"Unschooling" aunt hires 23-year-old niece to tutor her homeschooled 13 and 9-year-old children, doesn't like it when she's told that she's the problem: ‘She started crying, said she didn’t feel very supported, and hung up’

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Jun 5, 2025 12:00 PM EDT

None of us likes hearing that we're the problem. Most of us would get immediately defensive and take a minute to come to terms with it. While others will never come to terms and outright object the idea, never allowing the realization that it might be true to seep into their ego. This is especially true when it's someone younger than you pointing it out, for example, a student whom you're teaching or a fresh-faced new hire who you've hired to help out around the warehouse, and of course, it goes doubly when that young person is a family member who you watched grow up.

The thing is: right is right. There's no sense denying or running from it. And that's not a way to go about the world, all closed off and unwilling to accept that you might not know or have been wrong about something. If you're never wrong (or refusing to accept that you are), you're losing the opportunity to learn new things, and that will have a knock-on cumulative effect that will put you way behind the rest of the world.

We like to think that with age comes wisdom, and that with wisdom comes intelligence. But that's not really the case. Wisdom doesn't really equate to intelligence at all, but neither can be attained without intentionality and effort. So, you might one day come to find that younger generations have caught up or passed you by and be left wondering what the heck happened and where time went. Where did that edge go? You're getting older, life is harder, and you no longer have the mental fortitude to keep up, and that just keeps spiraling. Anyway, the point is that this seems to be what's happening with the aunt in this story: she's closed off and unwilling to admit that she's wrong, which in turn sets her own children back.

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"AITA for calling my aunt neglectful because she doesn’t know why her son is behind in math?"

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