A father who consistently forgets his daughter's age has been chastised by his niece and called a bad father. The teen has turned to Reddit to find out whether or not she was in the wrong for giving him this label.
*This is a work of non-fiction sourced from social media discussion boards and verified experts/specialists.*
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The author, an 18-year-old woman, starts off by explaining that she has a 16-year-old cousin named Lilly.
Her uncle and cousin Lily unfortunately aren't unfamiliar with tragedy, as the author details in her post:
"This started about 4 years ago when his wife died and since then he's been withdrawn. He remarried 2 years ago, and is obsessed with his step children but completely ignores Lilly. He just doesn't care about her, she can be away all day and come back at 3am and he wouldn't notice or care. At this point, he doesn't know her as a person at all.”
The death of a parent is a truly traumatic situation, and experts from Psychology Today state that children are likely to experience negative mental health effects such as anxiety, prolonged grief reactions, and other physical and emotional difficulties.
The author continues that it was recently Lilly's birthday, and her father entirely forgot. However, the author, her sister, and some of Lilly's friends still threw her a birthday party to celebrate this milestone.
That said, when the author's uncle was visiting her mom recently, he made a comment that Lilly was 15, and the author took this as an opportunity to speak up for her cousin Lilly:
"I overheard it and corrected him with ‘Lilly's 16 as of three weeks ago, you forgot her birthday again just like last year’ and then him and my mom went quiet. Then he said yeah, he'll make it up to her and I continued ‘what kind of father doesn't even know how old his own child is?’"
Her uncle became quite upset by this comment, and the author's mother told her to apologize. But she replied with:
“[Apologize] for what? telling the truth?”
The author called her cousin to let her know what had happened, and she later found out that her uncle tried to talk to Lilly but the conversation didn't go well. Rather than taking ownership, the uncle instead put the blame on the author, as she explains:
“He later called my mom and accused me of "manufacturing" this situation between him and Lilly and my mom is taking his side because she believes his parenting is none of my business and I had no right to call him out on that even if I believed I was right.”
What do you think?
Should the author have said nothing and minded her own business in this situation?
Or is the author entirely justified to point out a simple fact, and challenge her uncle to treat his daughter better considering he's basically forgotten she existed?
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