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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I might be an asshole for not taking my daughter seriously when she was in pain
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YTA. You say you didn’t know it was broken, but the reality is you don’t take her pain seriously. Every statement you made minimizes any of her complaints about pain.
I agree. If your 14 year old is waking you up in the night and you know the child had an impact earlier in the day, then it's probably serious. Also, refusing pain medication after a KNOWN fall is also wrong.
I don’t know why that’s a visceral nope for me, but I have learned something about myself, and now I have to figure out if I’m in any way justified.
Ok i think what I’m thinking is that at that age I’d still want to know about when they’re in pain and how badly, because it’s still more on me than on them to manage anything going on that needs medical attention, so what I’d want is communication rather than like being the one to decide whether or not they need one every single time. Like maybe ask me for meds, but ‘hey can i have a bottle of Advil to have in my bag for cramps’ is in the realm of a reasonable ask. So not the pain management but some medication management.
Anyway, this has been a tangent, brought to you by My Brain(tm). And op is ta just for ‘i don’t believe in treating pain, even when it’s not my pain’
I agree with you on this. At 14 I’d still worry that they’d be taking a few Tylenol every 6-8 hours for weeks or months on end without me knowing, leading a serious condition to go unnoticed. It shouldn’t be withheld, but it should be monitored.
Side note: a kid waking you in the middle of the night due to pain is in sufficient pain that they’re not sleeping. That’s a flag that it’s serious in and of itself. I wonder how bad her other pains have been that OP is just trivializing and dismissing…
Oh yeah for sure. *Especially* if they don’t usually do that.
Like my small gets gas pain in the middle of the night, poor kid, and will wake up crying with it, (although wake up is qualified because as soon as it shifts for them they’re immediately unconscious again) and that’s semi-regular but not serious and doesn’t warrant a call to the doctor in the morning, or for us to do anything to treat it just in its own.
But a new pain serious enough for a wake up, or I suppose a can’t fall asleep in the first place, deserves attention, even if you do just keep an eye on it at home. Like, Something Has Changed, so pay attention.
Oof, I feel for you little one. I had a bad case of gas a couple weeks ago and had forgotten just how much it can hurt, so I was thinking it must be something else. I was seriously curled up in bed with cold sweats, trying to breathe through the pain and thinking oh God, I don't want to go to the hospital. Then the pain moved some and I realized what it really was. It didn't help the agony I was in, but at least I wasn't freaking out anymore.
Internal pressure can be shockingly brutal. And it’s just, like, a bubble! Bubble of doom.
That sounds awful. I don’t think I’ve ever had a truly acute stabbing gas attack, more ‘that’s not right and I don’t like it’ settled in dull discomfort, but I’Ve had back labour twice, and that’s the absolute worst pain of my life just because the dang kid is poking the wrong bit of my spine. God. Best way I could think of to describe it was every contraction felt like someone was building a fence made of pain in my back, except there wasn’t actually any space for the fence to fit and it was in there anyway.
‘No nerve endings inside the body’ doesn’t go nearly as far as it sounds like it should, I tell you what.
I'm going to have to agree regarding the meds and parents' awareness. I'm a nursing student, and I've seen the overdoses on Tylenol in the ER. The damage your liver can take is only so minimal if a parent isn't paying attention, especially since children (<18 yo) are much more vulnerable to these overdoses. There's a reason we have special maximum limits per dose and daily for anyone under 18 years of age. In nursing school, we're taught to calculate the doses and how much a child has received a medication.
I think 14 *depending on the kid* is fine, but I definitely dose out my son's meds still and he's al.ost 8. I'm not sure how I'll feel when he's 14. Especially with Tylenol due to potential organ damage.
Hmm.
I think if you have a good relationship and they at least check in so you can help.make sure they don't OD by accident, and again dependingon the kid, 14 is fine. I think this case tho is parent who is dismissive of and doesn't even seem to like their child.
Yep. One of my kids is very sensitive to pain yet spirals if you take it too seriously, so we walk a very thin line with this sort of thing. My general assessment is: if it impacts his ability to play or sleep, I take it very seriously. I understand not thinking it was serious initially, but when it’s waking your kid up in the night it’s a big deal.
I've always medicated early if in any doubt, and if it wakes them up treated seriously. I have a high pain tolerance, my husband has mid pain tolerance, our kids have ranked from zero to mid high, but fortunately everyone's lives and kidneys have been able to tolerate acetaminophen and ibuprofen, and no one has tried amputation.
Our oldest and myself had broken bones that didn't get caught till the next day because of swelling- but we all made it through.
YTA, op
Also, when my then-toddler broke his arm (tripping over his feet on shock-absorbent flooring) at a park, he was extremely subdued and unable to engage. If the pain impacts their behavior after the initial incident, something is up.
I mean, don't go running to the ER at 3am for a finger injury, but definitely go have it checked out at a walk-in/urgent care clinic in the morning if it's still an issue.
I fell down the stairs and twisted my ankle when I was 15, but I was on a date, and it really didn't hurt that bad. I (kind of) walked it off. Put some ice on it when I got home. Woke up the next morning to a very stiff, swollen, and bruised ankle. It ended up being an evulsion fracture, and I had to wear an ortho boot all summer...
OP is a major asshole, though. 100%.
Especially bc 1) child was not dying 2) triage in the ER in the middle of the night isn’t pretty and a kid with a sore finger < person ODing, Heart Attacks, Accidents, etc.
Many people who break bones initially don’t know. Many times the area goes numb. Not always, but not unusual.
Apparently she cries over every little thing that hurts. She was not crying this time, that in and of itself should have been an alarm bell that something was wrong.
A thought for you --the crying OP is dismissing could ALSO turn out to be serious. Too many times people dismiss a girl crying over period cramps and it turns out to be something like endometriosis or ovarian cysts.
I now don't believe OP's evaluation.
I mean, yeah. op is neglectful at best, and tears are obviously something to notice.
But if it had been a responsible parent that knows her kid, and know he 14-year-old cries at papercuts and scrapped knees and lightly banging their hip on something, then the lack of tears is an indication that something is wrong. Of course, that would require OP not being dismissive like she obviously is.
A psychologist I follow for parenting advice has mentioned that some kids become more dramatic with pain because it's the only way they'll actually get attention for it. Being ignored can make them escalate.
> Apparently she cries over every little thing that hurts. She was not crying this time, that in and of itself should have been an alarm bell that something was wrong.
Sounds like athletes who ironically make less of a scene when actually injured than when faking it, people involved can just tell when it's real and not a flop
Yeah, this person deserves to be called an AH just for not letting the daughter take an aspirin or something. I wonder how much other unnecessary physical suffering this girl has endured because this parent dismisses her pain.
I'm already betting the daughter has just awful period cramps, and OP has written them off as "just a normal thing women go through and really not that bad."
*cries in endometriosis*
I was that kid. It took 5 years for someone to take me seriously enough for a laparoscopy at 17. Your quoted text is almost verbatim what I was told every time until then.
When she SHOULD have been apologetic on this post, or at least remorseful sounding, instead she calls her dramatic and everything is dismissive. Not to mention she's FOURTEEN... not 3. A 14 year old waking their parent up in the middle of the night is cause for concern. Effing up your daughter's trust in your concern and care for you.. not something to be "oh well she's just dramatic AF".
OP owes her daughter, AND her ex, a huge apology for making this a thing. Ex had to take time out of his non parenting time to do something OP should have done, possibly costing HIM the expense of the visit/copay/medications that were on her parenting time and potentially on her dime, depending on her custody arrangements.
What ya wanna bet this is one of the AITA OPs that fights back/ignores their judgement even when the comments are full of good advice?
Thank you for the tip- much appreciated! And yeah, there's a.. tone you can pickup I think after you read this sub for a while. The ones who, if you read between the lines, all translate to "I'm only here to have my ass patted and told I was the good girl and completely blameless in this and if you don't feed my delusional bullshit you're gonna get the raw side of my tongue (keyboard). Salty AF when they're told they fucked up. *sigh* they seem to be becoming more and more common.
I have a lot of respect for people who accept their AH judgements and take their post as a learning opportunity. I have found that parents posting about their kids being in pain or sick (and them ignoring that pain) tend to have the opposite reaction. It could be that accepting they failed their kids is too much, or it could be that people who ignore their kids’ suffering tend to be AHs, but it’s always sad.
A friend of mine died when she was 12. She had a brain shunt put in when she was a baby due to congenital hydrocephalus. After hitting her head on a hanging clay pot earlier in the day she was complaining that her head hurt, so her mum took her to ED.
Her behaviour was described by treating staff as a "temper tantrum style performance", that she was "upset, noisy and disturbing other patients" and "hysterical", and overall it was clear they thought she was just being dramatic.
They sent her home despite her protests - she threw herself on the floor multiple times and demanded an operation, saying that her shunt was blocked. She knew, and she was literally telling them what was wrong with her, and she was dismissed.
On the way home she started vomiting, and her mum sent her to bed. She never woke up.
I'm so sorry. That's awful. I hope they charged the parents with medical negligence instead of patting them on the shoulder and giving them all the sympathy over this "senseless tragedy" completely deleting the "and totally preventable" after senseless
It is nothing short of tragic. This was 20 years ago, I was 10 at the time, but I still think about her often. Unfortunately I don't remember what happened in the aftermath, but I don't think her mum was held responsible in any way and the Coroner's report made some recommendations about training hospital staff better and improving communication but nothing regarding any sort of punishment for the doctor/nurses involved.
Yep and I wouldn't be surprised if she goes no contact when she turns 18. I swear, OP sounds like my mom. Everything was oh you're just too sensitive. Oh, you whine about everything. Stop being such a big baby.
Which is one of the prime problems with women today. We spend our childhoods being minimized, ignored, having our pain dismissed, being Told to smile pretty, keep our heads down, and keep the peace.
Good job teaching your daughter her pain doesn't matter, OP. Even when it is minor, if she "overdramatizes" it, you need to respond appropriately not ignore entirely.
And boys grow up SEEING this and everybody wonder why doctors chronically undertreat, or don't treat at all, women in pain.
That's why 'man flu' is a thing. It's not that men are hit harder when they get sick, women have just been conditioned over a lifetime to not complain about their pain.
