Parents demand free swim lessons from mother of their daughter's friend after the ones that she gifted them for free were cancelled, cut off contact when refused: 'Their reaction caught me by surprise'

A mother has appealed to an online community for advice on how to handle the delicate social situation she has found herself in. This happened after a disagreement with the parents of another girl from her daughter's school, with whom her daughter is close friends. 

In her account of events, she starts by detailing how, while this had happened “about a year ago," she was still dealing with the fallout of the situation.

This actually happened about a year ago, but I'm still living with some of the consequences of it...

In her original story, she explains how in the “dense urban area” where they live, there is very limited access to swimming pools or swim lessons for children. These swim lesson “slots” are coveted as a result, and even the cheaper ones were “pricey.” 

So, once she had secured a place in relatively cheaper swim lessons at a local non-profit for her daughter, the challenge was keeping the spot. If a family stopped paying for the spot, they would lose it entirely. 

So, she arranged, with the approval of the organization, to keep her daughter's place by paying for the spots and then “gifting” them to another family. 

I asked the organization if I could pay for the lessons to keep our spot, but offer them to another family so they wouldn't go to waste, which they agreed to.

So, even when the family was away on vacation, she still had to pay for a spot each week, losing the money but keeping the slot secured while the entire family was away on vacation over the summer. 

But instead of wasting the “slot” entirely, since they weren't “using” those lessons they were paying for, they "gifted" the unused lessons to the daughter's school friend, intending for the girl to go in her place while they were away. 

Their families were not close, but the mother knew that the parents had mentioned that they, too, were looking for swim lessons for their daughter. So, this presented an opportunity for a kind gesture. She offered these free of charge to the family, since they were going to be paying for them anyway. 

Jane was friends with "Lisa" at school and although I didn't know her family well, I knew from some brief interactions with her parents that they were also interested in getting their daughter into swim. I explained the situation to the family and told them that they were welcome to use the lessons that we wouldn't be able to make over the summer, which they happily agreed to. I did not ask to be reimbursed for any of the lessons.

But when the lesson sessions were cancelled due to pool maintenance issues, the trouble started. 

Unfortunately, there were some maintenance issues with the pool over the summer. The first two sessions were canceled the day before the lesson was supposed to take place, and then eventually the whole session was canceled altogether.

She communicated these inconvenient developments to the parents, ensuring that they knew what was happening every step of the way. But once the lessons were firmly cancelled, the parents of the friend began demanding that she pay for replacement lessons elsewhere. 

They had somehow reasoned in their heads that they were now “out” swim lessons that they were owed. They told her that she “needed” to secure alternate lessons for their daughter. 

Their reaction caught me by surprise because after the session was fully canceled, they seemed quite angry with me and told me that I needed to secure and pay for alternate lessons for Lisa.

She declined to do this and explained that the “gift” hadn't been intended to be “the guarantee of lessons” but simply the “use” of the ones that otherwise were going to be wasted while the family was away. It wasn't an obligation that was now owed; it was a kind gesture that had gone awry. 

This prompted the family to cut off all contact, which disrupted the young girls' friendship. Leaving the mother struggling to explain to her daughter why her friend couldn't play with her anymore. 

It is with this information that she ended her account of events and appealed to members of the online community for their advice.

The family pulled back and my daughter lost a friend as a result of this whole situation which was regrettable. It's still coming up because my daughter wants to have Lisa over for a playdate but the family won't speak to us and it's a hard thing to explain to a young kid.

AITAH for not securing alternate lessons?

So, what should she have done here? Should she have simply relented and paid for alternate swim lessons (if she was able to even get the other girl into any) in order to save the friendship? Or was this going to be a lost cause? 

The following is what some of the key responses had to say.

At the end of the day, parenting is rife with challenges that will test your patience and interpersonal skills. But I’m not talking about the kids. At least not this time…

See, as your kids get older, growing from the wee little sprouts that you had become so familiar with, they’ll start having little lives of their own. (They won’t be out of the house for a while yet, so don’t fret; I'm just talking about going to school.) But from that young age, the first time they go out of the house, they’ll have a life apart from you. They’ll start forming their own relationships with other kids and teachers too.

And as they form these relationships, your interpersonal skills will be tested too. You’ll have to meet with teachers, converse with coaches, and, of course, navigate sometimes delicate relationships with other parents.

Some of these parents will be the parents of your kids’ friends. You probably won’t get to choose who your kids' friends are and maybe wouldn’t choose to be friends with these parents. But as long as your kid is friends with their kid, you’ll have to maintain at least some level of relationship with the parents too.

While you might not always see eye-to-eye or be from the same walk of life as these other parents, you’ll need to work it out and communicate well regardless. After all, it’s not about you and your feelings… It’s about what’s best for the kids. And while it wasn’t explicitly the fulcrum on which the family was applying pressure to negotiate (the parents seemingly didn’t explicitly imply this would be the case if their demands weren’t met; they merely stopped contacting after), jeopardizing the girl’s friendship just because a kid's parent wouldn’t pay for your kids' swimming lessons wasn't fair.

The parents' seemingly entitled belief that they to be paid out for the “free” classes doesn't add up. The only angle where the friends' parents' demands make any sense at all is if they really were under the impression that they were being “gifted” swim lessons themselves and not simply filling in empty slots. Maybe the clue here is reading between the lines, I think it is pretty clear from the context of this post that the mother who posted the thread is probably quite well off, given their lengthy summer vacation and their ability to pay the costly swim lesson costs even while not attending them. So perhaps the friend's parents thought they wouldn’t miss a little bit of money and could be strong-armed out of some.

Either way, their demand doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and the entire line of thinking follows the same vein as the classic “choosing beggar” posts that we used to cover often.

That's it for now. Catch you next time.