AITA for telling my daughter to do my son’s chores?

A father is facing backlash from his daughter, Holly (17F), for asking her to help with chores normally assigned to her brother Oscar (15M), who is bedridden with a migraine. Holly feels it’s unfair that Oscar is excused from chores, while she doesn’t receive the same treatment when she has minor headaches.

Frustrated, the father tells her that if she cares so much about the chores, she can take over the garden work herself. Holly accuses him of favoritism and storms off. read the original story below…

‘ AITA for telling my daughter to do my son’s chores?’

I have 2 wonderful kids, a son, Oscar 15M and a daughter, Holly 17F. My son gets very very bad migraines. He can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t do anything. Its a stressful time for everyone in our family and when he gets them he usually takes a day or 2 off school (it happens rarely so this is not an issue).

He’s currently in one of these ‘episodes’ as my wife and I have taken to calling them, so he is in the guest room resting. Obviosuly, he can’t do chores when he’s like this so usually me or my wife pick up the slack. Holly always gets a bit edgy when Oscar has these attacks and generally acts a bit grumpy.

I always assumed these were out of concern for her brother so would usually get her some sweets or something to take her mind off it. Today Holly saw me emptying the trash which is usually one of Oscar’s chores and did that really prolonged sigh which people do when they want you to ask them whats wrong.

I put the trash back and went to talk to her. Holly is upset because we never do all this for her when she has a headache. I explained, gently, that Oscar doesn’t get headaches, he gets migraines, and that when she’s as sick as he is we do, do ‘all this’ but Holly was still upset.

This all came on quite quickly so I tried to get her to understand, but she refuses she carried on telling me how Oscar should just get ‘off his lazy b**t’,
I reprimanded her for talking about her brother like that, especially since she knows how hard this is for Oscar and he’s hardly having a good time playing video games or something.

(edit: as in he’s not doing something enjoyable, not that he’s not enjoying playing games, he can’t play games rn). Holly continued saying it was unfair for us (edit: me and my wife, obviously not Holly) to do all his chores, and he should at least do the garden.

We have a big garden, and neither me nor my wife is fit enough to take care of it like we used to and Oscar, being the sporty guy he is took over. I told her, bluntly that if she cared so much about the garden, she could just do it herself.

She got really mad about this and I’ll admit I probably shouldn’t have suggested it. She started accusing me of favoritism, etc. I told her to go to her room to calm down, because she was shouting loudly and Oscar was resting in the room right next to us. She stormed off. But now I’m wondering if I was too harsh, AITA?

Here’s the input from the Reddit crowd:

Heeler_Haven −  I get migraines and I get headaches. Some of my headaches are as debilitating as my migraines, but they aren’t migraines. Some of my headaches are just low-grade pain that goes on for days and wear me down.

How bad are your daughter’s headaches, or are they dismissed as “just headaches” because they aren’t migraines like her baby brother gets? Not all migraines have an aura, nausea or other identifiers. Has she seen a doctor about her headaches?

Why does your son get the guest room for his migraines instead of using his own room? Does your daughter get treated to the guest room treatment if she is ill? Or is she banished to her room?

You left a lot out, but what you did say sounds rather dismissive of your daughter and “everyone rally around the SON when he’s ill”…… him having a migraine shouldn’t be stressful for the whole family, it shouldn’t impact anyone other than him, other than someone periodically taking him some pedialyte to sip on……

EtoshaLeopard −  Not enough info as I kind of feel like things are missing here… OP, it seems like this was maybe a bit of a “last straw” moment for your daughter and you basically told her that her feelings were invalid… It’s your home and I agree with others, she doesn’t get to dictate who does which chores and when.

That’s up to you…But as I said, I’ve got that nagging feeling, OP… when and in what other circumstances can you think of where your daughter has felt unheard or unfavored?

Also “fair treatment” doesn’t mean “exactly the same” and it’s impossible to expect different children even in the same household to have exactly the same responsibilities and I think probably due to her age that’s what she may be misunderstanding but only YOU can tell us that OP. Possible YTA.

Star-Lord-123 −  YTA. Your daughter feels that you’re playing favorites and has been getting frustrated that you haven’t noticed how she feels. It probably didn’t come on suddenly, it’s just that you hadn’t noticed. Now she’s told you outright how she feels and so this is your chance to make things right by talking to her and working with her to restore your relationship.

dragonsandvamps −  Gentle ESH I get chronic intractable migraines, so I get it. The reality is, chronic pain and chronic illness s**k. This will be a lifelong condition for Oscar and those who live with him.

It will mean lots of compromise, lots of doing chores on good days, and letting the house get a little cluttered and only doing what is absolutely necessary on those days when you are throwing up and feel like you have an ax imbedded in your skull.

Your daughter is a teen, so she doesn’t yet have the life experience to understand about spoons and that no, the family is not going to run itself ragged to make the garden look like something you could photograph for a magazine.

If she’s really interested in making the garden look nice and thinks that would reduce her anxiety to be outside working in the sunshine, she can always go outside and volunteer for the task. I really enjoy gardening (on cloudy days, now that the migraines make me very light sensitive.)

One last thing as a caution–you were very dismissive of your daughter’s headaches. You said your son has migraines and your daughter has headaches, and dismissed them. I would hope your son is already under the care of a neurologist.

(He should be.) Your daughter should be checked out too, if she is getting more than 3-4 headaches per month. Migraine runs in families. 1 out of every 5 women experience migraines. For men, it’s 1 out of 11.

The fact that she has a brother with migraine, makes it much more likely that these “headaches” either already are migraines or will develop into migraines. You need to take her headaches as seriously as your son’s because you have family genetic history of migraine disease.**

nick4424 −  FYI, this has been brewing for a while. You just didn’t notice. You need to calm down and have a rational discussion with her.

Avlonnic2 −  INFO: Your daughter is telling you she feels you are playing favorites with your ‘sporty’ son over her, and have done for a while. Upon self-reflection, can you honestly say that you treat them fairly – – or do little preferences slip in because you actually like your son more? And he’s your baby? And he’s ‘sporty’.

Why is the son not in his own bedroom instead of the guest room like a special visitor? Are there stairs you can’t climb or something? Maybe you could spend a little one-on-one nurturing time with your daughter occasionally. Your son is innocent here, obviously. Your daughter should realize how sick migraines can make someone if she has been around him his entire life.

Relative-Ad7280 −  YTA for not taking your son to the doctor. There are treatments for migraines now that can stop them within 20 minutes or medication or treatments to prevent them to begin with.

SusanfromMA −  Does Holly know how hard it is for Oscar? It does not appear to be the case. She sees Oscar as being lazy and getting out of doing his chores and everyone rallying to take up for him. She wants to know why when she is feeling poorly that you don’t do that for her. So in her mind, you are showing favoritism.

If Oscar is incapacitate for a day or two, why can’t the chores be left for him to complete when he has recovered? Are they really that time sensitive? I am going with a soft YTA. You could have handled it better.

SpontaneousROFLs −  YTA, you “tried” talking to her and ended up reprimanding her.

Was the father too harsh, or was he justified given the situation? Share your thoughts below!