Yesterday, earlier afternoon, I (16M) was told to fold all the clothes that were washed previous day. I had a meeting later that evening with some colleagues and mom took my keyboard and mouse for the PC, saying I would have to finish folding the clothes and I will get it back. They always do this whenever they want me to do something, I feel like I am being forced to do this but I just de-escalate the situation by doing it or else I am not getting the mouse and keyboard in time and I don’t really want to argue. So, 2 hours later of folding clothes, I asked her to give me my stuff back so I can go into this meeting and she first asked to check the clothes since she “always sees that I fold badly,”. Yet I don’t. She picked up clothes that were folded and claimed “they are not folded” and she went on to unfold them. There and then, I got angry and told her she always does it and is being petty and annoying. I told her to give me my stuff since we agreed she would do so but she said I would have to re-do everything and she would give me my stuff back. (Been already folding for 2 hours) I unfolded all the stuff, told her she would have to do it herself and I will not do anything ever again while my personal items are being hold “hostage”. She went to my dad and complained, he crashed out. So I just locked myself in my room. We have a cruise next day (today) which I am going with them but I am not. Decided to stay home. They are now “apologising” to me but I know it’s not sincere and just want me to help them take care of my siblings on the cruise. They always apologise only when they need something from me.
AITA?
Nobody enjoy me doing chores, but it’s part of life. I’m interested to know how it escalated to this point where they need to take your things to get you to help out around the house – im assuming it’s after a pattern of refusing / not getting around to it.
I mean if you folded them fine then you aren’t the asshole, especially if you had a meeting. I think maybe the cruise thing was a bit of an overreaction because they are a lot of money but I’m a bit inbetween
So your mum asked you to do chores, and took away your tech until you did so? TBH I do this with my 13 year old. I ask and ask and ask him to do reasonable chores and he ignores me, and often only actually does it when I do something like turn the internet off until he does it. So, without knowing the context, it sounds like they often ask you to do chores around the house, and you refuse, so they ‘force’ you to chip in and help around the house. It also sounds like you did a half arsed job about it because you were being ‘forced’ to do it, so your mum told you to do it properly, so you chucked a temper tantrum and acted like a toddler.
What other jobs do you do around the house? Do you clean the house, do your own laundry, mow the lawn, wash dishes? Or do your parents do everything for you? Honestly if you were my child I would have turned the internet off and grounded you for being so disrespectful. YTA.
YTA. 16 year old and completely entitled. That your parents have to take away your keyboard / mouse to get you to do chores says everything.
If you don’t like the terms & conditions of living at home, time to move out and get a job.
YTA no one enjoys doing chores. I don’t see how one day’s of laundry took you 2 hours to fold. I’d like to know how it got to the point where at 16 your parents need to take away your keyboard and mouse for you to one chore
YTA. Do your overdue chores.
Also, learn how to fold clothes better, because it should not take 2 hours to fold a day’s worth of laundry.
You are a kid. You don’t have colleagues. You have chores and obligations to your family. Frankly, what you were asked to do is minimal compared to what adults have to do every day to keep their lives and the lives of their families running. Someday you will look back on this and wish folding clothes well was all you had to worry about. But in the meantime do your damn chores.
YTA
How did it take him 2 hours to fold the washing though that has to mean something
I can’t understand that, you can get A LOT done in 2 hours
To me it actually reads like the parents are indulgent and the kid knows that and manipulates them.
It’s weaponized incompetence combined with emotional blackmail there at the end.
Super mature behavior, OP. So grown up and deserving of respect lol
Yeah, you lost me at “colleagues”. You’re 16. You have friends, not colleagues. YTA for that alone and it pretty much discredits the rest of your story. Do your chores dude.
How would it possibly take 2+ hrs to fold clothes? I mean, how many loads of laundry and for how many people are we talking about here? It sounds like you weren’t actually paying attention to folding clothes and more likely that you were doing it half-heartedly while doing something else.
As to your edit in the comments, it’s possible that they are being overly harsh in their tone. But based on what appears to a very one-sided telling of your story, it’s hard to put much faith into this.
It’s hard to say here because we aren’t there to see and some info is missing.
Sometimes parents are straight up arseholes and don’t know how to talk to their kids nor raise them. Sometimes teens are arses because they are at that selfish point in life where they just have no idea how much people do for them and they are just trying to differentiate themselves as they grow up.
We don’t know how many siblings you have. We don’t know if the laundry was two loads or seven loads. We don’t know if this was your only chore in the house all week. We don’t know if your parents regularly parentify you so they don’t have to watch the other kids. We don’t know how old the other kids are. We don’t know if you actually did a bad job folding or if your mom is just “Joan Crawfording” needing it to be perfect.