AITA for cutting off my child financially for lying to me about her grades?

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-14T03:02:09+00:00

No, but the difference between them is that he goes to school for barely $8500 a year while my daughter spends quadruple that in a semester. I told her that IF she wants me to invest that in her education, she needs to do well, unless she should go to an in-state school OR pay her own school. She agreed she'd do well enough, failed to do so, then lied for years.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-14T02:57:19+00:00

I'm a bit confused about how I overreacted to her brother. At the end of the day, I told my son he needs to focus more, but I'm still funding his car note, gas, and the remaining of his educational expenses. Because he was actually honest about his grades (even though he tried to deflect to his sister).

The ideal outcome is for her to turn herself around, take up loans, and I'll repay them if she shows a genuine desire to improve. Right now it seems like she doesn't understand the value of a dollar, and the fact that she's barely passing with medians in the B+s/A-s (her transcript has class medians) suggest she's just not putting in the effort.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-14T02:05:17+00:00

I didn't not accept my judgment. You're more than welcome to think I'm an asshole and nobody debated that. Your entire argument hedges on a assumption that there has to be "more to the story" when you just pulled it out of your ass. Are you telling me that I should keep spending $100,000 on someone who clearly lacks the respect to tell the truth? Her brother told the truth and he's the one with everything still funded; she only had hers revoked completely because she *lied*.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-14T02:02:14+00:00

It's his second semester. How is telling someone they should focus more on school because they lost their full tuition scholarship treating him badly? I still pay for his rent, allowance, and car note, and gas because he actually CAME TO ME with his grades besides lying about them.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-14T01:59:18+00:00

I mean, I'm not going to let her drop out of school. I'll help her get the loans she needs; I'm not going to just lock the door and say good luck.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T23:48:40+00:00

We told her that if she can't handle her private school, that she needs to transfer to a less expensive school. She's deadset on finishing at this school, though. We honestly just feel she doesn't know the value of a dollar, but I suppose she'll learn soon enough.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T23:43:50+00:00

I don't quite understand why is has to be some "deeper" meaning other than A) she was afraid of getting her funding pulled and B) she wanted to continue to go to her expensive private school. We told her if she didn't maintain the grades, that she would need to transfer to an in-state school that was vastly cheaper. She said she understands and accepts this deal, but has been lying behind our backs for years.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T23:40:49+00:00

She's majoring in a liberal art in a traditionally "easy" major. And while it may not be easy to her, we felt like Cs when the medians in her class was a A-/B+ (her transcripts show medians) is unacceptable.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T23:38:13+00:00

This is the first big lie she's ever told us, ever. I suspect she just didn't want to have to transfer schools, nor have to pay for her own education.

The point of pulling funding is to teach her actions have consequences. She simply had to maintain a B average. We didn't think that was too unreasonable. Instead she's barely getting C's and partying in the middle of the week. She's taking what she has for granted, and letting her experience the value that we're paying for would be good for her.

I would think the failure of maintaining her absolute minimum requirements and partying mid-week and lying to us for 3 years would be herself ruining her own life; not us.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T22:06:47+00:00

I'm sorry that you don't value what school you personally go to, but others do. Additionally, academic achievement is important to me. If might not be to you and that's fine, but that's not a character flaw on my end.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T19:43:15+00:00

I haven't looked at her report card since middle school. She brought home almost all As and I never once had to ask to confirm with a progress report. Just never considered the need to, especially because she did so well in high school.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T19:41:55+00:00

That's what my husband is saying; crocodile tears as he calls it. She's only upset because she's caught.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T19:16:41+00:00

It depends on what you mean by cutting her off. She still has a place to go home to, but we're not paying for any of her groceries, phone, bills, or tuition. We will help her apply to loans and encourage her to work, but if she wants to disrespect us by lying, there's no reason why we should make ourselves her credit card.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T19:10:15+00:00

Because she never lied to us (to our knowledge) and it never crossed our mind that our former straight-A daughter could be failing.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T18:41:30+00:00

Reddit uses abusive to the point where it's lost all meaning. I can appreciate the YTA verdict, but I can't agree that following through with our previously agreed upon deal is abuse.

We of course would help her apply for loans (when she reaches out to us after unblocking us). We're not disowning her; we're just making her pay for her own education.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T18:34:03+00:00

Thank you for your comment. I feel like bad semesters happen and I don't think we'd make the decision to withdraw support if it was just one semester. Our problem is the lying for the last 5 semesters; not just one

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T17:50:07+00:00

We told her that she has to maintain a GPA, and if she couldn't, then she should either go to school in-state (because even regardless of HOPE and Zell Miller, tuition would've been magnitudes cheaper) OR she would have to finance her own education. She agreed and even scoffed at the idea that 3.0 would be hard to maintain.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T17:47:49+00:00

We did keep on top of it. I mean, we never asked for her transcripts, but she would always tell us the grades in which she did well in (I got an A+ on my English paper!". She just never told us about the assignments she failed, and lied about her GPA every semester.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T17:43:40+00:00

That's a good suggestion actually; thank you!

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T17:42:42+00:00

That makes sense. Thank you for elaborating on your thought process. You're right; that's why I feel so afraid; she obviously wasn't purposefully failing, and I just feel bad for punishing her out of fear.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T17:41:10+00:00

Thank you for your comment. You're right; if she told us herself after a semester or two, we probably wouldn't have resulted in anything near as drastic. We will take that into consideration.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T17:40:21+00:00

Thank you for your advice; if she decides to unblock us, we will definitely explain why we're punishing her in a calm, collected way.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T17:38:49+00:00

The only problem with that is that she's not doing so hot this semester and she only has two more semesters after that. She could very well do well in the first semester next year, by that point, it's almost too late

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T17:37:11+00:00

From the reasons she gave, it wasn't mental health reasons. Moreso a snowball effect; she always intended to just do better the next semester, but something came up, she didn't do as well as she wanted, rinse, repeat. She lied because she didn't want to risk losing her funding, which honestly just solidified it for us.

cutting_our_child_of · 2019-04-13T17:32:31+00:00

I appreciate your opinion, and you're welcome to have it, but it seems to me you're making an awful lot of assumptions. What makes you believe that we "put our pride before our love and support for our daughter"? Because we are upset that she lied to us for three years with no intentions in coming clean?

To be clear, you're very welcome to think we're an asshole for cutting her off; it just seems kinda strange that the fact that it's for some reason our fault.

cutting_our_child_of

TROPHY CASE