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She's only five years old.
By Victoria Soliz — Last updated on Oct 31, 2023
After an incident resulted in a woman telling her half-sister that she isn't family, she wonders if she's in the wrong for saying it.
The woman says her five-year-old half-sister overheard her telling the school office that the girl isn’t her family.
“My father has way too many children," she said in a Reddit post. "As of this year, he's up to 11 children with 6 different mothers."
She describes their living situation and how "Moms 1 and 2" decided to live together and raise their children together — she's one of those four children.
“We decided a long time ago that we, meaning the four of us, were the only siblings we were going to have," she continued. "No claiming any other children he may have as siblings or even acknowledging them if we could help it. I know it sounds bad, but on a practical level, we had to draw a line somewhere. We've made our stance clear."
"Our moms and our father are fine with it but the other moms aren't. Mom 5 REALLY isn't," she continued. "Despite never having met her kid, she insists to everyone that will listen that we are her kid's siblings.”
She goes on to explain that the child is now in kindergarten and, despite their wishes, the mother put her down as the little girl's emergency contact for the school.
“Last week, the school called us to come get her because she was sick. We wanted to ignore it, but they demanded that we come in and made threats, so we decided to go to the school to make it clear that they needed to take us off the list."
The woman describes the altercation with the people in the office, emphasizing her argument that they were "not responsible for her in any way," equating them to "strangers off the street" since they never treat her like family.
"They had brought her into the office while we were talking, so she heard all of this.
Now the mother is demanding an apology.
The mother called the woman, furious that she would say all of that in front of her child, saying she “broke her heart in front of everyone.” The woman stood by her actions, saying that when you claim somebody as a sibling there are obligations that come along with it and they don’t want any of that.
She also insists that they weren’t aware the child was there but said “it had to be said anyway, and she was going to figure out the truth. It's not personal at all.”
Now, since the family is torn, she is wondering if she was wrong for doing what she did.
People on Reddit reassured her that she wasn't wrong.
Plenty of users below agree that it’s a little suspicious that the mother put the woman down as an emergency contact without first discussing it.
“How can they even accept someone as an emergency contact without getting approval from the emergency contact? I feel like they should require a signed acknowledgment and acceptance from the person being put down as an emergency contact,” one user wrote.
One parent shared their own experience with dealing with school emergency contact lists, showing just how easy it is to put somebody down without their knowledge.
“None of my kid's schools (9th grade now) required the emergency contact to given consent to be listed. I get the feeling that they assume whoever is on the list knows they're on the list. Hell, one year I couldn't take my kid to her open house because of an injury and the neighbor who baby sat for us took her instead. The neighbor filled out the emergency contact list while there, listing me and grandma as primary contacts and herself/her husband as emergency contacts so any one of the 4 of us could get her in the event of an emergency. (Which I 100% was ok with) The school didn't call to verify anything with me.”
In fact, there aren't many rules or regulations regarding who can be listed as a child's emergency contact. However, emergency preparedness experts Laura and Janet Greenwald suggest reaching out to anyone you consider naming as an emergency contact to make sure they're comfortable doing so.
Emergency contacts are meant to be responsible guardians in place of a parent's absence, and naming someone who's made it clear that they're not interested in the child doesn't forge a relationship between them. Rather, it could put the child's welfare in danger. While it's understandable that the mother may feel hurt that her daughter isn't claimed by her half-sisters, ultimately, the mother must make decisions with her child's well-being in mind.
Victoria Soliz is a writer who covers news and entertainment content. Her work explores pop culture trends, film and TV, and celebrity news