In a post shared on Reddit’s AITA (Am I The A******) subforum under the username Spirited_Boat_6380, the 17-year-old said her parents had her 29-year-old sister when they were young (her dad was 18 and her mom was 19).
According to the poster: “They did not do a great job with her and she has a lot of problems. She is chronically unemployed and she is a thief.”
The sister, who has two kids, broke up with her boyfriend recently and needed a place to stay. The teenager said: “I begged my parents not to let her stay with us. They declined. So I begged again for a lock for my door. No dice.”
The user said: “I have to go to school so I can’t guard my stuff at all times. When I came home on Friday I found my car absolutely trashed and the side of it destroyed.”
According to the teenager, her sister found her spare car keys in the user’s room, took the car and then “lost control on the ice after a day of eating crap and tossing fast food wrappers everywhere” and “sideswiped a tree.”
A June 2011 study in the peer-reviewed Journal of Family Theory and Review found “the processes that affect sibling relationship dynamics operate at a variety of levels, ranging from intrapsychic processes such as attachment and social comparison to relational dynamics such as social learning and more distal forces beyond the family such as sociocultural influences.”
The study noted that although some point to “sibling rivalry as a root of sibling conflict,” other research has suggested that “during adolescence, access to resources (e.g., television, clothing, tangible goods) and family conditions (e.g., likelihood of parental intervention, division of labor) promote conflict between brothers and sisters, as opposed to frustrations stemming from sibling jealousy and rivalry.”
According to the user in the latest Reddit post, her parents said the older sister did not have the money to fix the damaged car.
After talking to her grandfather, the teenager told her parents that the insurance would cover fixing or replacing her car, depending on the damage. But she “would have to file a police report” and her sister “would probably be charged” for stealing the car. “They begged me to tell [the insurance company] that she had permission. I said nope,” the user said.
Instead of going via the insurance route, her parents are replacing the car using money they’d set aside to take her and her nieces to Orlando next summer for the user’s graduation.
“My parents, sister and nieces are upset with me and saying that I’m an a****** for denying my nieces the opportunity to go on a vacation that they have never had. I just asked them if a lock for my door would have been cheaper,” the teenager said.
JoLeann “Joey” Trine, a licensed clinical professional counselor (LCPC) with Thriveworks, a counseling/therapy service in Aurora, Illinois, told Newsweek: “Family conflict is difficult” and “that popular phrase ‘a rock and a hard place’ applies here for these parents.”
Whether the parents went via the insurance route or not, their children are both suffering and the parents did their best to decide how to handle it. “No scenario leaves these parents without worrying about the welfare of their family or without some impact on their children,” Trine said.
The LCPC said “practicing active listening skills and healthy communication during difficult times” is crucial in this situation.
“Right now, some feelings of anxiety and resentment appear to be surfacing in the family unit. The family can focus on processing the feelings and working through the fact that everyone is doing their best with a complicated situation. Holding space for supportive and safe communication can go a long way,” she said.
Several users on Reddit shared messages of support for the original poster.
In a comment that got 35,400 upvotes, user angelaheidt said the teenager is “NTA [not the a******] - ‘Play stupid games, win stupid prizes’.”
User tbarnes472 agreed, writing: “For real! I wish I had been able to be this on point at OP’s [original poster] age! NTA. Obviously!,” in a comment that got 7,100 upvotes.
In a comment that got 2,800 upvotes, EmeraldBlueZen wrote: “I agree with the others - Good for you OP. Stay strong. You aren’t the one who ruined the vacation. Your sis and your parents who enabled her are responsible for that. NTA.”
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