17-year-old daughter refuses to apologize to divorced parents for protesting their divorce when she was 7 years old: ‘[Mom] said I was a manipulative child who used tears to get her own way...’

Author image for Lana DeGaetano
Lana DeGaetano • "Show me to me please."
Mar 10, 2025 11:00 PM EDT

Divorces signify an irreversible change. The lives children once knew are no longer, and oftentimes at young ages, these children don't understand how to cope with these significant changes to their family dynamics and household. Obviously, they shouldn't know how to do so. No child, teen, or adult is ever ready for what negative changes come along with divorce, but a seven-year-old girl clearly wouldn't understand how to deal with her big emotions about mommy and daddy suddenly having separate houses.

The divorced parents in this next story, however, accuse their child of trying to manipulate them into staying together when in reality, her seven-year-old self simply didn't understand why they were getting divorced. You'd think a pair of parents would understand this, but they decide to unleash their anger and resentment onto her 10 years later. Luckily, this now-17-year-old refuses to apologize for her completely valid feelings ten years earlier. Scroll to read.

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  • The 17-year-old explains that her brother, who is two years older than her, expressed anger more than sadness when their parents shared the news of their divorce. Her brother has never let this anger go, and instead only learned to live with it. Their parents, however, never gave him grief for his feelings, yet choose to vilify their daughter instead, who was even younger at the time of their divorce. A part of parenting is having the hard conversations and hearing out your children… Apparently, this is not what happened.

  • "They both compared me to the stepkids who don't have a problem with two households or who don't ask to invite their other parent for stuff."
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    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • "AITA for not apologizing to my parents for putting them through h**l and making them feel guilty for divorcing?"

    10 years ago my parents sat me (17f) and my brother (19m) down and told us they were getting a divorce. My brother was angry and after calling them hypocrites and yelling for a minute he withdrew. The hypocrite thing
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  • came because they could be very forceful when it came to building and keeping relationships and more than once they forced my brother to have playdates or attend the birthday parties of this kid who was mean to him and others. It used to annoy him and
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  • he was miserable spending time with this kid. Our parents would say he had nobody and my brother being nice would make him nice back. But it didn't. Our parents would insist you don't just give up on
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  • people/relationships. Even thought my brother and this kid didn't have one outside the pushing. But my brother found their stance hypocritical when they were divorcing. He's still withdrawn from them today.
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    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • For me the news made me break down and I cried and begged them not to get divorced. The stuff I heard about divorce from my friends sounded awful to me and I'd heard my friends cry over having to choose which parent
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  • they did something with or not having one family and instead having two and the never having one house thing. Most of my friends didn't like things being that way. I hated the idea of that happening to us and I became pretty distraught.
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  • In the aftermath I struggled to adjust to two houses. I got upset when my parents had other partners and missed being all together. When I asked I was told divorced families don't do that and I needed to get okay with two separate things for everything. I
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  • never settled into the splitting my time between two houses. I still hated it and a few months ago I ended it by asking my grandparents if I could live with them and they said yes. My
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  • parents didn't like it. But my relationship with both became really strained after they told me they were divorcing. I never felt supported by either. And they built up a lot of resentment toward me.
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  • That resentment started coming out once I moved out. My dad has two stepkids and my mom has three. They both compared me to the stepkids who don't have a problem with two households or who don't ask to invite their other parent for stuff.
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  • My mom told me none of her husband's kids cried when they were told about their parents divorce. Dad said his stepkids were happy about the divorce of their parents. That they were tired of an unhappy home.
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  • There are times they'll bring up (separate from each other) how I made them feel bad for wanting to be happy and how I made a difficult thing more difficult when I got so hysterical. My mom
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  • accused me of making my brother's anger worse by being so upset which made him fight them for me. She said I was a manipulative child who used tears to get her own way and wasn't really upset but just wanted to force them to stay together. My dad told me I was
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  • exhausting and so much hard work when he knew kids who had zero reaction to their parents divorce. Then my mom asked me if I saw the divorce as a good thing and I said no. She got so mad at me
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  • that my grandparents, who are her parents, made her leave. Then a week later I got calls from both my mom and my dad within days of each other saying I owed them an apology for putting them through h I when I was 7 and making them feel guilty for divorcing.
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  • My brother never got any of this. We talked about it and he was just really angry at our parents for their behavior toward me and for blaming me when they did nothing to help. AITA?
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  • Otherwis... Jesus Christ. YOU WERE 7 YEARS OLD NTA. They were parents to begin with and have only gotten worse. They forced their child to spend time with his bu y? Why? God only knows?
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  • They have the right to divorce. They don't get to exclude the other parent. I know divorced people that organise birthdays, go to school events, even holidays together so the kids can have both parents present for important events.
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  • They could have gotten you therapy to get used to two different houses. They never considered that moving on a weekly basis without any emotional support would be difficult for a 7 year old? That having step siblings take your space on both your parents life would be difficult without any reassurance?
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  • They are parents and the only way the can be able to live with themselves is to pretend by putting the blame on someone else. Usually it's the ex that becomes the scapegoat not a 7 year old. I would go no contact at the stroke of midnight on your 18th birthday.
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