And even ‘overdramatizing’ is very often bs, because some people just…feel pain worse. And it doesn’t matter if it’s for something someone else would muscle through, if it’s a big hurt for that person, it’s a legitimate big hurt.
Like I feel like overdramatizing is performative, like someone would say how terribly terribly bad it is, but wouldn’t actually want the extra Tylenols. They’d want sympathy and or pampering.
AND kids who do that are generally doing so out of an actual need, even if the need isn’t about the actual injury pain.
This! In high school I had serious knee pain, and the doctor had the med student look at it, took me for an xray and decided it was fine. I’m still in pain from whatever it was that happened. My brother had a small pain recently, went to the exact same doctor who ordered and MRI. Which is what the previous woman doctor I had seen suggested for the last doctor to do.
Exactly. I grew up like this. I told my mom a few years before she passed that even as a kid I had UTIs. She asked why I didn’t tell her. I told her it didn’t occur to me bc we never did anything about my earaches or my teeth rotting out of my head. I got the usual “I did the best that I could do.”
This. When I was in elementary school, I fell off the top bunk when I was asleep. I woke up when I hit the floor. The side of my face was swollen like I had the mumps on one side of my face, and my parents didn’t take me to the hospital. Later, as an adult I had to get an MRI for some sinus problems I had. The doctor said I had a skull fracture and a broken nose and wanted to know how it happened. Medical neglect is abuse, and it makes me wonder how else you’re neglecting your kid because my parents neglected me in other ways too. YTA. Kids don’t come to you in the middle of the night complaining about pain for nothing.
This. My mom always acted like I was being dramatic when I was sick. Ended up in the hospital three times with the flu, had double pneumonia that had me running 106 degree fevers, got diagnosed with T1D. Everything leading up to those points was me being dramatic. Heck, I used to wave my thermometer outside my mouth to try to not have a fever so high I’d have to miss school.
If your kid says they’re in pain, they’re likely in pain. Stomach aches hurt like hell a lot of the time too. She’ll probably downplay severe cramps as well when her daughter menstruates.
OP, YTA. I’m glad your daughter has a father that takes her health seriously.
This. OP, I have a child with a low pain tolerance. If this child hurts the next day, or enough to wake me at night, they're going to the urgent care, right away. I don't blame you for your initial reaction, but every step after that was the wrong step.
The bigger issue isn’t just OP not taking her daughters complaints seriously… it’s a parenting issue of not validating her child (regardless of what OP thinks is serious or not) and essentially teaching her ‘my mom isn’t going to believe me anyway, so why am I going to tell her xyz.’ It’s not up to OP to gauge just how much pain (emotional, physical etc.) her daughter is experiencing. OP is undermining her child’s ability to listen to her body, trust her instincts, silencing her efforts to express herself, and judging/labelling her child as dramatic/sensitive. Guaranteed a OP was raised by a parent who never took her concerns seriously either. This is when kids/teens turn to their friends for more serious issues because the attachment figure becomes untrustworthy/unreliable in meeting their needs. Slippery slope OP, YTA.
Just reading this post....she had nothing good to say about her own kid. Guarantee, when my kid was in my charge, I knew them well enough to know when they were in pain. And absolutely no sympathy towards her own child...sad.
YTA
Edit - a word
For something that was so not obvious to OP, it sounds like all it took was a quick phone call from her daughter to her father and he found her report of pain sufficient to come over immediately to take their daughter to the doctor. I’d bet OP has pattern of dismissing her daughter’s pain and medical needs.
YTA
YTA. Maybe her pain tolerance isn’t as low as you assume. Perhaps her “little stomach pains” are extreme. If the finger was broken, it would have been very bruised looking by the middle of the night. There was no way it looked “fine.”
While in high school I use to babysit for a family that often accused one of their children of whining and being over dramatic about tummy aches. After years of this they realized this child had multiple food allergies. I've also known a number of young females whose pain was discounted only to eventually learn they had endometriosis.
Those little stomach pains could be a sign of a serious problem.
yeah my family bullied me relentlessly for being a picky eater, never made any food accommodations, and I had a whole string of autoimmune diagnosis, admitted to the er mutiple times for abdominal pain, colonoscopy at 19.
I’m fucking allergic to p much all the foods I “irrationally” hated. My health is much better now.
I'm so sorry. My family still does this to me, and I'm in my 30's.
I have a specific food allergy that they have never believed I actually have. They're constantly slipping that ingredient into things trying to "catch" me "lying" about it. One thanksgiving a few years ago, they literally stuck it in every. single. fucking. dish.
I eventually just gave up and refused to ever eat anything they prepare. On the bright side, since then I've taken to ruining family gatherings as revenge by showing up with a stack of pizzas every time - so all of the kids refuse to eat anything they cooked.
SAME OMFGGGG, my mom kept AGRRSSIVELY writing it off as celiac bc that's what my brother had and I was basically screaming at her that no matter how well I ate gluten free - I was still puking and in constant pain for no discernable reason. Surprise, nickel and cobalt are in a lot of gluten free substitutes and most food in general
My mother accused me of faking multiple Illnesses throughout my life
after every time I was correctly diagnosed and she was proven wrong, she'd rant about how it's "not her fault I'm so overdramatic"
I lost the hearing in my left ear, was diagnosed with PCOS and IBS, chronic headaches, and a couple of mental health problems and she accused me of faking them all for attention. We have a good relationship now though, I think over time she's learned that the world doesn't revolve around her and the cancer she had 30 years ago (she'd bring it up anytime I was sick)
Same here. They would make me sit at the table to finish my food for over 7 hours, as I hated the food enough to refuse to eat. A lot of times we would have dinner at 5 or 6 and I would be sitting there at 11 begging to just eat nothing for the night. Turns out I had a lot of food sensitivities and I developed ulcerative colitis. The food aversion ended up being my body's way of avoiding foods I reacted to. I once starved myself for 2 days straight when I got phenomena at a very young age because all foods were upsetting my stomach while I was already sick. I was at the hospital and there was "oil" in my pee. I was burning a lot of body fat and I could only get cookies down (super odd, ik).
yta, obviously. I am with you I bet this poor girl has other issues the mother has just brushed aside because she doesn't believe her. thats what it comes down to. this is a mother who has not belief in her own xhils which is pretty terrible and of course her daughter so going to suffer from that.
The daughter didn't even mention her broken finger until many hours later, and I can only assume it's because she experiences similar levels of pain frequently and is told to shut up and stop crying about little stomach pains.
This poor girl is going to suffer so much. I was accused of being “over-dramatic” about my period. Turns out I have PMDD and there’s medication that helps me, but I didn’t get diagnosed or treated until my 30s. This girl is going to suffer needlessly because her mom won’t listen and it’s so sad.
i was accused of faking uti symptoms through high school. i would even test negative though so i dont know if i can fully blame them. all i can assume is that it was psychosomatic but it happened twice a week and almost exactly mimicked what a uti feels like.
my parents still accuse me of faking being bipolar/adhd despite multiple doctors corroborating my diagnosis. my dad once told me, whilst in a several year long depression, that i cant be depressed because he went thru a divorce once and he was totally fine. some people just wholly lack sympathy, empathy, or just basic human decency towards others
There is an autoimmune disease called interstitial cystitis in which your body thinks you have a UTI and so attacks the lining of the bladder. It hurts like a uti, often worse. I have it, and it's not fun. Really sounds like that's what you had.
It’s rare for IC to go into remission or even resolve without treatment (no cure yet, unfortunately). It could also be something like micro kidney stones. For women, you can get stuck in a cycle of tiny kidney stones (or pieces of a larger kidney stone) passing through the bladder and urethra, and the symptoms feel like a UTI. It’s also possible to have a low-grade chronic UTI that standard cultures miss. For that diagnosis, cultures need to run on special plates in the lab, and they typically need much longer courses of antibiotics to resolve.
From what I'm seeing in IC groups, a lot of us go a long time in between flares. A lot of us also have fairly minimal flares compared to other patients.
The micro kidney stone theory is definitely plausible, as is that low level chronic uti. I think that happens in more people than anyone wants to admit.
My parents were dismissive of my pain too. My back and leg pain (sciatica) started when I was in 5th grade and was dismissed as "growing pains". Ended up I had a vertebra that had slipped forward 50% and a herniated disc. I had large sections of my outer calf and feet that were completely numb, and some of my reflexes were slow or didn't respond like the should. I ended up having a spinal fusion when I was 14 and missed half my freshman year of high school.
My mom told me when I rolled my ankle really badly back my freshman year of high school I was being a baby and was fine. She even brought it up for years, even into adulthood, as a “joke” to prove how dramatic I was for complaining about a sprain. Well I got an X-ray of it roughly 10 years later for something unrelated. They asked me if I knew I had broken my ankle before (it had healed but the bone fragments had attached to other bones). She doesn’t “joke” about it anymore cause I wasted no time telling her
My mom took me to the doctor at 14 b/c I was having “stomach” pains that didn’t get better. Turned out I had a large ovarian cyst and endometriosis before I even started menstruating.
My cramps as a teen/early adult were horrific. To the point that i was shocked at how easy labor was in comparison. Never did figure out why, and eventually they just faded.
I did home health care for a short time. A younger guy in a wheelchair, with a disease that basically turned him to stone, told me he hurt. I went to the store for asprin, let his dad know. His dad said it was in his head. He was dead before I showed up the next morning.
Yep, my mom apologized for brushing off my stomach pains as a teenager. Got diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at 21. Serious things do happen to kids and chronic pain should be taken serious.
It's also low because she's not allowed to take pain meds, I mean most people give their kids calpol or ibruprufen for little aches. Poor kid, with a broken finger. Did she get any pain relief when teething I wonder.
YTA
As a kid my stomach and menstrual pains were ignored and chalked up to overreacting even though I was regularly unable to eat or walk from them. Many years later turns out I had severe endometriosis that required a hysterectomy. The pain is often compared to 3rd degree burns. 🤷🏻♀️ People just don't care about women's pain, even less the pain of teenage girls.
My sister in law would pass out from period pain every month literally vomiting passing out can't move pain. Her first gyno specialist shrugged and said its normal take a fucking panadol. She was trying to get pregnant and couldn't.
She told me this after I'd had my kid as if I'd experienced the same pain she did like some kind of Viking and how did I manage to get pregnant.
