AITAH for refusing to ski with child of wife’s friend when it became clear they exaggerated his skill level?

A dad (48M) was asked to include his wife’s colleague’s 12-year-old son, “Tom,” in a family ski outing. Tom’s parents claimed he was an excellent skier, but when faced with advanced terrain, it was clear they had exaggerated.

After the boy refused to ski and the agreed-upon backup plan fell through, the dad placed him in childcare at the lodge and continued skiing with his own kids. Tom’s parents and the man’s wife were upset by this decision. Read the full story below…

‘ AITAH for refusing to ski with child of wife’s friend when it became clear they exaggerated his skill level?’

I (48M) have a vacation house adjacent to a ski area. I’ve owned it since before I met my wife and had kids (11M and 13M). The kids have grown up skiing 25-35 days a year, do lots of lessons and as a result they are both excellent skiers. My wife invited a colleague, “Annie”, and her family, including a 12 year old son, “Tom”, to come out after Christmas for a few days.

My kids aren’t friendly with Tom(to my wife’s chagrin — she is weirdly invested in being regarded by this woman as a friend and having a friendship between the kids would help), largely because the boy cannot help himself from trying to “one-up” all his peers, often with obvious fabulism. His parents tend to indulge his exaggerations.

We’ve more than once heard how great he is at some skill or hobby, only to discover he is a notch above a tyro. The parents want to spend their time out here cross-country skiing. My wife said she’d accompany them, and then “voluntold” me that I could take their son along with my kids when we were to go downhill skiing.

My wife related that Jane told her Tom is a good skier. My kids both gave me a look. We all knew it is likely Tom is very far from a good skier. I told me wife I was not going to sacrifice our holiday ski time babysitting the son of a colleague I didn’t want her to invite in the first place. She insisted I take him.

The compromise we reached is that I would show Jane and Tom what sort of terrain we intended to ski. If they attested he could do it, I’d take him, but if it turned out he was not capable, she would need to pick him up and figure out what to do with him for the rest of the visit (for example, they could enroll him in skill-appropriate group lessons).

Just as my kids and I suspected, Jane and Tom told us he was an excellent skiers and would have no trouble keeping up. And likewise in line with our hunch, the moment we went to drop into a bowl, he freaked out and wouldn’t do it. I called my wife to come get him. She said they were mid cross-country and couldn’t make it.

I said that was not what we agreed. I took Tom to the lodge and put him in kinder-care.(which usually only goes up to age 7, but since I know a lot of the staff at the mountain, they took him), and left a voicemail for my wife to let her and Tom’s parents know. We skied for 3 hrs and never heard from them. We stopped by kinder-care on the way out and Tom was still there, unhappy.

Jane, her husband and my wife were not happy when they finally got in touch and learned what I did. I told them that Tom was not capable of keeping up, that it’s not surprising or a bad reflection on Tom, because my kids have had a very unusual amount of skiing experience.

But the fact is that I was very clear about the difficulty level of what we intended to ski and we could have made other arrangements for Tom if they had been honest about his skill level. So, was this an AH move or reasonable?.

Here’s the feedback from the Reddit community:

facinationstreet −  NTA. LOL kindercare. Perfect solution. Now, let’s talk about who the real issue is here – your wife.

AussieLady01 −  Why on earth did your wife get to have her fun skiing experience with her friends and d**p a strange child on you? That makes no sense….

butterfly-garden −  You have a wife problem. You know that, right?

YaddaBoomBadda −  NTA It’s too bad your wife didn’t listen to you or your children. It sounds like she expected you to slow way down to accommodate her child’s friend, but that’s something she should have cleared with you first. Hopefully his parents have enrolled him in lessons for the rest of the trip.

RandomCoffeeThoughts −  Does anyone else feel bad for Tom? He’s a young braggart, but it feels a lot like he’s trying to live up to his parents’ expectations, or they don’t know their kid at all? Tom can’t ski and ended up humiliated in kinder care while everyone else went out and had a great time.

bigben7102 −  NTA people get killed skiing like Sonny Bono and an Olympic champion just died recently on the slopes and you and your wife made a deal that she didn’t honor and little Tom is a proven l**r

longlivethequeen1986 −  Skier here. First off, a missed day or a day stuck inside a kid camp is tragic, so I think I feel most for the tyro who was stuck with kids thinking about how s**tty a skier he is. How bad was he? How soon did you drop into a bowl? I need some context. Did you try to intimidate him? Because I hate skiing with slow ppl too, but something about this seems very agro.

Various_Cucumber6624 −  Your wife and her friend were kind of jerks for thrusting him on you if you made it clear you really wanted a family ski day to do some challenging terrain with your own kids. And then they bailed before you could properly gauge his skills and put you in an awkward position.

That sucks, but you responded by punishing the 12 year old kid, which is pretty uncool. So I dunno. Might be out of step with the mainstream zeitgeist here, but… it is kind of an a**hole thing to leave a 12 year old kid on his own in the lodge. He came out for a ski vacation and it isn’t likely his fault that he was expected to keep up with you guys.

Even if he exaggerated, it sounds like he was going to get dumped with you one way or the other based on wife/friend behavior. As someone who skis 50+ days a year and lives near several ski areas, I’ll commiserate on how it is a drag when a flatlander comes to visit and expects you to give them a private ski lesson for free.

But I always remind myself of how lucky I am to be able to have that in the first place, and as long as it isn’t a primo powder day, I’m down for cruising some groomers and just working on form. My dad is 78 and I still ski several days with him a year despite the fact that he is now fully relegated to blues and greens.

Expecting every ski day to be all about you and challenging terrain for you could be considered kinda selfish/assholish if you are really out there 35-40 days a year. If this was your one chance for the year, it would be less so.

big_bob_c −  NTA. I suspect that Tom’s overconfidence is due to his parents over-praising him.

a_teenage_spaceship −  I’m sure you feel very validated by all the comments, but no I don’t think it was very reasonable for you to leave a kid you don’t like surrounded by a bunch of much younger kids for 3 hours. How in your mind is that not outright and intentionally humiliating him?

If you really doubted Tom’s skill level — and your post confirms that you did — you probably should have pushed harder for the ‘other arrangements’ ahead of time, but I feel like you (not even very deep down) wanted to make a point to both your wife and to him. Yeah, your wife put you in a s**tty spot, but no, the fact that you are ‘equalizing’ the inconvenience doesn’t mean you aren’t the a**hole.

Edit: your added info doesn’t really change much, makes it kind of worse really. Your kids ski 25-35 days a year but you all couldn’t s**k it up for one day going on some blue slopes for the sake of the kid, or for your wife? Yeah, okay man.

Was this dad justified in prioritizing his own kids’ skiing experience, or should he have handled the situation differently? Share your thoughts below!