Top News

It’s the week after Mother’s Day here in the U.S., which, of course, means one thing: a lot of disappointed moms. Stories about ungrateful kids and perhaps especially ungrateful husbands who don’t bother helping honor their wives are everywhere each year, but this year, one mom is feeling slighted for reasons some find a bit unfair. Her outrage is solely focused on her tween daughter, who forgot the holiday and apparently spends all her free time — like most kids her age — on her phone.

A mom was hurt that her 11-year-old daughter blew off Mother’s Day.

This mom didn’t necessarily have high expectations — all she really wanted was a homemade card or something along those lines, like so many kids have done for decades. Instead, all her daughter did was “stick her face in her cell phone,” and it left her hurt and angry.

: Why The Woman Who Created Mother’s Day Spent The Last Years Of Her Life Trying To Cancel The Holiday

It’s the first Mother’s Day since her husband passed, so she expected something special.

“Her dad (recently) passed,” the mom wrote. “I understand that this is going to be a different Mother’s Day this year; no flowers from dad, no fun dinner or friends.”

So she was expecting her daughter to do something for the day. “I asked her if she would like to go see a particular movie or eat somewhere,” she said, but got no answer. “I did expect a card, a ‘hey mom happy Mother’s Day,’ or something considering she asked me Friday if it was this Sunday,” she added.

To add insult to injury, her daughter did take time to honor her father for Mother’s Day, but omitted her mother entirely. And it’s left her so hurt and angry, she’s considering turning her daughter’s phone off since she spent the whole day on screens. “The only reason I haven’t turned it off until now is because I need it to get a hold of her.”

Chris Boese | Unsplash

: Justin Bieber’s Mother’s Day Post Has Fans Worried About His Marriage

Her hurt is understandable, but these are inappropriate expectations for a child.

It’s hard not to empathize with this mom to some degree, especially given that she’s recently lost her partner. But tough love: Not only is spending all day with her face buried in her phone totally normal tween behavior, but expecting an 11-year-old child to put on a big Mother’s Day celebration with no parental guidance is absurdly unrealistic.

This situation goes well beyond that, however. The level of anger she seems to feel suggests expectations that smack of parentification, the psychological term for the damaging dynamic in which parents make their children responsible for duties inappropriate for their age.

Parentification most often takes the form of forcing children to do childcare, but it can also involve parents expecting their kids to take care of their emotional needs. It seems pretty clear that’s what’s happening here.

It seems likely her daughter’s grief may be at play, too. The fact that she was able to make a Mother’s Day project for her Dad but not her mom suggests she either has complicated feelings about her mother or was too overwhelmed by her grief over her dad to do another project. Or possibly both.

Either way, this mom is being unrealistic and insensitive, even if her own hurt is justified. As one Redditor bluntly put it, “She’s 11, it’s your responsibility to show her how to celebrate and what’s important to celebrate, not sit around and wait for acknowledgement from a child.” Bingo.

This was a perfect learning opportunity for those cultural concepts, and also a perfect opportunity to connect, squandered by a parent expecting adult-level responses from a little kid. There’s a lesson there, too — but it’s one for the mom to learn.

: Mom Tells Family If Their Gift Requires Any Of These Things, It’s Not A Mother’s Day Gift

John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.