A mum has started an online debate after revealing she decided to put a lock on her 10-year-old son's bedroom door.
The Reddit user described the reasons behind her decision in the site's popular AmITheA**hole page and her post now has 11,200 votes and 1,600 comments.
Titled 'AITA for putting a lock on my sons bedroom door?' she explains that she's regularly visited by her sister and her nieces aged seven and five and nephew aged 12 which bothers her 'quiet' son because he's an only child.
"They always swarm to his room to play when they come round and it's upsetting especially as there has been a few toy breakages in the past," she said.
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To tackle the problem, the original poster (OP) and her husband decided to put a lock on their son’s door for him to use ‘to keep anyone he wants out as he’s old enough for privacy’.
The mum said that she and her husband have a key in case of emergencies.
When her sister and her children visited after the lock had been installed, the children tried to enter the room but it was locked.
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She wrote: “This upset my 12-year-old nephew who wanted to play with my son's PS5 so he began to try to get me to make my son share, I told him 'no I wasn't going to force the issue but if he wanted to play video games after lunch then he could use my Switch that was hooked up to the TV in the living room'.”
The mum’s sister was ‘annoyed’ and argued that the 10-year-old did not need 'that kind of privacy’ and warned she was ‘training him to be rude and inconsiderate'.
The Reddit user added: “She then began to apply pressure to my son trying to convince him that he wanted his cousins to come play in his room as they were so bored and wouldn't it be ‘fun’?
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“My son isn't good at confrontation as I said he's quiet and he was clearly feeling uncomfortable so I told my sister to 'lay off' and 'if her kids needed to play so much there was no reason to hang around after lunch as it wasn't fair to make them sit there bored'.”
This angered the Reddit user’s sister, who complained to their parents that the Reddit user was teaching her son ‘to be inconsiderate’.
One Reddit user declared the mum was not the a**hole and said: “As someone who grew up with very little privacy... thank you. You're doing right by your kid.”
Another commenter believes the issue is not privacy, but the behaviour of the mum’s nieces and nephew. They wrote: “The issue isn’t privacy, the issue is your sister and his kids have no respect for your son’s wants, space or stuff. If they were decently behaved and respectful, would you need the lock? Possibly not.”
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While one responder said the sister’s opinion ‘isn’t law in the mum’s house’ and suggested the mum should thank her sister for sharing her opinion but should not feel obliged to remove the lock.
They wrote: “OP what I can't understand is why your sister thinks she has any input on what goes on in your house. You, your husband and your son had a family discussion and agreed on something. Your sister doesn't even live there, pay bills or do anything useful. Sure she has an opinion but you know what they say about opinions and butt holes.”
Someone else wrote: “OP you also need to take the heat off your son here. Make it a rule that the kids play outside of your son's room when they come over.”
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People who grew up in large families also shared their support for the mum. “I grew up having so many of my toys being broken by siblings or cousins that this kind of privacy would have been great,” one Reddit user wrote.
What do you think?
Gregory Robinson