11-Year-Old Girl Claims Her Dad Is ‘Ruining Her Life’ By Gifting Her A $600 IPhone Instead Of The $1,200 Version
It may not feel good, but this is pretty much exactly how a tween should feel about her parents!
SDI Productions | Getty Images Signature | Canva Pro "You're ruining my life!" is pretty much standard issue tween and teenage rhetoric when it comes to their parents.
Give them a curfew? "You're ruining my life!" Make them do their homework? "You're ruining my life!" Have the unmitigated temerity to so much as think the word "no?" "You're ruining my life!"
But one dad on Reddit is struggling so much with the phrase that he's wondering if he actually IS ruining his daughter's life, all because he's refusing to buy the right iPhone.
A dad's 11-year-old says he is 'ruining her life' because he won't buy her the exact iPhone she wants.
Now, if you're a millennial or older, this probably sounds insane on its face. My parents wouldn't even buy me name-brand crayons as a kid (fellow Rose Art survivors, I see you), let alone a thousand-dollar handheld supercomputer that will inevitably be shattered the first time the kid takes it on the school bus.
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But, of course, times have changed. For us olds coming of age at the turn of the century, it was $200 Doc Marten boots or whatever. Now it's an iPhone. It is what it is.
But this guy's kid is pretty much the definition of a choosing beggar. "We gave her a phone two years ago," he wrote in his Reddit post, which was "an old iPhone 8" that she uses for calling, texting, and social media. But now, she wants an upgrade. And boy, has it stirred up drama.
The dad wants to buy her a $600 iPhone 13, but his daughter is insisting on a $1200 iPhone 15.
"Recently she's been wanting a new phone because her phone was old and all her friends have new phones," the dad wrote. "Too bad!" a lot of you are probably yelling at your screens, which is fair enough. But an iPhone 8 IS basically a rotary dial phone at this point, so who can blame the kid?
But given that she is, to reiterate, 11 years of age, this dad sensibly "thought the iPhone 13 would be a good option as it's $600, has good camera/battery life, and it looks the same as every other iPhone." Sounds like a plan. Ring it up!
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LOL, not quite. His daughter "specifically wanted the iPhone 15 Pro Max because apparently "'it plays console level games and has a 120hz display.'"
Okay, listen, I am a 45-year-old grown man who makes videos with my iPhone FOR A LITERAL LIVING, and I don't even have an iPhone 15 Pro Max. You're 11! Go play hopscotch or something before I wash out that insouciant mouth with a bar of Irish Spring! *raps cane on table.*
Anyway...
"My daughter is a gamer and has always complained about her phone not being able to game properly as it's old," the dad went on to explain. But he maintained it's a waste of money — which is pretty indisputable.
But she did not see it that way and threw a fit, saying her dad was "ruining her life" because all her friends had iPhone 15 Pro Maxes. (Goodness, what would she do with a real problem, I wonder?) It got so dramatic that his wife said they should relent and just give the kid the phone she wanted as a "big gift."
Huge, overwrought feelings are a natural part of growing up for tweens and teens — as is hating their parents for setting boundaries.
Screeching "You're ruining my life!" over an iPhone an 11-year-old child absolutely does not need may seem extremely dramatic and spoiled — and it probably is to some degree. But it's also completely normal.
Because of how quickly their bodies, brains, and emotions develop as they enter puberty, tweens and teens tend to be highly emotional and often feel like even mundane things — or, at times, absolutely everything — are life-ending crises. It's natural.
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And as we all probably remember from our own teen years, it also means they often hate your guts with the heat of a thousand suns every time you lay down a boundary. As one parent on Reddit put it to this dad, "If you haven’t heard 'you’re ruining my life!' more than once by the time your kid is 11, you aren’t doing your job!"
Other parents put it into a far more bracing perspective. "I count it as a win that my kids can express their genuine frustration, albeit imperfectly," another person wrote, "bc when I was a kid, saying that to either of my parents would have resulted in a beating." Better to be petulant than afraid of your parents.
Experts say that as upsetting as these outbursts can be, relenting is usually not the best choice. "Watching our teens deal with difficulty is hard," psychologist Dr. Alicia Clark told us. "We often want to jump in and resolve their struggles for them. However, doing so is usually not the best decision."
Psychologist and so-called "Millennial parenting whisperer" Dr. Becky Kennedy says that instead, what teens need is "a sturdy leader" who will validate their emotions while maintaining firm boundaries so that they know you can be depended upon to do the right thing.
At the end of the day, it's just an iPhone, and it doesn't have the power to ruin anyone's life, let alone a tween's!
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.