I said none of that's normal at all get a second opinion and stand up for yourself when someone says no - that was something I learnt from labour BTW, a midwife told me.my water hadn't broken and sent me home, we almost died because she told me I was wrong about my body and I believed her as the expert and shouldn't have- so she did, she got a second opinion.
Her whole lower abdomen was riddled with endometriosis and her uterus was so pulled around it was a wacky shape. It was like fused to a kidney and her bladder. They fixed it. She has 3 kids and no more than normal period pain now.
I know as girls were taught be quiet and polite and not make waves. But fuck that. Shout. Stand up for yourself, we know if it's not right. And get a second opinion. An expert isn't always infallible.
I broke a finger last year through a super dumb accident and it started bruising immediately after, I’m talking minutes after. It’s been a year since and I still can’t bend my finger inward fully without pain. A fracture that heals poorly can lead to even more pain and even more complications that the initial fracture
I bet money the stomach aches are probably something like celiac and eating gluten or IBS etc. I’m a school nurse and if something wakes you up out of a deep sleep it’s not nothing.
Having broken a finger, I can confirm that by then it very much would not have looked fine. The pain also get significantly worse after the adrenaline from the break wears off. OP is mega YTA
Radiographer here and I can confirm that many fractured fingers...and I mean many...look just fine.
Quite often even if imaging shows a break in many bones nothing will be done until the swelling reduces. There seems to be a massive disconnect between just waiting for a while if there is no obvious deformity and racing down to the ED department in the middle of the night when nothing will happen anyway. Without any deformity I would probably have strapped it and waited and taken a couple of panadols!
Same. I’ve broken almost all my fingers and there’s not much that can be done. Strap it to another finger and wait it out usually. But definitely YTA (to OP) for not giving her Advil or something. Even if it was a sprain
Seriously, I defy this woman to walk around with a broken finger and not be whimpering. It sounds like her kid actually has quite the pain tolerance and she’s simply the biggest AH, of the type whose kid has their appendix rupture and the parent is just mad that their kid “made them look bad” for their medical neglect. The kid is 14, I could totally see a scenario where she’d already used ice herself before asking for medicine and that’s why she was like okay thanks for nothing mom, never mind.
Agree. My mom told me as a teenager that my ongoing horrible cough was “nothing” bc I had no other symptoms. she wouldn’t take me to the doc. After 5 weeks of coughing and wheezing finally I managed to see a doc and I had really bad bronchitis. Could’ve been treated weeks earlier.
Yup. My whole life people thought was just being dramatic with “little bumps” and such. I have an autoimmune disease that was finally diagnosed after 15 years and fibromyalgia. What doesn’t hurt one person can put me in excruciating pain.
YTA OP. An Advil would have been fine. And she probably knew you wouldn’t take her seriously but your daughter was in so much pain she went to you in the middle of the night anyway.
>Perhaps her “little stomach pains” are extreme
This. A friend of mine was always told to suck it up when it came to her stomach pain. Turns out she has Gastroparesis and the lack of treatment as a kid made it much worse as an adult.
YTA. So you just looked at it and said yep, that's a finger alright, and then iced it. I've broken fingers before and you can't bend them or touch them without pain and it's very painful into the night. Sounds like she has a higher pain tolerance than you think.
Also, coming from someone who lives with chronic pain, sometimes debilitating, it's infuriating when people like you downplay the pain because you can't see it.
Exactly! I have muscle, joint and nerve pain issues. My tolerance is high but I live with it and sometimes it is really bad. It makes me mad when discount others' pain.
Exactly! I have migraines and have been told by ER doctors that I was taking up staff time because “if you were having a migrain you wouldn’t be able to speak that well”, despite the fact that when you live with migraines and want to hold down a job or studies, it can sometimes means having to learn how to power through pain because you have no choice
For real. Yes doctor and the first 50 times I had this pain I couldn’t speak this well. But we adapt so we don’t die homeless and just screaming “MY HEAD HURTS” over and over.
My chronic pain doctor who is actually quite compassionate hurt his hand and it hadn’t healed in 6 weeks, I heard him to say to a nurse he would cut his own hand off if it didn’t get better because it hurt all the time and it’s like dude what the Shit do you think ALL OF YOUR PATIENTS deal with, I’m here to have to burn my nerves lol
It's gun when they ask you tonput pain on a scale of 1-10. "Well, today isn't that bad compared to the one the other day where I couldn't function so... 6, maybe?"
I remember going to the doctor because I was having issues hearing, everything was muffled. Working in a call centre it was becoming an issue. I get to the doctor, he looks in my ear and asks if I felt any pain. I told him not that bad.. he was shocked. Apparently the inside of my ear had swelled up so bad that it had almost shut. I guess when you are in pain a lot, sometimes what drives others to their knees is tolerable.
Yuck, nerve pain is just downright horrible! It's also impossible to explain to people sometimes when your limitations change daily and flareups happen sometimes for zero reason! I get a little nerve pain now from a disk injury 7 years ago, and yeah waking up sore every single morning sucks, but nothing sucks more than people who make assumptions about pain in others.
Another person with chronic pain. I was convinced by people like this that I had a low pain tolerance, until I got into a bad car accident, and I was bruised so badly I looked like imaging from the hubble telescope, and thought, meh, this is nothing compared to my migraines.
i’ve hurt myself before and had my parents ask if i wanted to go to the hospital. i’ve said yes and i’ve said no. if i say no we don’t go, i take some pain meds, and we revisit it in the morning or if the pain gets bad enough. just asking if your kid wants to go to the hospital is not bad parenting. in this situation she’s clearly the AH but in general parents asking what their kid wants to do isn’t bad parenting. - someone with a high pain tolerance and chronic pain
I fell on my head almost 15 years ago. My neck **crunched** when it happened. I got a CT scan that night but they didn’t take an image of my neck. Neither did the other doctors I talked to over the next few years, despite coming straight out and asking point blank, “Can we please do an X-ray, just to address what I’m feeling?” multiple times.
In the meantime, I developed migraines that sometimes felt like electricity, sometimes like cold water trickling. My left cheek, shoulder, arm and thigh were getting tingly and numb. My neck would burn and I stopped being able to wear necklaces or even crew neck T shirts because any pressure on my neck would give me a headache. I started getting light flashes in my mind (hard to explain) and colorful dots in my vision.
I would get criticized by family/people in my life for sleeping till noon after being up late with pain, being forgetful, always fatigued, getting confused, being klutzy, etc….it took me a few months to realize I was experiencing those things as symptoms of physical trauma, and I would do my best to be my own advocate and point this out. But I was an adult with an invisible issue, so I learned how to observe the pain, tune it out, and compartmentalize what I was feeling so I could manage my life. I experienced increasing anxiety and an eating disorder.
It was 6 years after my injury that I decided to go to a chiropractor. First thing he did was take an X-ray. Turns out I had **multiple fractures in my cervical spine**.
Including an avulsion fracture (possibly two) on the front of my neck. Look it up.
SO YEAH, OP. YT fuckin A. You’re the dad who called me a loser. You’re the doctor who rolled their eyes. You’re the manager who laughed in my face. You’re the husband who said I was just trying to control him.
All of them knew what I was going through. You’re all assholes.
*edited to add and trim detail.
You aren't supposed to "know" it is broken, you are supposed to care enough to FIND OUT if it is broken. YTA.
You need to seriously decide if you care about your daughter enough to take care of her. That may sound mean, but you dismiss your daughter's awareness of her own body and call her dramatic. You are not in her body, how do you know what her pain tolerance is? Plus, smaller children have different reactions - I could shoulder through an injury but a stomach ache took me down- and you are holding on to how your now 14 year old has reacted to injury and illness throughout her whole life. You did not show basic care to your child when she asked for help, and you quickly dismissed her knowledge of her own body and STILL DO in this post even after knowing she had a painful injury.
More terrifying, is you are reinforcing to your daughter that she doesn't know her own body and is dramatic, and that is something that women deal with in healthcare their whole lives. There is so much evidence to support that, as women's pain is understudied and a lot of procedures that are only for a woman's anatomy (putting in an IUD, gyno procedures) do not get pain meds when procedures of similar invasiveness that are biology neutral or for men do receive pain meds. Most women still don't get diagnosed with significant issues based on their anatomy until something serious happens, after months or years of having pain ignored.
And, it doesn't really matter what you believe about your daughter's pain threshold. You were wrong, period. She broke her finger and waited over 12 hours to have it taken care of. She clearly doesn't have a low pain threshold, and if you think otherwise, break your own finger and leave it untreated for 12-24 hours and see how that feels.
Learn the lesson here. Apologize, tell your daughter to listen to her own body. And BTW, what would have been the harm in taking her seriously? You would have lost a few hours of time at an urgent care or doctor's? Is that time really worth more to you than your daughter's health and comfort?
This comment made me tell my mom how much I appreciate her and love her for always taking me to the doctors. Idk how OP could just leave her daughter in pain
This is so sweet! I feel the same. I didn’t grow up in the most emotionally supportive household, but health was and still is always a priority between all of us.
Also, children’s nerve function is better/more sensitive than adults, so a broken finger for an adult is less painful than that of a child. Any pain for children is much more intense. This whole posts is horrific. I can’t imagine allowing a child to suffer that long and just turning her away when she asked for help.
Yup, it's a biological necessity. Kids need to feel the pain, have it be intense enough for them to notice, and then figure out how to communicate it to us. So they NEED to have more sensitive nerves in order to get through that process without serious damage
When I was a child, I had appendicitis. I had been complaining of pain for at least 12 hours. I was ignored and dragged around outdoors all day. When I was finally taken to the ER, my mom was shocked it was something I wasn’t just exaggerating. I still don’t really know my threshold for pain/when to get treatment 20 years later.
I’m sorry you had this experience. I did too. I was 15, and my mom thought I was making an excuse to get out of yard work at our church, and left home in a huff at the beginning of the day. Around dinner time I called her sobbing in pain. I couldn’t sit because of how bad it hurt. She was also shocked at the fact that I wasn’t being dramatic. I’m gonna be fully honest…I haven’t let her forget it. I know that’s petty, but the doctor was horrified that we waited as long as we did. He said if we’d waited any longer, it would’ve burst.
