My Husband Disagrees With How I Talked to Our Daughter About Bullies – Am I Wrong?

AITA for how I talked to my daughter about bullying? My husband thinks it was too much – with UPDATES from OP

So I (34F) have been married to John (36M) for about 12 years, and I have never seen him flip out about this like something before. We have a daughter – Fiona (14F) and a son, Will (10M).

During lockdown, John has been working 12-hour shifts as an essential worker. A few days ago, I got a message from one of the girls at Fiona’s school’s mother. She let me know about her daughter being bullied by Fiona and her group of friends and sent screenshots of what they’d been doing to her.

I was devastated, to say the least. I was bullied relentlessly as a teenager and Fiona and I are very close, so it just came as a huge surprise. I messaged the mum back apologising, thanking her for telling me and saying I’d speak to Fiona. This was not long after John had left for work so I decided to tackle it immediately rather than wait until he got home.

By sharing her own history of trauma, the mother is using a technique similar to emotional modeling, demonstrating to Fiona that feelings have consequences and that empathy is important. This approach can help adolescents internalize lessons on morality and social behavior, though it carries the risk of triggering guilt or defensiveness if not framed carefully.

I called Fiona in, showed her the message and screenshots and she went instantly on the defensive, complaining that they didn’t want to be friends with her and that she was weird and deserved it. She kept shrugging it off, so I decided a different approach. I told Fiona about how the bullying I experienced when I was younger affected me. How it pushed me to some horrible places and to do some terrible things, and the depression I lived with for a very long time. After I’d finished talking, Fiona said to me “whatever” and stomped off, but then a couple of hours later she came back to me sobbing and apologising.

We talked some more, she let me know how she’d also been struggling with mental health and didn’t know how to handle it. After a couple of hours, we had both cried a lot, but I let her know she was still going to be punished – which she understood and accepted.

When my husband got home that night, I filled him in on everything that had happened and he absolutely lost it at me out of nowhere. He couldn’t believe that I shared my struggles with Fiona and that I had “manipulated” her by using my feelings to control her. He told me that I should have just punished her and told the school and let them handle it. He said she was just a kid and didn’t need to be guilt-tripped. He said that I had traumatised her. Before I could get a word in, he stomped out to the living room, where he has been staying for the past 3 days.

Fiona and I have been really connecting since our talk, but John still is not speaking to me — except for in front of the kids. I genuinely don’t feel like I did anything wrong, it’s not like Fiona doesn’t understand mental health. But John’s reaction makes me feel like maybe I’ve been a huge asshole, and I could have somehow damaged my daughter forever.

So, AITA?

TL;DR: found out my daughter was bullying a girl, punished her and informed her of my bullying story, husband thinks I’ve traumatised her for life. AITA?

John’s reaction may be rooted in his own past experiences with guilt, shame, or bullying. Often, adults project unresolved trauma onto situations involving their children, seeing reflections of their own mistakes or missteps. This explains why he perceived sharing of experiences as “manipulation,” when the mother’s intent was educational rather than punitive.

The internet did not hold back.

vortex_time — NTA. You helped your daughter understand the issue from the other side, and she responded to your honesty by opening up in return. Did your husband’s parents guilt trip him when he was a kid? I wonder why this, in particular, has become the focal point for his pandemic stress. BTW, this might also be a good topic for r/ parenting, depending on the type of feedback you are looking for.

proserpinafore — I’m also curious why this is the husband’s thought process. From what OP wrote it sounds like she was able to teach her daughter a lesson in empathy in a healthy way, which led to more sharing between mother and daughter. How is that not a good thing? Someone suggested the husband might’ve been bullied at school himself and I think that would explain a few things.

SpaTowner — I wondered the opposite, whether he might have been a bully at school. Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not saying that he was, only that the possibility occurred to me.

Hrududu147 — Him using the phrase guilt trip is interesting. So he was happy to punish the daughter as long as she didn’t feel guilty? Surely being made to feel guilty about bullying people is a good thing. Its a way of honing your empathy a bit. Wheras just taking away the phone for a week etc might just send her down the “God my parents are so unfair” route Actually thinking and examining her actions is the way to go

Asayyadina — Exactly, guilt is not always a negative emotion. Guilt is what tells us that we have done something to hurt or upset someone else. Guilt is what pushes us to try and make amends and apologise. Like all emotions guilt can become negative but it is not automatically.

OP update

thanks everyone for your input. I plan to sit John down tomorrow, show him your comments and discuss what made him react this way. Hopefully I’ll have a good update within the next couple of days.

UPDATE

Thank you so much for all your advice, I was really starting to doubt myself because of Johns reaction – at first I thought he was being ridiculous, but as the days of silence carried on I began to get more and more worried.

I definitely agree that I should have waited until John got home to discuss the issue, looking back I don’t think it was fair that I approached Fiona without speaking to John at all, but at the time I just wanted to take the bull by the horns and get it over with.

Anyway: the update

So last night the moment John got home I demanded that we needed to talk and I was not going to take the silent treatment anymore. I guess he could tell I was dead serious because he huffed but he sat down with me at the table. I explained to him that I made this reddit post and he read through all the comments. And then he got really quiet.

A lot of you in the comments suspected that something had happened in John’s past, and you were completely correct. John admitted that he too had been a bully when he was younger, to the point where one of the victims moved towns. I’m not excusing his behaviour at all, but his parents were(are) horribly abusive. It turns out that when his parents were notified about the bullying, his father encouraged him to take it to physical violence and that he was “finally a man”. He said that it was the only time he ever felt loved by his dad.

Hearing the way I described my experience to Fiona brought up a lot of repressed guilt and sadness in him, and he was lashing out because he couldn’t handle the memories it was bringing up for him. He apologised and was grateful for everyone’s comments, and that he acknowledges he was being a asshole.

We booked in a couple of virtual therapy sessions for him, and extended the same to Fiona in case she wanted to speak to someone. I’m confident we’ll be able to move on from this and become stronger as a family and hopefully be more aware of our actions in the future.

Thank you all again for your kind words and insight

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Source: Reddit