Redditors Are Clucking Their Disapproval at These Parents Who Ignore Their Kids on Thanksgiving to Drink
Sitting at the kids table is great! You get to laugh with your cousins, avoid that lumpy casserole and be silly. It’s one of the best parts of the holiday season…if you’re a kid. But if you’re the only one old enough to buy alcohol, then it starts to get dramatically less fun. One young woman on Reddit was tired of her family seeing her as a free, default babysitter, and parents can do so much better.
In the “Am I The A—hole?” subreddit, a 22-year-old woman wrote about how she’s skipping Thanksgiving this year for a very understandable reason.
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“I’m the youngest cousin in the family by a lot ( I was a surprise/mistake) All of my older cousins have kids,” she wrote. “Every thanksgiving we go to my aunts house my cousins put their kids in the playroom and start drinking and I get stuck watching the kids all day.”
Ugh, how frustrating! All the parents dump their kids to drink in the other room? It’s just rude! Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad if someone came to help occasionally, but she detailed how she is “stuck” doing everything.
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“Anytime one cries or has to go for the bathroom or any of them fight I get stuck dealing with it,” she continued. The icing on the cake: “They also sit my at the kids table.” So annoying and disrespectful.
“I complain to my mom every year and she just tells me it’s not like that and is it a big deal to give the parents the day off,” the woman continued. “I don’t look forward to thanksgiving anymore because it happens every year.”
So, she came up with the perfect solution. She’s just going to skip!
“My boyfriend inviting me to his family thanksgiving this year and I decided to go,” she wrote. “I told my mom and she is flipping out telling me it will break her heart to not have me there for thanksgiving and everyone will miss me. I just want to enjoy thanksgiving this year.”
Redditors were so annoyed with the parents at this holiday get-together (who are supposed to be the responsible adults). “NTA– She had years to listen to you, and now she’s reaping what she sowed,” one person wrote. “She’s being kind of dim if she doesn’t give you any options and then it’s surprised when you take one when somebody else offers.”
Someone else pointed out, “She isn’t upset that their precious little girl is going to be there, is that their free babysitter isn’t going to be available and the parents are going to have to be parents.”
Now that the woman is of drinking age, one person suggested, “I’m thinking Op should have a few glasses of wine before the others even arrive….. ‘Sorry – I’m joining the adults this year!’”
Another praised her for setting boundaries. “If her boyfriend ends up being ‘the one’, she needn’t ever go back to spending Thanksgiving supervising other people’s kids because their parents are too selfish and too drunk to do so,” they wrote. “She can spend her holidays with her boyfriend-fiance-husband from now on!”
“Why do ‘adults’ (aka chronologically grown people who still have the mentality of children) feel the need to imbibe to the extent that they can no longer effectively take care of a child/ren? THAT is the real issue here,” another wrote. “OP is most definitely NTA. I wouldn’t put up with that shit either.”
Another suggestion? Try to find a babysitter instead. “Hiring a babysitter is certainly an option,” someone said. “So is taking shifts with your partner/the other parents present. Roping an unwilling family member in as a free babysitter is not an acceptable option.”
As a PSA to all parents this Thanksgiving: watch your own kids! You can’t get wasted at Thanksgiving (sorry…?), and it’s your responsibility to care for your own offspring — on Turkey Day and otherwise.
Before you go, check out these wild stories about Reddit’s most horrific mother-in-laws.
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