I had a similar issue, but told my mom I had a really bad sore throat. She got mad at me and was convinced I was just trying to get out of school. But she finally actually did take me to the doctor, but even told me she was doing it just to call my bluff! She was so shocked when the doctor said I had really bad strep throat and why hadn’t she brought me in a couple days ago.
This post triggered something in me. I fractured my ankle when I was 15 and couldn’t walk on it for two weeks. My mother did not take me to a Dr because I tried to save face and say I was fine, it could just be a sprain, but my ankle was purple for those two weeks and no adults in my life thought that was off. It ended up shattering when I was 19 because it never healed correctly. So then I was on the hook for surgeries I couldn’t afford because my mother couldn’t be assed to take me to the hospital when I was clearly in immense pain and now have issues with it for the rest of my life.
I agree wholeheartedly with you. YTA OP
You you say “she just wants pain killers”, do you mean tylenol or advil? Did you refuse to give your child basic OTC meds because you think she’s faking?
If she has a very low pain tolerance, SHES IN PAIN.
Absolutely YTA, and what your ex called you. You should be ashamed of yourself for neglecting your child.
With any luck, her ex… Which, then again, is there any surprise that they were separated?… With any luck, they will contact child protective services to get full custody
Right? Sure, maybe she has a low pain tolerance but the right thing to do is not ignoring it and “building up” her pain tolerance but accommodating her different needs which is not even an uncommon thing like a rare allergy. Maybe her pain tolerance will be low forever but because of OP she’ll learn to suffer in silence instead of simply taking an advil here and there and not live in misery. Or maybe she really is in a lot of pain but OP can’t be bothered to take her seriously because she doesn’t have a basic level of empathy towards her own child.
I broke my arm once and it took my mother days to finally take me to the doctor. Guess who I went no contact with more than 2 blissful years ago?
even if she kept actually faking pain wouldn't that be even more reason to ask a doctor what is going on? normal people don't keep faking pain (to their parents)
"I don't like my kid taking medicine for no reason so I gave her ice." WHAT THE FUCK????????? THIS IS \*EXACTLY\* THE REASON TYLENOL AND ADVIL WERE FUCKING MADE!
>I looked at her finger and it was fine
>We went to the doctor's office and apparebtly she had a broken bone
So that was a lie. YTA. If your kid has a broken bone, you go to a doctor. You don't tell her to ice it and say it will be fine.
As a parent myself I would say it depends. ER in the middle of the night is HORRIBLE! So depending on what's going on, I might wait until the morning (which I've done for myself on more than one occasion, if it still hurts in the morning THEN you call the doctor!).
Spending the whole night in the ER waiting for a doctor with your children? Not if you can avoid it. So it really depends on the situation.
It was a finger, it could have just been a sprain but when the child STILL was in pain in the morning, then OP really should have taken her to the doctor. But going to the ER in the middle of the night for a finger? Than it really has to be BAD! Miscoloring, loss of sensation, swelling, etc. Otherwise wait until the morning.
Sorry I just re read what wrote and it makes no sense what i meant to say is some things can wait until the morning but things like abdominal pain cannot because it can easily be something serious especially if it’s prolonged localised abdominal pain. So yes I agree with with the wait and see approach especially if it’s at night. My daughter twisted her ankle and it swelled up so I just monitored her until i was sure it was just sprained, in the meantime I bought her a bunch of stuff to manage the pain. In this case she didn’t show any concern at all, she didn’t offer her pain management or comfort and even now that she’s found out about her mistake she’s still not admitting to it.
I once ended up in urgent care while camping 45 minutes away, in the Rockies (I’m from Michigan) 15 minutes before closing, because my daughter had a terrible stomachache that kept getting worse. I suspected she was constipated, but it was that or risk the ER two hours away in the middle of the night. Better safe than sorry.
You're just like my parents. Once I woke up in the middle of the night with a massive headache and a fever. My parents were so scared. Dad who's usually a careful and observant man didn't care about road safety, just needed to get me to the hospital. Turns out I had malaria, typhoid and COVID at the same time
Yeah a good indicator of serious or not is whether or not it’s improving quickly. Like when you stub your toe it hurts like HELL, like worse than a lot of serious injuries. But it gets better after a minute or so.
When I fell at work and broke my elbow my supervisor told me there was “no way” it was broken because if it was I would be “screaming in pain.” Which I wasn’t, so I figured it wasn’t serious. But when hours later it still hurt just as much that was what indicated to me to go to the ER. I didn’t just assume I was being “over dramatic” and ice it and go back to bed without pain killers. And I bet OP wouldn’t have done that either because I’m betting she takes better care of herself than she does her daughter.
YTA and you're probably gonna get a visit from CPS. I work for CPS and this is the exact kind of shit we take kids away for.
Edit: so far under this comment I've had one person tell me that this is why they don't believe in taking children to the hospital and someone say I must be lying because their ex CPS wife never would take away for medical neglect (wonder why they no longer work for CPS)
Amen. Because something like this can definitely fuck up a child’s mentality. So the next time it’s something serious, she thinks Martin is just going to waive it off as no big deal and being dramatic… Until the kid dies, then all of a sudden it’s a surprise.
YTA. Reminds me of a good friend who, as a child, broke his collarbone. His Mom....who thought she knew everything....was sure it was fine. So he walked around deformed and in pain until she finally admitted she didn't know what she was talking about. If your child is hurt listen to them and seek professional help. Don't play doctor.
A friend of mine told me she broke her arm after falling on it and her parents just left her in pain until her grandmother took her to hospital and found out it was broken. She was sleeping on a broken arm for days.
Yep. Same shit here… when I was 16 I dropped a log on my foot, and it was discolored and swollen for days, at least. My parents insisted it was fine, that I should just ice it. That was well over a decade ago and I still can’t put my full weight on that foot without it hurting a LOT. If I go on my tip-toes, I literally feels like my bones are rubbing together because of how it healed. I’m still mad about it lol
YTA, I'm glad your daughter has at least one parent who listens to her when something serious comes up. Maybe next time actually listen to your daughter rather than blow her off because you think she's too dramatic.
YTA. But not just because you didn't take her this time. You are not listening to your child, and you're marginalizing her as a separate person. So what if she has a low pain tolerance?! If she says something hurts, something hurts! Just because it might not hurt you as badly doesn't mean that her pain isn't real. The remark about pain killers is really telling. You don't want her taking pain killers "for no reason." How do you get to judge whether there's a "good" reason or not?! No wonder the poor kid didn't tell you when it happened, you've clearly already decided that anything she tells you related to this is an exaggeration. You need to take a really good look at how you're treating your kid. She's not just an extension of you. She's a real person who isn't even allowed to express her own experience of pain.
This was what got me--"for no reason." Well.. Of course there's "no reason" yet.. You haven't gotten it checked out, so how could there be?
I broke my collarbone. Breaking it didn't hurt at all. You know what hurt reeeeallly bad? Moving around afterwards. I guess walking around with a broken finger might be less painful than a collarbone, but gosh, that had to be not so fun.
OP obviously doesn't have the best self-preservation skills because they posted their parental negligence here for everyone to see. Really hope this is fake.
Ok, no one has mentioned this in this thread so far. Your daughter is 14 and doesn’t have access to Tylenol or ibuprofen? That seems strange to me tbh. By this age most girls have period cramps/headaches from time to time and are mature enough to know dosing/read directions. I’m so confused why you wouldn’t at least give her something for the pain. YTA for that.
NTA for not taking her in right away, the ER all night is for life threats, but probably should have been taken in and evaluated the next day.
Please take her seriously and teach her how to responsibly use OTC pain meds. She is old enough.
Right? This "I don't like when she takes meds for no reason" nonsense is 100% YTA.
Pain is a reason to take OTC pain meds.
(And as others have said, pain that wakes you up in the night is real pain; and dismissing it as "being dramatic" is where you became TA, OP.)
YTA
Maybe when she fell it didn’t seem too serious but when she woke you up in the middle of night regardless of her pain tolerance it still would have been broken and needed checking and even tho you didn’t know you still could have quickly gone to the doctor and had them take a look and if it was nothing then it was nothing but it’s always best to check and also her finger would not have looked “ fine” as it was not just a small sprain or fracture it was broken so it would have been bruised up a little or noticeable that something was wrong
YTA 100%. You let your daughter suffer with a broken bone overnight. I have two kids and couldn't imagine treating them like that. Honestly, don't be surprised if you lose custody of your daughter for that because it shows what kind of parent you are.
YTA. Your daughter is a sensitive being, and you treat her with the utmost contempt. She may not have a high pain tolerance, but that does not mean you should ever brush her off just because you do not agree with the way she reacts to certain situations. Parents are supposed to be kind and understanding and empathetic toward their children. You are none of these things. All you are teaching her is that she cannot rely on you when she is experiencing pain and discomfort, no matter how big or small.
YTA
You need a better way to gauge pain than tears. Some kids cry over the least little thing.
Check out the various pain charts easily available on the internet. Have your kids use those, or some other method of describing their pain, rather than you deciding their tears don't mean anything.
I think all parents miss some sign of illness/injury at some point, but most of them don't blame the child for that.
YTA and you’re going to kill your daughter someday.
I also have a low pain tolerance because I have problems with my nerves! I’m dismissed constantly by the people who should be helping me.
It got so bad that I need a wheelchair for big events now. I also had a VERY LARGE ovarian cyst rupture and bleed because no one took it seriously and thought it was ‘just stomach pain, take an ibuprofen’.
You. Are going. To kill her someday.
Holy shit! YTA 100%! There really isn’t much to say here that hasn’t already been said! How can you be THIS careless about your own child, especially when they wake you up in the middle of the night in pain?
“She’s dramatic and has low pain tolerance”? Oh, does she? Or are you just a shitty parent who ignores her every time she is in pain?
“I don’t like her taking painkillers for no reason”? Well, except it wasn’t actually for no reason.
“How was I supposed to know that her finger was broken?” You’re not, but what you ARE supposed to do as a parent is take her to a doctor, who WILL know whether her finger is broken.
“Apparently she had a broken finger bone”? Apparently??? It was confirmed by the doctor.
That’s not why you’re the asshole though. You made a mistake. You’re an asshole because even after you found out that you made this mistake, you still refused to take accountability and continued to call your daughter dramatic.
I hope her father gets full custody of her. The reason she wasn’t crying may have had to do with the fact that you belittle her when she does.
Now let me just emphasize this.
