now she is unsure if she can trust him to watch them again. “He just rolled his eyes and told me that I’m being really f–king dramatic and that the twins will be fine, I don’t need to act like this,” she wrote.
She added that her son does not usually behave in this manner and is wondering if she is making a scene over something minor.
Most Redditors believed that her son was in the wrong.
“If this had been someone other than your son, I'd be calling it abuse and assault. Certainly negligent. He is clearly unreliable and I'd be very upset,” one user commented.
“Hopefully he has some actual consequences. If he didn’t want to babysit he should have talked to his parents, and not acted so childish, cruel, and disrespectful to them or his little sisters,” another user wrote.
“Even though it is their son, it NEEDS to be called exactly what it is: abuse and neglect. And they need to handle it before those girls really get hurt,” another added.
Other users believed that the boy was struggling with deeper issues and that his parents needed to talk to him about it.
“There seem to be some issues he is having,” one user pointed out. “Set aside this situation and actually ask him if he's okay. He may be passing on bullying from school or some other incident that he is going through.”
“He could definitely easily be consuming that kind of [Internet] trash and that type of stuff is unbelievably damaging to a 15-year-old and everyone who has to be around him,” another suggested.
“If this is out of the norm I’d figure out what led to it and be there for him too… make sure your son is okay, ‘hurt people, hurt people’ as they say.”
The mother followed up with Redditors that she was going to have a conversation with her son to get to the root of his recent behavior.
According to the mother's update, it appears Reddit users were right to be concerned.
The concerned mom shared a devastating update that explained her son's actions.
She says that when they sat down to talk about his babysitting error he opened up to them about something upsetting.
"I’m being vague on purpose but I have never seen my husband cry and what our son told us was enough to break us both," she wrote.
"My son began to just say whatever came into his mind and said that he had interacted with the person that inflicted harm upon him earlier that day and was in a very off mood."
She explains that when her twins started acting up while her son was caring for them, he became overwhelmed and frustrated.
"He said that he suddenly felt as if he was back where the bad thing happened to him and he ended up telling them that he was going to give them peanut butter for being annoying. The same way that person did something to him for being disruptive and annoying."
She doesn't give much away but says she and her husband are getting a lawyer and putting their son in therapy.
"My husband is determined to put that sick disgusting human away."
She also issues a warning to other parents, "Don’t make my mistakes."
"My son is 6ft tall and has the build of a true hockey player and it happened to him. He’s not shy and is never afraid to speak his mind, but he still kept it a secret."
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.