Aita- I 34yo female have a son who is turning 13 this weekend. He bday falls close to xmas and I am not wealthy, we just get by, so many years he doesn’t get a full party. This year felt like a big milestone becoming a teenager so I wanted to make it special. We invited 10 kids and rented out some batting cages for 1.5 hours, I ordered a cake and planned a whole game and food and snacks. We live in an apartment so I planned a scavenger hunt outside to keep them entertained after the batting cages and wanted the prize to be soem hidden money. So on Monday I pulled out $20 and got 4 5 dollar bills. Today is Thursday and his last day of school before break they were having a party at school and so I pulled a $5 out of my wallet and handed it to him and saw the other 3 $5s. I work from home so went to my room to go back to work, while in there I heard his friend come inside for 5 minutes before they left together. A little after thay I walk out to get more coffee and I notice that both my purse and wallet are open, which is not like me, so I go and look and see if only have 1 $5 in my purse. I immediately call my son asking if he took $10 which he denies. I say we’ll if you didnt take it then your friend must of and he says no. I feel like I should add that i dont think his friend took the money, he has been in my house lots before and nothing has ever gone missing. My son was with me when I pulled out the money at the store and knew what I had and where it was. My son has also never stolen money but does sneak extra snacks and cookies and lies a lot about little things and his lying has been an issue for a while now and sadly i have caught his lying so much i dont believe him much. My son’s refuses to say what happened and how the money disappeared, they were the only 2 in the living room and I 100% saw it when I handed him the $5. When he got home we tried to talk about it but he still says he didnt do it and neither did his friend. So I told him that I his bday was cancelled as I feel like he is lying and I do not trust people in the apartment if he has no clue what happened to my money. A part of me feels like I am overreacting over $10 but I feel like if my son did take and I let him still have a party I am setting an example that he can just steal more next time. So AITA?
YTA. Your 13 year old son lies about taking extra snacks. He’s not a thief, he’s hungry.
This has to be handled, but not by cancelling.
He’s going to be humiliated when everyone is told
it’s canceled. Hope you didn’t tell any parents why.
He needs to be dealt with and not trusted for a while until he earns it back, but a birthday party for a 13 year old who hasn’t had a real one like this is cruel.
YTA – the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.
YTA The truth is that you don’t know that either kid took your money. Maybe you put it somewhere safe and forgot. Maybe it fell out of your wallet. Your brain fills in details all the time. You could be mistaken that you saw that money in your wallet.
I’m a teacher. If I had one of your $5 every time a student swore they remembered turning a paper in, only to later find it in their backpack, I could retire right now. Human brains make mistakes.
I get it. Money is tight. It’s stressful. Don’t make this $10 a formative memory that your son will be telling a therapist a decade from now. It’s already hard having a December birthday. Please don’t make it harder for him.
This. The amount of people saying to punish him for something with absolutely no evidence beyond “I’m sure it was him”… what if it was his friend, and he honestly doesn’t know anything about it?
Imagine threatening to take away all the nice things like birthdays and christmases when this kid might genuinely have no idea what’s going on. Is there a chance he did the wrong thing? Absolutely. But without proof, OP could simply damage her relationship with her child.
Especially in that pre-teen to teen phase, they make a LOT of bad choices. Extreme punishment doesn’t teach them to do anything more than get better at hiding bad behaviour. Punishment is reasonable and a tool that parents need to use sometimes (boy do I know that one!) but without proof? Not for me.
TA – Only 4 things are possible:
Son took the money.
Friend took the money and your son doesn’t know he took it.
Friend took the money and son DOES know it.
You made a mistake and/or it just got lost.
He’s going to feel like shit for 3/4 of those things. Maybe not today but soon enough.
But IF he is innocent, and we all deserve the presumption of innocence, he will remember this for flipping ever. Do YOU remember what it feels like to be wrongly accused, let alone punished for it?