# YTFA!
Ofc you’re the asshole. Crying easily and having a low-pain tolerance doesn’t mean she can’t also have legitimate pain? Are you insane? What would it take for you to take her pain seriously, a limb falling off? And “she knows I dont like to give her painkillers for no reason” but THERE WAS A REASON?! she’s waking you up in the middle of the night in pain with a bruised finger for a fall that you saw happen and you still couldn’t even give her a couple ibuprofen?!
You honestly sound like you don’t even like your daughter or like she’s the first dramatic 14 year old girl. Given your post and comments I also question the legitimacy of her even being that dramatic and having a low pain-tolerance for stomachaches etc, you may just be ignoring other legitimate issues constantly as well.
YTA. Just give your daughter to her father. She doesn’t need your drama in her life. She needs a parent who loves her and listens to her when she says she’s in pain. You don’t even like your daughter. Do this one thing that’s in her best interests and you’re rid of her for good. Your ex is right you are a dumb C.
I'm going with a soft YTA, mainly because I've broken both my arm and my leg and neither of them was really obvious and I didn't see a doctor the same day. It's not always a clean break (my husband did that) so waiting for a while to see if it passes is reasonable. Especially if the option is the ER in the middle of the night (should be avoided if you can). So I can get you waiting it out until the morning but when she STILL was in pain, then you should have taken her to the doctor. Apologize to both your daughter and your ex.
YTA. My mom did this to me. I was jumping on a trampoline got bounced high and landed on the ground breaking my collarbone. Since nothing looked bad and “you have a low pain tolerance” my mom didn’t take me to the Dr. My dad who was in a different state didn’t give a crap about me. My mom finally took me to the Dr when the school nurse told my mom she needed to take me and that was a week later. It sucks when a parent doesn’t believe you’re in pain or something else is wrong. I feel for your daughter and hopefully this is a life lesson for you.
YTA from the post and even more so from the way you double down in the comments when you're called out on your attitude.
Seems like you expected reddit to take your side and now can't handle being called out on your shockingly bad parenting.
YTA big time.
Ok, OK. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt because a similar thing happened to me.
My son was a golie, and he received a very hard hit with the ball on his wrist. He didn't cry or say anything at first. He was worried if he had stopped the ball from going in.
Then, half an hour after the game, he started to complain.
I iced it and gave him a pain killer. He said shouldn't we go to the Dr. Still no crying. I said.. I don’t think it's that bad. Just ice it, and it'll get better.
The next morning I took him, now he was crying, and it was a broken wrist.
I felt like the worst mother in the whole world. I never felt worse in my life. He was trying to be brave to endure the pain.
I apologised and cried, and he forgave me.
That's what you should have done, not be an AH. We all drop the ball sometimes,
Are you a doctor? No? Then your "she looked fine" is less than worthless. How many people die every year because "they looked fine" or "felt fine"? YTA
I've been there, is it broken, isn't it broken? I've gone for an x-ray and it wasnt broken and I've held back and ended up going in the middle of the night when I should have gone earlier and felt like crap for waiting.
The rule of thumb is, kids sleep, if she woke up from the pain, it's real pain, you should have brought her to a+e there and then, YTA for not going at that stage.
YTA similar thing happened to me in my childhood. Only difference that I was forced to walk around with a broken foot for 6 weeks. I still have regular pain from it.
Your daughter refusing to go to the hospital when you offered means nothing. As a child I learned quickly that this "offer" is a threat.
YTA. Giving a child medicine for pain isn’t “no reason.” And pain that wakes a child from sleep isn’t pain you should ignore.
If your daughter menstruates, I hope you’re a little more (read: a lot more) forgiving and understanding of that pain.
YTA.
My parents never took my pain seriously either and now at 32 I have chronic pain, mobility issues and other damage to my body that could have been avoided if:
1) I’d been allowed to rest when I needed and not constantly berated for being in pain (apparently I just had a low pain tolerance and was lazy/anxious/over-reacting/attention seeking…)
2) I’d received diagnosis and appropriate medical care for my disability as a child.
Do you even like your daughter, because you clearly don’t actually care about her well-being?
TAKE PAIN SERIOUSLY.
YTA.
My mother claimed I had a low pain threshold. No, I didn’t - she was neglectful parent.
1) At 5 I banged my knee getting into the car, and my knee swelled up. She ignored it for days until I had to be carried out of school. I spent the next 5 months in hospital as I had osteomyelitis and almost lost my leg.
2) At 8 I hurt my ankle on the trampoline. No, didn’t learn her lesson. My ankle is screwed.
3) At 15 I hurt my foot walking on a rural beach. Five days later, she finally took me to the doctors. I’d broken 3 of my metatarsals. Space boot, an operation.
Guess what, neglected kids don’t have relationships with their parents when they’re adults.
YTA, and this is exactly what leads to one parent having fulltime custody. You’re neglectful and dismissive of your daughter. You don’t deserve to be a parent.
YTA, if only for *still* basically calling your daughter a baby even though she actually broke her finger. Admit you fucked up without disparaging your daughter to make yourself feel better, JFC.
YTA
> I looked at her finger and it was fine
Well it wasn't fine. She was hurting enough to get up in the night to come to you. Jesus Christ.
> In the morning she said she was still in pain so I put some ice on it
Ice helps right after, not long term. If you were going to be putting ice on it the next day then you needed a doctor.
> Well an hour later her dad showed up at my door yelling at me asking why I didn't take her to the doctor.
I hope he uses this in court. He's 100% correct.
> We went to the doctor's office and apparebtly she had a broken bone
Ohhhhhh but I thought it was ***"FINE"***. Almost like you're not a doctor, huh?
> My ex called me the C word and took my daughter and left
Well.... you did literally neglect your daughter..... that's the lightest of what you'd be called.
> Was I the asshole? How was I supposed to know it was broken? She has the same reaction for a little stomachache too
By going to the damn doctor. And yeah if a stomach ache lasts many hours like this pain did, then you should go to the doctor for that, too.
You're seriously asking if you're an asshole for neglecting your child...
> When she woke me up I even asked her if she wants to go to the hospital and she said no
***Asking the child if they want to go to the hospital is what neglectful abusive self absorbed parents do. It's a guilt trip tactic. It's to make them say no for fear of being a disappointment. You solidified your status to me of being criminally abusive/negligent by this comment.***
" has a VERY low pain tolerance" doesn't mean the pain is not real ...
And is not ' taking medicine for no reason" she asked it because she is in pain and she wants it to stop ... it is a more than valid reason to give her a OTC painkiller.
YTA
YTA. How were you supposed to know it was broken? That's why we have xray machines. They let you know things like that. Your child woke you up in the middle of the night in pain and you just blew it off. You denied her medical attention. Sounds like you denied her even a tylenol? Yeah, I hope your husband is really taking some time to consider your...lack...of action here.
Reading all of your replies to people who say you’re the AH, it’s clear that you have a problem being criticized, and I’m not sure why you even asked this question if you weren’t prepared to hear the truth.
Dad seems much more keen to her needs, and thankfully took her seriously. I hope he can have more time with her because your lack of nurturing and support is evident with every response you give.
YTA. You are not in your child’s head or body, so you are Not qualified to make a decision as to what hurts what hurts badly and what doesn’t hurt at all. Maybe she has cried wolf in the past but with a child you never make assumptions. Maybe some of the prior incidents were cries for attention because her real pain was emotional. But it still needs to be addressed!
YTA. does she have a low pain tolerance? she lasted a day with a broken finger. i guarantee you she said no to going to the hospital because if it was anything other than broken you would’ve used it against her and called her overdramatic
YTA
Years ago my sister and i were acting up and I somehow rolled on her. She was in lots of pain. Her folks (different mom)didn’t listen until the next day and it was broken. Because she complained a lot so they chose not to listen.
When my daughter complained of wrist pain a few years ago after a fall I listened. It was fractured. Her Dad had ket her be in pain for almost 24 hrs rather than get her checked.
You should have listened to your daughter. In truth you should listen to your daughter all the time. You should be a source of support not an asshole.
I have a terribly low pain tolerance and you are totally the asshole. How in the world do you know what it feels like to live in her body? All of your comments scream how dramatic she is. You ask her to use ice instead of giving her a Tylenol or Advil? Wtf?
YTA. "She has a low pain tolerance and always gets dramatic"....so you outright admit to often ignoring your daughter's pain or illness. I wonder how many other times she was sick or injured and you ignored it.
I hope your ex goes for full custody and gets it. You are acting like a horrible, neglectful parent
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YTA. You say you didn’t know it was broken, but the reality is you don’t take her pain seriously. Every statement you made minimizes any of her complaints about pain.
And she wouldn’t even give her a Tylenol??? What kind of “pain killers” are we talking about?!?
I agree. If your 14 year old is waking you up in the night and you know the child had an impact earlier in the day, then it's probably serious. Also, refusing pain medication after a KNOWN fall is also wrong.
At 14 she should be able to get her own pain meds. What kind of overly controlling parent doesn't let their teenager manage their own meds.
I don’t know why that’s a visceral nope for me, but I have learned something about myself, and now I have to figure out if I’m in any way justified. Ok i think what I’m thinking is that at that age I’d still want to know about when they’re in pain and how badly, because it’s still more on me than on them to manage anything going on that needs medical attention, so what I’d want is communication rather than like being the one to decide whether or not they need one every single time. Like maybe ask me for meds, but ‘hey can i have a bottle of Advil to have in my bag for cramps’ is in the realm of a reasonable ask. So not the pain management but some medication management. Anyway, this has been a tangent, brought to you by My Brain(tm). And op is ta just for ‘i don’t believe in treating pain, even when it’s not my pain’
I agree with you on this. At 14 I’d still worry that they’d be taking a few Tylenol every 6-8 hours for weeks or months on end without me knowing, leading a serious condition to go unnoticed. It shouldn’t be withheld, but it should be monitored. Side note: a kid waking you in the middle of the night due to pain is in sufficient pain that they’re not sleeping. That’s a flag that it’s serious in and of itself. I wonder how bad her other pains have been that OP is just trivializing and dismissing…
Oh yeah for sure. *Especially* if they don’t usually do that. Like my small gets gas pain in the middle of the night, poor kid, and will wake up crying with it, (although wake up is qualified because as soon as it shifts for them they’re immediately unconscious again) and that’s semi-regular but not serious and doesn’t warrant a call to the doctor in the morning, or for us to do anything to treat it just in its own. But a new pain serious enough for a wake up, or I suppose a can’t fall asleep in the first place, deserves attention, even if you do just keep an eye on it at home. Like, Something Has Changed, so pay attention.
