It might be a parent’s prerogative to worry about their kids, even as grown adults, but one mom took it to embarrassing heights recently. The mom shared on Reddit that she freaked out when she was unable to locate her adult daughter … for two hours in the middle of the day. For parents with children still at home, this is a bit of a cautionary tale about learning to let go when our kids are grown — whether or not they’re flown.
“Yesterday she went to work and she told me her shift finished at 1:30 p.m.,” the now-deleted original post said of her daughter who is living at home while attending college. “It got to 3:30 p.m. and she still wasn’t home yet so I called her to see where she was and she didn’t pick up. I called her again and still no answer. I called her maybe 10 times and asked her brother to call her but she didn’t pick up, so I called her boss to ask if he knew where she was.”
Can you imagine if your mom called your boss?! I can actually, as when I was in my early 20s, my roommate’s parents left overnight voicemail messages for practically everyone we knew — including my roommate’s boss — when they couldn’t reach us on our landline due to a service outage, and they were convinced we had been murdered.
But seriously, this was two hours in the middle of the afternoon! We get that her mom was worried that she had been in a car accident or needed help escaping from a kidnapper or something, but this mom probably needs to watch less Law & Order: SVU. It turns out the 20-year-old had been asked by her boss to stay late because they were really busy.
“When she got home she was not happy with me,” the mom wrote on Reddit. “She told me she didn’t have a chance to tell me she was staying late but she was going to text me as soon as she could’ve. She said I embarrassed her by calling her boss and that I need to give her more freedom as she’s 20 years old, and I ‘don’t need to know where she is all the time.’ I told her she should be more considerate of my feelings and she should’ve called me, even if it meant making a customer wait a minute.”
Wow, wow, wow. We know this mom’s concern comes from a place of love, but she also sounds pretty selfish. Not only does she feel entitled to know where her adult daughter is every minute, but she thinks her feelings take priority over her daughter’s job and customers.
As Reddit user dickicorn wrote, “That just makes me want to see the full on FIT she would throw if she was the customer and an employee told her ‘wait I have to call my mom to tell her I’m still at work!’”
As many commenters pointed out, this likely also negatively affected the boss’ opinion of her daughter as an employee.
“This is how you treat a 12 year old, not a 20 year old,” wrote des1gnbot. “Where she is every minute of the day is no longer your concern; she gets to decide that. Also you may have harmed her standing at work by encouraging her boss to view her as a child. What if your husband did the same to you; how would you feel about it?”
Anglerfishtacos agreed: “She is 20 years old and was 2 hours delayed in the middle of the day. People get held up, and you do not need her reporting to you every time plans change. Calling her 10x plus having her brother call, then calling her boss when she is delayed for a short amount of time makes you look like a lunatic and her unprofessional.”
Several others pointed out this mom took helicopter parenting to a new level. “YTA, and a weapons-grade helicopter parent,” commented Anonymotron42. “If you were a TV show you’d be Airwolf or if you were a movie I’d call you Blue Thunder. Way to fire an air-to-ground missile at your daughter’s job!”
And nochickflickmoments brought up an interesting scratch-our-chins point about hovering parents in general: “What did these helicopter parents do before cell phones? Oh, I know, drive around town yelling their name out the car window?”
As this AITA mom deleted her original post from Reddit, we suspect that she is embarrassed by her actions and now sees the error of her ways thanks to the commenters on Reddit. Next time she and her daughter disagree, we hope she’ll be willing to accept and respect her daughter’s feelings without having to ask a forum of strangers for their opinion first. Meanwhile, we hope she and her daughter make up, set up some ground rules and boundaries for their new adult-to-adult relationship, and perhaps that she even get some therapy for what seem like larger-than-usual anxiety issues. And try to catch some episodes of Airwolf — that was a great show!
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