He’s already getting screwed every year for being a Christmas Baby – Give him the benefit of the doubt. But also keep your purse secured for a while.
My dad once accused me of breaking a plate while doing dishes on purpose because I didn’t want to do dishes but it really was just an accident… I have never forgotten that moment or how it made me feel.. and this happened like 25 years ago.
My grandparents once accused me of faking a knee injury to get out of house work. Took me to the dr a week later, had a tumor the size of a tennis ball below my knee.
I remember at 4 years old, a cat that had been hanging around the house and gave birth tried to move her kittens into my bedroom. I distinctly remember my dad finding her in the hallway, and putting her back outside, since she wasn’t allowed in/not sure whose cat she even was. But I got blamed and punished when a kitten was found in my room. The helplessness of no one believing you when you’re innocent sticks with you.
I vividly remember when I was around 4 or 5, I was coming down a ramp in a restaurant and this other kid was running and just barrelled right into me and fell over. He started screaming and my mother looked back, and for some reason she automatically assumed it was my fault. I have no idea why, I was a very quiet and shy child.
She told me to apologize to him for knocking him down and I refused because he was the one who ran into me. She said I’d get a spanking at home if I didn’t apologize and I still refused. I got the threatened punishment and I’ve NEVER forgotten that, despite being almost 47.
I was left in the care of my older sister off and on when I was a kid (she was 17 years older than me) because my mom would be gone for months at a time doing contract work. When I was five, my sister went on a cleaning spree and then went to take a nap. While she was sleeping her husband made himself a sandwich. He left the bread on the counter. When my sister woke up she accused me of leaving the bread on the counter. I said I didn’t and pointed out that I couldn’t even reach the cabinet that the bread was kept in. I told her her husband got it out, made a sandwich, and forgot to put it away. She didn’t believe me. I got spanked with a wooden spoon for lying. I’m 49 and I still remember that. That stuff sticks with you.
Soft YTA. Absolutely have a consequence for the missing money. Either he took it or he knows his friend did, he isn’t being honest no matter who took it.
But! I think special occasions should not be used as punishment. Cancelling birthdays, Christmas etc is wrong in my opinion. Ground him, take away his phone or whatever he thinks is important for a while, not cancel his birthday. Especially because you have said this is not a normal every year occurrence.
Especially with 10 kids invited that he’s either going to have to lie to, or really embarrass himself to. He’s not going to learn anything but resentment from that.
YTA, because speaking as a Mom here, you don’t have proof of wrongdoing, so you are teaching your kid that there is no truth or trust between you.
My mom accused me of stealing something when I was a kid. Turned out she made the mistake, and the item was found a year later.
It’s been 30 years and I *still* bring it up if things get misplaced.
As for the lying: look as a mom of boys of a similar age, you have to pause and ask why your kid is lying to you. Mine lie if they think the punishment is worse than being honest with me, so I had to do the work to change that dynamic, because it was on me to create the kind of relationship where they can be honest with me. They aren’t perfect by any stretch, but now they are pretty open with me about any subject.
Regarding the snacks: have you been food insecure? Because his behaviour around stealing food indicates he’s either genuinely hungry or he’s afraid of not having food. You can always put him in charge of his own snacks for the week.
My son was accused by his grandma of stealing $20. She lectured him the same way you are. She shamed him. His dad and Step mom did the same.
He called me bawling. A teenage boy crying like he did when he was a small child. I knew he didn’t take it, not only because even though my son was a jackhole teen at the time he wasn’t a thief, but because of the tone in his voice. He was so hurt they all thought he would steal from his grandma.
A week later she went to the gas station and the clerk came running out saying ” I’m so glad you came back we saw this on the ground after you left and put it aside for you” and handed her the $20.
My son has never had the same relationship with his grandmother.
Moral of the story: You are pretty sure of what happened, but if you insist it’s what happened and are wrong you might permanently break your relationship in a way that can’t be fixed.
Also, why do you have more faith in his friend than your son?