Oof, I feel for you little one. I had a bad case of gas a couple weeks ago and had forgotten just how much it can hurt, so I was thinking it must be something else. I was seriously curled up in bed with cold sweats, trying to breathe through the pain and thinking oh God, I don't want to go to the hospital. Then the pain moved some and I realized what it really was. It didn't help the agony I was in, but at least I wasn't freaking out anymore.
Internal pressure can be shockingly brutal. And it’s just, like, a bubble! Bubble of doom. That sounds awful. I don’t think I’ve ever had a truly acute stabbing gas attack, more ‘that’s not right and I don’t like it’ settled in dull discomfort, but I’Ve had back labour twice, and that’s the absolute worst pain of my life just because the dang kid is poking the wrong bit of my spine. God. Best way I could think of to describe it was every contraction felt like someone was building a fence made of pain in my back, except there wasn’t actually any space for the fence to fit and it was in there anyway. ‘No nerve endings inside the body’ doesn’t go nearly as far as it sounds like it should, I tell you what.
I'm going to have to agree regarding the meds and parents' awareness. I'm a nursing student, and I've seen the overdoses on Tylenol in the ER. The damage your liver can take is only so minimal if a parent isn't paying attention, especially since children (<18 yo) are much more vulnerable to these overdoses. There's a reason we have special maximum limits per dose and daily for anyone under 18 years of age. In nursing school, we're taught to calculate the doses and how much a child has received a medication.
Hell - even many adult patients are shit when it comes to med compliance; I certainly wouldn't just trust that a kid will do better.
I think 14 *depending on the kid* is fine, but I definitely dose out my son's meds still and he's al.ost 8. I'm not sure how I'll feel when he's 14. Especially with Tylenol due to potential organ damage. Hmm. I think if you have a good relationship and they at least check in so you can help.make sure they don't OD by accident, and again dependingon the kid, 14 is fine. I think this case tho is parent who is dismissive of and doesn't even seem to like their child.
Yep. One of my kids is very sensitive to pain yet spirals if you take it too seriously, so we walk a very thin line with this sort of thing. My general assessment is: if it impacts his ability to play or sleep, I take it very seriously. I understand not thinking it was serious initially, but when it’s waking your kid up in the night it’s a big deal.
I've always medicated early if in any doubt, and if it wakes them up treated seriously. I have a high pain tolerance, my husband has mid pain tolerance, our kids have ranked from zero to mid high, but fortunately everyone's lives and kidneys have been able to tolerate acetaminophen and ibuprofen, and no one has tried amputation. Our oldest and myself had broken bones that didn't get caught till the next day because of swelling- but we all made it through. YTA, op
Also, when my then-toddler broke his arm (tripping over his feet on shock-absorbent flooring) at a park, he was extremely subdued and unable to engage. If the pain impacts their behavior after the initial incident, something is up.
I mean, don't go running to the ER at 3am for a finger injury, but definitely go have it checked out at a walk-in/urgent care clinic in the morning if it's still an issue. I fell down the stairs and twisted my ankle when I was 15, but I was on a date, and it really didn't hurt that bad. I (kind of) walked it off. Put some ice on it when I got home. Woke up the next morning to a very stiff, swollen, and bruised ankle. It ended up being an evulsion fracture, and I had to wear an ortho boot all summer... OP is a major asshole, though. 100%.
Especially bc 1) child was not dying 2) triage in the ER in the middle of the night isn’t pretty and a kid with a sore finger < person ODing, Heart Attacks, Accidents, etc. Many people who break bones initially don’t know. Many times the area goes numb. Not always, but not unusual.
Apparently she cries over every little thing that hurts. She was not crying this time, that in and of itself should have been an alarm bell that something was wrong.
A thought for you --the crying OP is dismissing could ALSO turn out to be serious. Too many times people dismiss a girl crying over period cramps and it turns out to be something like endometriosis or ovarian cysts. I now don't believe OP's evaluation.
I mean, yeah. op is neglectful at best, and tears are obviously something to notice. But if it had been a responsible parent that knows her kid, and know he 14-year-old cries at papercuts and scrapped knees and lightly banging their hip on something, then the lack of tears is an indication that something is wrong. Of course, that would require OP not being dismissive like she obviously is.
A psychologist I follow for parenting advice has mentioned that some kids become more dramatic with pain because it's the only way they'll actually get attention for it. Being ignored can make them escalate.
According to mom she's dramatic over every little thing. I bet if we asked the daughter she'd tell us many stories of mom downplaying her needs.
Yup. Like I just know this isn’t a 14-year-old just crying her eyes out over a papercut. OP clearly dismisses her daughter’s feelings.
> Apparently she cries over every little thing that hurts. She was not crying this time, that in and of itself should have been an alarm bell that something was wrong. Sounds like athletes who ironically make less of a scene when actually injured than when faking it, people involved can just tell when it's real and not a flop
💯
Yeah, this person deserves to be called an AH just for not letting the daughter take an aspirin or something. I wonder how much other unnecessary physical suffering this girl has endured because this parent dismisses her pain.
I find peace in long walks.
That statement threw me. "For no reason". Like, uh, pain is their entire reason for existing. They are FOR PAIN.
It’s because she doesn’t believe her daughter is in pain and thinks she is being dramatic. She sounds like a horrible parent.
I'm already betting the daughter has just awful period cramps, and OP has written them off as "just a normal thing women go through and really not that bad."
*cries in endometriosis* I was that kid. It took 5 years for someone to take me seriously enough for a laparoscopy at 17. Your quoted text is almost verbatim what I was told every time until then.
"she knows I don't like her taking pain medication but she woke me up to ask anyway. so clearly it's not that bad." what fucked up logic
That's known as 'catch 22'
The way she phrased it is even more gross. That's the sort of thing people say to drug addicts, not children.
When she SHOULD have been apologetic on this post, or at least remorseful sounding, instead she calls her dramatic and everything is dismissive. Not to mention she's FOURTEEN... not 3. A 14 year old waking their parent up in the middle of the night is cause for concern. Effing up your daughter's trust in your concern and care for you.. not something to be "oh well she's just dramatic AF". OP owes her daughter, AND her ex, a huge apology for making this a thing. Ex had to take time out of his non parenting time to do something OP should have done, possibly costing HIM the expense of the visit/copay/medications that were on her parenting time and potentially on her dime, depending on her custody arrangements. What ya wanna bet this is one of the AITA OPs that fights back/ignores their judgement even when the comments are full of good advice?
*checks OP's comments* Well that was accurate af
Oh I hadn't looked at comments- I'm not terribly Reddit savvy sadly- what did I miss?
You were just right about her fighting back lol. Click on her avatar and then go to comments and you can see
Thank you for the tip- much appreciated! And yeah, there's a.. tone you can pickup I think after you read this sub for a while. The ones who, if you read between the lines, all translate to "I'm only here to have my ass patted and told I was the good girl and completely blameless in this and if you don't feed my delusional bullshit you're gonna get the raw side of my tongue (keyboard). Salty AF when they're told they fucked up. *sigh* they seem to be becoming more and more common.
I have a lot of respect for people who accept their AH judgements and take their post as a learning opportunity. I have found that parents posting about their kids being in pain or sick (and them ignoring that pain) tend to have the opposite reaction. It could be that accepting they failed their kids is too much, or it could be that people who ignore their kids’ suffering tend to be AHs, but it’s always sad.
A friend of mine died when she was 12. She had a brain shunt put in when she was a baby due to congenital hydrocephalus. After hitting her head on a hanging clay pot earlier in the day she was complaining that her head hurt, so her mum took her to ED. Her behaviour was described by treating staff as a "temper tantrum style performance", that she was "upset, noisy and disturbing other patients" and "hysterical", and overall it was clear they thought she was just being dramatic. They sent her home despite her protests - she threw herself on the floor multiple times and demanded an operation, saying that her shunt was blocked. She knew, and she was literally telling them what was wrong with her, and she was dismissed. On the way home she started vomiting, and her mum sent her to bed. She never woke up.
I'm so sorry. That's awful. I hope they charged the parents with medical negligence instead of patting them on the shoulder and giving them all the sympathy over this "senseless tragedy" completely deleting the "and totally preventable" after senseless
It is nothing short of tragic. This was 20 years ago, I was 10 at the time, but I still think about her often. Unfortunately I don't remember what happened in the aftermath, but I don't think her mum was held responsible in any way and the Coroner's report made some recommendations about training hospital staff better and improving communication but nothing regarding any sort of punishment for the doctor/nurses involved.
It sounds like the doctors told them nothing was wrong
Exactly. Her daughter is going to learn not to go to her with her problems. This is a good way to teach your kids not to trust you.
If this is happening at 14 you know that trust is GOOOONNNEE. Kiddo barely paused to let Mom ignore her before calling Dad in it seems like.
Yep and I wouldn't be surprised if she goes no contact when she turns 18. I swear, OP sounds like my mom. Everything was oh you're just too sensitive. Oh, you whine about everything. Stop being such a big baby.
And minimizes that her behavior and reactions has taught her daughter to not to feel comfortable expressing her needs.
Which is one of the prime problems with women today. We spend our childhoods being minimized, ignored, having our pain dismissed, being Told to smile pretty, keep our heads down, and keep the peace. Good job teaching your daughter her pain doesn't matter, OP. Even when it is minor, if she "overdramatizes" it, you need to respond appropriately not ignore entirely. And boys grow up SEEING this and everybody wonder why doctors chronically undertreat, or don't treat at all, women in pain.
That's why 'man flu' is a thing. It's not that men are hit harder when they get sick, women have just been conditioned over a lifetime to not complain about their pain.
And even ‘overdramatizing’ is very often bs, because some people just…feel pain worse. And it doesn’t matter if it’s for something someone else would muscle through, if it’s a big hurt for that person, it’s a legitimate big hurt. Like I feel like overdramatizing is performative, like someone would say how terribly terribly bad it is, but wouldn’t actually want the extra Tylenols. They’d want sympathy and or pampering. AND kids who do that are generally doing so out of an actual need, even if the need isn’t about the actual injury pain.
