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She kept holding it over his head when they fought, so he gave her a taste of her own medicine.
By John Sundholm — Written on Feb 05, 2023
An adoptive father is feeling guilty after sending his daughter to live at her uncle's for a week after she kept demanding it during their fights.
Posting to the "r/AmITheA--hole" (AITA) subReddit, he described how the conflict arose.
In his post, he described how he ended up adopting his niece after both of her parents passed away years ago.
Now that she is a teenager, they have been getting into conflict regularly.
The dad's adoptive daughter says she would rather go and live with her other uncle every time they have an argument, so the man decided to send her away for a week to see how she likes it.
The dad said the requests to live with her uncle was a recent "annoying habit" his niece and adoptive daughter has developed, and that he knows she didn't mean it.
He explained that "she barely knows her other uncle," and that he has "a high-paying job... so she is too spoiled to be able to live with anyone else."
So the next time she made the request, he "told her to go pack a bag," and she went to her room and did so.
When he approached and asked if she was ready to go, she changed her tune, saying that "she didn't mean what she said and doesn't really want to go."
But he told her to go anyway, so that "then she can tell me if she wants to stay there or come back home."
Even though "she insisted that she already knows where she wants to stay," he forced her to go anyway.
After a week he called and asked if she wanted to come home and she said yes, but has been giving her the silent treatment ever since.
And once his family found out, they all got angry at him and said he was an "a-shole" for calling his adoptive daughter's bluff.
Users on Reddit were divided on whether the guy had done the right thing, with some feeling it was a good "tough love" lesson and others feeling it was manipulative and maybe even abusive.
One user who was once in a similar situation wrote, "I was ‘adopted’ by relatives who would pull this 'I don’t have to keep you' sh-t any time I was a normal bratty adolescent."
"Now I have abandonment issues."
Another person agreed he'd made the wrong choice. "Stop pawning your 'bad' children...on other people in hopes that it will teach them a lesson."
"TALK to them. Deal with the hard parts. Get them in therapy if you need or want to. They are just children. But they are learning from you and it’s your job to raise them."
But others disagreed and thought the man had taught his adoptive daughter a much-needed lesson.
As one user put it, "the niece wanted to F around and find out - I doubt she will say anything about living with her uncle again."
Another person wrote, "Learning about action [and] consequence is also an important part of parenting."
"Yes, a good heart-to-heart after this episode might be best, but I wouldn't go as far as to call [him an a-shole] for doing this."
In the end, the adoptive dad agreed that he'd made a mistake, and after talking it over with his daughter, they've now reconciled.
His daughter confessed that she was really hurt by what he did, and he apologized and told her he would never have let her stay at her uncle's because he "I love her too much... so she is stuck with me."
His daughter has decided to forgive him, but with conditions—"she continues to torture me by forcing me to binge-watch Riverdale with her," he joked.
"And she wants a daddy, daughter day and I'm guessing that I'm not going to like any of her plans based on the evil grin on her face," he added.
But in the end, he's looking forward to it. "I'll do whatever makes her happy."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.