Mom Hurt That Her Daughter Excluded Her From Her College Move-In Day — But There's A 'Perfectly Valid' Reason
The teen suggested her mom wasn’t exactly deserving of an invite.
Hero Images | Canva Pro Intentionally excluding your mom from college move-in day can certainly seem like a low blow, but one young woman felt justified in the decision after being hurt by her mom one too many times.
The college student took to Reddit to ask if she was wrong for leaving her mom out of her move-in day.
In her AITA post, the 18-year-old explained she graduated from high school a year early, and rather than taking a break, she used the time to get a head start on her college education, completing a semester at a community college. She now lives on campus at another college and is working on finishing her degree.
She shared how she spent half of her high school education living with her mom, her stepdad, who she referred to as Ryan, and her two younger siblings, Amy, 10, and Liam, 7.
“Amy and Liam wanted me around, and I wanted to see them too before I started doing adult stuff and got too busy to come around as often,” the young woman explained. “As much as I loved being near my brother and sister, I hated living in the same house as Ryan.”
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The teen revealed that Ryan’s family was never welcoming, and her mom did little to stand up for her.
“He and his family weren’t shy about the fact that they don’t really like me,” she wrote. “When he and my mom first got together, it was like I was being purposely excluded from everything he and his family would invite us to.”
The teen tried to mention how this exclusion made her feel to her mom, and her mom would say she’d talk to Ryan, but “nothing changed.”
During family gatherings, she was rarely spoken to and frequently asked to take family pictures of everyone else. Ryan even went as far as to plan family outings without her, bluntly informing her she was not invited. Whenever she made an effort to be included, she was ignored or dismissed.
The teen eventually accepted that her mom seemed to be moving on with her new family.
“It got worse when they had my siblings,” she recalled. “I would have to sit on the sidelines and watch as my brother and sister were enthusiastically accepted … by Ryan’s family, all while they made it blatantly obvious that they didn’t want anything to do with me.”
The teen said “the real last straw” that broke the camel’s back was when Ryan’s sister purchased a Mother’s Day gift for her mom a few years back — a locket with a picture of Amy and Liam.
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“She said it was so my mom could always have her two children close to her heart. My mom didn’t say anything about me; she didn’t even glance in my direction,” the teen wrote. “So I stopped trying and just accepted that I’d never be a real part of her new family.”
Rather than taking action and advocating for her firstborn, the mom quietly enabled Ryan and his family’s attempts to erase the teen from their lives. This understandably developed into a serious conflict between the mom and her daughter, as the teen could feel her mom’s lack of attention, care, and love.
Despite repeatedly telling her mom when her college move-in date was, the mom forgot, and the teen didn’t bother to remind her. She spent the last year gradually packing and moving her things to her dad’s place to prepare for her dorm.
When move-in day came, she packed up her car and drove to campus by herself.
“My dad met me there, and we decorated my room together,” she detailed. “My mom thought that I was just spending the weekend with my dad, so when I ended up telling her that I wasn’t going to be coming back during the week because I’d moved in already, she got really upset.”
After years of the mom allowing her own daughter to be excluded from her new family, the teen showed her mom a taste of her own medicine. It may not have been the healthiest response, but perhaps the mom needed to properly understand the feeling of exclusion by experiencing it herself.
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The mom was understandably upset by her daughter’s lack of desire to include her, but she evidently failed to prioritize the girl’s feelings and needs over her new family’s. After allowing Ryan and his family to emotionally neglect and abuse the teen for years, can she be surprised?
“[My mom] said it was hurtful that I would exclude her from this huge moment in my life and that as my mom, it’s her job to be there for this journey and be there for me,” the teen wrote. “I told her that she’d been letting her husband exclude me from her life since the day they started dating, and because that never seemed to bother her, I didn’t think it would be a big deal for me to do it too.”
Reddit users agreed that the teen’s actions were a valid result of her stepfamily’s abuse.
Reddit users empathized with the teen. They argued that the mom seems to be largely invalidating and dismissing her daughter’s traumatic experience.
“Your mom needed her feelings to be hurt — badly,” one person commented on the post. “Only then might she finally get a clue about how you’ve been feeling all this time.”
“OP is only eight years older than the first half-sibling, so she was likely just six or seven when her mom and Ryan married, possibly even younger,” someone else predicted. “Who … treats a small child like that? And continues to exclude a child over the years?”
“Why is the mom only worried about her hurt feelings? Shouldn't this be a trigger for Mom to ask why OP felt the need to take this action?” another person identified.
It is a parent’s responsibility to always be there for their child.
While divorce and remarriage can sometimes make families a bit more complex and dysfunctional, it does not justify treating an innocent child like she doesn’t belong. Ryan and his family have certainly behaved immaturely and heartlessly, but this experience could have been averted had the mom taken action sooner and demanded her daughter be seen, respected, and loved.
Being a stepparent isn't easy, but considering a whopping 65% of families in the U.S. are classified as blended, it's unfortunate that this teen's mom isn't demanding more for her first child.
Whether she's afraid of losing her seemingly perfect new family or there are spousal problems that we are unaware of, the unfortunate truth is that this mom's choices could lead to an estranged relationship with her college-bound daughter.
While the mom’s feelings are valid, perhaps it can serve as a wake-up call to step outside herself and recognize how much pain daughter has endured.
Francesca Duarte is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team based in Orlando, FL. She covers lifestyle, human-interest, adventure, and spirituality topics.