I (16nb) am in Science Olympiad, which is an academic competition held in the US where you participate in events for different scientific disciplines. One of my events are Bungee Drop, where you are supposed to make a mass attached to a cord drop as close to the ground as possible without touching it. You work with a partner on those events, and mine for Bungee is 14m and Indian which is important for context.
During practice, my partner and I talked about going to his house to test our cord, as it has a deck which would make it a lot easier. Here is where I think I am the AH. I asked my mom if I can go to my partner’s house to test the cord last minute on a Saturday night when she was driving home via text and forgot to tell her about his name or address. However, I was dropping hints about meeting my partner in person for testing our cord and she seemed fine with it, and I thought that she would let me go anyway since this was for Science Olympiad.
When she came home, she told me that "I can’t just go to a random guy’s house last minute because I can’t trust him and she doesn’t know if his parents will be there, since girls need to be careful (I am still closeted)", and she asked me about his ethnicity and grade. She then said that Indians aren’t trustworthy and asked where he lived and if his parents were there. Also, she said since I “asked her if I can go and she in reality had no choice”, she compared my behavior to “communism”. I then told her about his name and location, as well as the fact that one of the girls (she was a freshman at the time) on my team visited other peoples’ houses to test engineering devices a lot last year. After that, she seemed kinda open to it after letting her know about his parents contact info but insisted that I should test in a public place if ideal. I responded that I can’t test at a public place due to safety issues, so she asked me why I picked this event in the first place. She then just asked me to test after school and told me that I am letting myself be manipulated by a boy who is 2 years younger than me. Because I wanted to avoid any more conflict I just agreed with her.
I later asked my partner for times we can meet, but he had marching band so we could not find one that worked, so I told my mom that he had conflicts and that I probably had to visit his house anyway. She responded that she will think about it, but the tone made it clear that she did not want me to go. That ticked me off really bad so I snapped at her and told her not to blame me if I do bad at the tournament. After that, she told me that it still was a safety risk and made comments about me somehow being in love in my partner (WTF). I was so mad at this point that I sarcastically asked her if I should wait until after the tournament to test. She followed this up with saying that I only gave her the illusion of a choice and that I was her daughter and she was my mom and that she had the right to make a choice about this. AITA?
NTA. Your mom has some serious brain worms, to put it charitably, based on the reasons she’s giving for not wanting you to go there.
NTA
Nta but your mom has valid concerns.
I would speak about trust with your mom and reassure her that you are a responsible person. At some point your mom has to trust that you are going to be responsible. If she can’t trust you then you have to speak to that lack of trust and if it is deserving or not.
tbh i’m not rly the kind of person to sneak out and do anything dangerous or anything but yeah i do feel like i have to talk to her abt trust at some point. but then again she’s let me do stuff like navigating through the airport and flying alone with no parental supervision for multi-week-long residential summer programs (multiple times!) so i thought she knew i was responsible and that i wouldn’t do any weird stuff.
NTA
Your mom’s acting a bit odd. Does she do this with every male you interact with?
i don’t rly have like a history of asking to go to other ppls houses bc i’m pretty much a friendless loner so i don’t have something to compare this to but yeah this caught me rly off guard bc i thought she would let me go anyway as this is for science olympiad. fwiw though she has let my brother visit other ppls houses i think for extracurricular purposes though.
NTA but your mom is both a racist and has some valid concerns. “Indians can’t be trusted” is a wild, blanketed statement to make as NOTHING applies to ALL people. Secondly, asking to go to a “strangers” house last minute concerns most parents. It was her making all those accusatory statements that made it feel dirty. But under the circumstances, your asking was valid. I did MESA (mathematics, engineering, science achievements) in middle school which is similar and you don’t always have a lot of time to practice so it makes sense why it was such a tight schedule.