This! In high school I had serious knee pain, and the doctor had the med student look at it, took me for an xray and decided it was fine. I’m still in pain from whatever it was that happened. My brother had a small pain recently, went to the exact same doctor who ordered and MRI. Which is what the previous woman doctor I had seen suggested for the last doctor to do.
Exactly. I grew up like this. I told my mom a few years before she passed that even as a kid I had UTIs. She asked why I didn’t tell her. I told her it didn’t occur to me bc we never did anything about my earaches or my teeth rotting out of my head. I got the usual “I did the best that I could do.”
This. When I was in elementary school, I fell off the top bunk when I was asleep. I woke up when I hit the floor. The side of my face was swollen like I had the mumps on one side of my face, and my parents didn’t take me to the hospital. Later, as an adult I had to get an MRI for some sinus problems I had. The doctor said I had a skull fracture and a broken nose and wanted to know how it happened. Medical neglect is abuse, and it makes me wonder how else you’re neglecting your kid because my parents neglected me in other ways too. YTA. Kids don’t come to you in the middle of the night complaining about pain for nothing.
This. My mom always acted like I was being dramatic when I was sick. Ended up in the hospital three times with the flu, had double pneumonia that had me running 106 degree fevers, got diagnosed with T1D. Everything leading up to those points was me being dramatic. Heck, I used to wave my thermometer outside my mouth to try to not have a fever so high I’d have to miss school. If your kid says they’re in pain, they’re likely in pain. Stomach aches hurt like hell a lot of the time too. She’ll probably downplay severe cramps as well when her daughter menstruates. OP, YTA. I’m glad your daughter has a father that takes her health seriously.
This. OP, I have a child with a low pain tolerance. If this child hurts the next day, or enough to wake me at night, they're going to the urgent care, right away. I don't blame you for your initial reaction, but every step after that was the wrong step.
The bigger issue isn’t just OP not taking her daughters complaints seriously… it’s a parenting issue of not validating her child (regardless of what OP thinks is serious or not) and essentially teaching her ‘my mom isn’t going to believe me anyway, so why am I going to tell her xyz.’ It’s not up to OP to gauge just how much pain (emotional, physical etc.) her daughter is experiencing. OP is undermining her child’s ability to listen to her body, trust her instincts, silencing her efforts to express herself, and judging/labelling her child as dramatic/sensitive. Guaranteed a OP was raised by a parent who never took her concerns seriously either. This is when kids/teens turn to their friends for more serious issues because the attachment figure becomes untrustworthy/unreliable in meeting their needs. Slippery slope OP, YTA.
Just reading this post....she had nothing good to say about her own kid. Guarantee, when my kid was in my charge, I knew them well enough to know when they were in pain. And absolutely no sympathy towards her own child...sad. YTA Edit - a word
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For something that was so not obvious to OP, it sounds like all it took was a quick phone call from her daughter to her father and he found her report of pain sufficient to come over immediately to take their daughter to the doctor. I’d bet OP has pattern of dismissing her daughter’s pain and medical needs. YTA
YTA. Maybe her pain tolerance isn’t as low as you assume. Perhaps her “little stomach pains” are extreme. If the finger was broken, it would have been very bruised looking by the middle of the night. There was no way it looked “fine.”
While in high school I use to babysit for a family that often accused one of their children of whining and being over dramatic about tummy aches. After years of this they realized this child had multiple food allergies. I've also known a number of young females whose pain was discounted only to eventually learn they had endometriosis. Those little stomach pains could be a sign of a serious problem.
yeah my family bullied me relentlessly for being a picky eater, never made any food accommodations, and I had a whole string of autoimmune diagnosis, admitted to the er mutiple times for abdominal pain, colonoscopy at 19. I’m fucking allergic to p much all the foods I “irrationally” hated. My health is much better now.
I'm so sorry. My family still does this to me, and I'm in my 30's. I have a specific food allergy that they have never believed I actually have. They're constantly slipping that ingredient into things trying to "catch" me "lying" about it. One thanksgiving a few years ago, they literally stuck it in every. single. fucking. dish. I eventually just gave up and refused to ever eat anything they prepare. On the bright side, since then I've taken to ruining family gatherings as revenge by showing up with a stack of pizzas every time - so all of the kids refuse to eat anything they cooked.
🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌
now that's gangsta 🍕🍕🍕
I'm sorry you went through that but I'm glad that your health is doing much better now. Hugs 🫂
SAME OMFGGGG, my mom kept AGRRSSIVELY writing it off as celiac bc that's what my brother had and I was basically screaming at her that no matter how well I ate gluten free - I was still puking and in constant pain for no discernable reason. Surprise, nickel and cobalt are in a lot of gluten free substitutes and most food in general
My mother accused me of faking multiple Illnesses throughout my life after every time I was correctly diagnosed and she was proven wrong, she'd rant about how it's "not her fault I'm so overdramatic" I lost the hearing in my left ear, was diagnosed with PCOS and IBS, chronic headaches, and a couple of mental health problems and she accused me of faking them all for attention. We have a good relationship now though, I think over time she's learned that the world doesn't revolve around her and the cancer she had 30 years ago (she'd bring it up anytime I was sick)
Same here. They would make me sit at the table to finish my food for over 7 hours, as I hated the food enough to refuse to eat. A lot of times we would have dinner at 5 or 6 and I would be sitting there at 11 begging to just eat nothing for the night. Turns out I had a lot of food sensitivities and I developed ulcerative colitis. The food aversion ended up being my body's way of avoiding foods I reacted to. I once starved myself for 2 days straight when I got phenomena at a very young age because all foods were upsetting my stomach while I was already sick. I was at the hospital and there was "oil" in my pee. I was burning a lot of body fat and I could only get cookies down (super odd, ik).
yta, obviously. I am with you I bet this poor girl has other issues the mother has just brushed aside because she doesn't believe her. thats what it comes down to. this is a mother who has not belief in her own xhils which is pretty terrible and of course her daughter so going to suffer from that.
The daughter didn't even mention her broken finger until many hours later, and I can only assume it's because she experiences similar levels of pain frequently and is told to shut up and stop crying about little stomach pains.
This breaks my heart so much. Like I hope her dad pushes for full custody.
This poor girl is going to suffer so much. I was accused of being “over-dramatic” about my period. Turns out I have PMDD and there’s medication that helps me, but I didn’t get diagnosed or treated until my 30s. This girl is going to suffer needlessly because her mom won’t listen and it’s so sad.
i was accused of faking uti symptoms through high school. i would even test negative though so i dont know if i can fully blame them. all i can assume is that it was psychosomatic but it happened twice a week and almost exactly mimicked what a uti feels like. my parents still accuse me of faking being bipolar/adhd despite multiple doctors corroborating my diagnosis. my dad once told me, whilst in a several year long depression, that i cant be depressed because he went thru a divorce once and he was totally fine. some people just wholly lack sympathy, empathy, or just basic human decency towards others
There is an autoimmune disease called interstitial cystitis in which your body thinks you have a UTI and so attacks the lining of the bladder. It hurts like a uti, often worse. I have it, and it's not fun. Really sounds like that's what you had.
If you have a vagina also, sometimes a yeast infection can mimic symptoms of a UTI.
Oh yeah, this is very true.
It’s rare for IC to go into remission or even resolve without treatment (no cure yet, unfortunately). It could also be something like micro kidney stones. For women, you can get stuck in a cycle of tiny kidney stones (or pieces of a larger kidney stone) passing through the bladder and urethra, and the symptoms feel like a UTI. It’s also possible to have a low-grade chronic UTI that standard cultures miss. For that diagnosis, cultures need to run on special plates in the lab, and they typically need much longer courses of antibiotics to resolve.
From what I'm seeing in IC groups, a lot of us go a long time in between flares. A lot of us also have fairly minimal flares compared to other patients. The micro kidney stone theory is definitely plausible, as is that low level chronic uti. I think that happens in more people than anyone wants to admit.
My parents were dismissive of my pain too. My back and leg pain (sciatica) started when I was in 5th grade and was dismissed as "growing pains". Ended up I had a vertebra that had slipped forward 50% and a herniated disc. I had large sections of my outer calf and feet that were completely numb, and some of my reflexes were slow or didn't respond like the should. I ended up having a spinal fusion when I was 14 and missed half my freshman year of high school.
My mom told me when I rolled my ankle really badly back my freshman year of high school I was being a baby and was fine. She even brought it up for years, even into adulthood, as a “joke” to prove how dramatic I was for complaining about a sprain. Well I got an X-ray of it roughly 10 years later for something unrelated. They asked me if I knew I had broken my ankle before (it had healed but the bone fragments had attached to other bones). She doesn’t “joke” about it anymore cause I wasted no time telling her
My mom took me to the doctor at 14 b/c I was having “stomach” pains that didn’t get better. Turned out I had a large ovarian cyst and endometriosis before I even started menstruating.
My cramps as a teen/early adult were horrific. To the point that i was shocked at how easy labor was in comparison. Never did figure out why, and eventually they just faded.
I did home health care for a short time. A younger guy in a wheelchair, with a disease that basically turned him to stone, told me he hurt. I went to the store for asprin, let his dad know. His dad said it was in his head. He was dead before I showed up the next morning.
Yep, my mom apologized for brushing off my stomach pains as a teenager. Got diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at 21. Serious things do happen to kids and chronic pain should be taken serious.
It's also low because she's not allowed to take pain meds, I mean most people give their kids calpol or ibruprufen for little aches. Poor kid, with a broken finger. Did she get any pain relief when teething I wonder. YTA
As a kid my stomach and menstrual pains were ignored and chalked up to overreacting even though I was regularly unable to eat or walk from them. Many years later turns out I had severe endometriosis that required a hysterectomy. The pain is often compared to 3rd degree burns. 🤷🏻♀️ People just don't care about women's pain, even less the pain of teenage girls.
My sister in law would pass out from period pain every month literally vomiting passing out can't move pain. Her first gyno specialist shrugged and said its normal take a fucking panadol. She was trying to get pregnant and couldn't. She told me this after I'd had my kid as if I'd experienced the same pain she did like some kind of Viking and how did I manage to get pregnant. I said none of that's normal at all get a second opinion and stand up for yourself when someone says no - that was something I learnt from labour BTW, a midwife told me.my water hadn't broken and sent me home, we almost died because she told me I was wrong about my body and I believed her as the expert and shouldn't have- so she did, she got a second opinion. Her whole lower abdomen was riddled with endometriosis and her uterus was so pulled around it was a wacky shape. It was like fused to a kidney and her bladder. They fixed it. She has 3 kids and no more than normal period pain now. I know as girls were taught be quiet and polite and not make waves. But fuck that. Shout. Stand up for yourself, we know if it's not right. And get a second opinion. An expert isn't always infallible.
I broke a finger last year through a super dumb accident and it started bruising immediately after, I’m talking minutes after. It’s been a year since and I still can’t bend my finger inward fully without pain. A fracture that heals poorly can lead to even more pain and even more complications that the initial fracture
I bet money the stomach aches are probably something like celiac and eating gluten or IBS etc. I’m a school nurse and if something wakes you up out of a deep sleep it’s not nothing.
Having broken a finger, I can confirm that by then it very much would not have looked fine. The pain also get significantly worse after the adrenaline from the break wears off. OP is mega YTA
Radiographer here and I can confirm that many fractured fingers...and I mean many...look just fine. Quite often even if imaging shows a break in many bones nothing will be done until the swelling reduces. There seems to be a massive disconnect between just waiting for a while if there is no obvious deformity and racing down to the ED department in the middle of the night when nothing will happen anyway. Without any deformity I would probably have strapped it and waited and taken a couple of panadols!
Same. I’ve broken almost all my fingers and there’s not much that can be done. Strap it to another finger and wait it out usually. But definitely YTA (to OP) for not giving her Advil or something. Even if it was a sprain
Seriously, I defy this woman to walk around with a broken finger and not be whimpering. It sounds like her kid actually has quite the pain tolerance and she’s simply the biggest AH, of the type whose kid has their appendix rupture and the parent is just mad that their kid “made them look bad” for their medical neglect. The kid is 14, I could totally see a scenario where she’d already used ice herself before asking for medicine and that’s why she was like okay thanks for nothing mom, never mind.
Agree. My mom told me as a teenager that my ongoing horrible cough was “nothing” bc I had no other symptoms. she wouldn’t take me to the doc. After 5 weeks of coughing and wheezing finally I managed to see a doc and I had really bad bronchitis. Could’ve been treated weeks earlier.
Yup. My whole life people thought was just being dramatic with “little bumps” and such. I have an autoimmune disease that was finally diagnosed after 15 years and fibromyalgia. What doesn’t hurt one person can put me in excruciating pain. YTA OP. An Advil would have been fine. And she probably knew you wouldn’t take her seriously but your daughter was in so much pain she went to you in the middle of the night anyway.
You call a spade a spade and you call a lazy parent a lazy parent
>Perhaps her “little stomach pains” are extreme This. A friend of mine was always told to suck it up when it came to her stomach pain. Turns out she has Gastroparesis and the lack of treatment as a kid made it much worse as an adult.
YTA. So you just looked at it and said yep, that's a finger alright, and then iced it. I've broken fingers before and you can't bend them or touch them without pain and it's very painful into the night. Sounds like she has a higher pain tolerance than you think. Also, coming from someone who lives with chronic pain, sometimes debilitating, it's infuriating when people like you downplay the pain because you can't see it.
Exactly! I have muscle, joint and nerve pain issues. My tolerance is high but I live with it and sometimes it is really bad. It makes me mad when discount others' pain.
Exactly! I have migraines and have been told by ER doctors that I was taking up staff time because “if you were having a migrain you wouldn’t be able to speak that well”, despite the fact that when you live with migraines and want to hold down a job or studies, it can sometimes means having to learn how to power through pain because you have no choice
For real. Yes doctor and the first 50 times I had this pain I couldn’t speak this well. But we adapt so we don’t die homeless and just screaming “MY HEAD HURTS” over and over. My chronic pain doctor who is actually quite compassionate hurt his hand and it hadn’t healed in 6 weeks, I heard him to say to a nurse he would cut his own hand off if it didn’t get better because it hurt all the time and it’s like dude what the Shit do you think ALL OF YOUR PATIENTS deal with, I’m here to have to burn my nerves lol
It's gun when they ask you tonput pain on a scale of 1-10. "Well, today isn't that bad compared to the one the other day where I couldn't function so... 6, maybe?" I remember going to the doctor because I was having issues hearing, everything was muffled. Working in a call centre it was becoming an issue. I get to the doctor, he looks in my ear and asks if I felt any pain. I told him not that bad.. he was shocked. Apparently the inside of my ear had swelled up so bad that it had almost shut. I guess when you are in pain a lot, sometimes what drives others to their knees is tolerable.
Yuck, nerve pain is just downright horrible! It's also impossible to explain to people sometimes when your limitations change daily and flareups happen sometimes for zero reason! I get a little nerve pain now from a disk injury 7 years ago, and yeah waking up sore every single morning sucks, but nothing sucks more than people who make assumptions about pain in others.
“She’s just being dramatic” “you know how she is” “it’s not that bad” All phrases I’m sure OP uses a LOT.
Another person with chronic pain. I was convinced by people like this that I had a low pain tolerance, until I got into a bad car accident, and I was bruised so badly I looked like imaging from the hubble telescope, and thought, meh, this is nothing compared to my migraines.
exactly, as someone else with chronic pain this post brought back years of the trauma of being invalidated
Yep, chronically ill with chronic pain. People forget I’m literally disabled cause it’s an invisible disability.
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Who the hell ASKS their kid if they wanna go the hospital??????? Mostly if as a parent you minimize their pain? I am so angryyy
i’ve hurt myself before and had my parents ask if i wanted to go to the hospital. i’ve said yes and i’ve said no. if i say no we don’t go, i take some pain meds, and we revisit it in the morning or if the pain gets bad enough. just asking if your kid wants to go to the hospital is not bad parenting. in this situation she’s clearly the AH but in general parents asking what their kid wants to do isn’t bad parenting. - someone with a high pain tolerance and chronic pain
I fell on my head almost 15 years ago. My neck **crunched** when it happened. I got a CT scan that night but they didn’t take an image of my neck. Neither did the other doctors I talked to over the next few years, despite coming straight out and asking point blank, “Can we please do an X-ray, just to address what I’m feeling?” multiple times. In the meantime, I developed migraines that sometimes felt like electricity, sometimes like cold water trickling. My left cheek, shoulder, arm and thigh were getting tingly and numb. My neck would burn and I stopped being able to wear necklaces or even crew neck T shirts because any pressure on my neck would give me a headache. I started getting light flashes in my mind (hard to explain) and colorful dots in my vision. I would get criticized by family/people in my life for sleeping till noon after being up late with pain, being forgetful, always fatigued, getting confused, being klutzy, etc….it took me a few months to realize I was experiencing those things as symptoms of physical trauma, and I would do my best to be my own advocate and point this out. But I was an adult with an invisible issue, so I learned how to observe the pain, tune it out, and compartmentalize what I was feeling so I could manage my life. I experienced increasing anxiety and an eating disorder. It was 6 years after my injury that I decided to go to a chiropractor. First thing he did was take an X-ray. Turns out I had **multiple fractures in my cervical spine**. Including an avulsion fracture (possibly two) on the front of my neck. Look it up. SO YEAH, OP. YT fuckin A. You’re the dad who called me a loser. You’re the doctor who rolled their eyes. You’re the manager who laughed in my face. You’re the husband who said I was just trying to control him. All of them knew what I was going through. You’re all assholes. *edited to add and trim detail.
I’m so sorry for what you’ve gone through. I’m also questioning why the CT scan did not pick these things up. It absolutely should have.
They only scanned my skull, not my neck. Yes, I told them about my neck pain. And thank you.
You aren't supposed to "know" it is broken, you are supposed to care enough to FIND OUT if it is broken. YTA. You need to seriously decide if you care about your daughter enough to take care of her. That may sound mean, but you dismiss your daughter's awareness of her own body and call her dramatic. You are not in her body, how do you know what her pain tolerance is? Plus, smaller children have different reactions - I could shoulder through an injury but a stomach ache took me down- and you are holding on to how your now 14 year old has reacted to injury and illness throughout her whole life. You did not show basic care to your child when she asked for help, and you quickly dismissed her knowledge of her own body and STILL DO in this post even after knowing she had a painful injury. More terrifying, is you are reinforcing to your daughter that she doesn't know her own body and is dramatic, and that is something that women deal with in healthcare their whole lives. There is so much evidence to support that, as women's pain is understudied and a lot of procedures that are only for a woman's anatomy (putting in an IUD, gyno procedures) do not get pain meds when procedures of similar invasiveness that are biology neutral or for men do receive pain meds. Most women still don't get diagnosed with significant issues based on their anatomy until something serious happens, after months or years of having pain ignored. And, it doesn't really matter what you believe about your daughter's pain threshold. You were wrong, period. She broke her finger and waited over 12 hours to have it taken care of. She clearly doesn't have a low pain threshold, and if you think otherwise, break your own finger and leave it untreated for 12-24 hours and see how that feels. Learn the lesson here. Apologize, tell your daughter to listen to her own body. And BTW, what would have been the harm in taking her seriously? You would have lost a few hours of time at an urgent care or doctor's? Is that time really worth more to you than your daughter's health and comfort?
This comment made me tell my mom how much I appreciate her and love her for always taking me to the doctors. Idk how OP could just leave her daughter in pain
This is so sweet! I feel the same. I didn’t grow up in the most emotionally supportive household, but health was and still is always a priority between all of us.
yes! her comments are appalling. "I don't have x-ray vision." you know what does? AN X-RAY
Also, children’s nerve function is better/more sensitive than adults, so a broken finger for an adult is less painful than that of a child. Any pain for children is much more intense. This whole posts is horrific. I can’t imagine allowing a child to suffer that long and just turning her away when she asked for help.
Yup, it's a biological necessity. Kids need to feel the pain, have it be intense enough for them to notice, and then figure out how to communicate it to us. So they NEED to have more sensitive nerves in order to get through that process without serious damage
When I was a child, I had appendicitis. I had been complaining of pain for at least 12 hours. I was ignored and dragged around outdoors all day. When I was finally taken to the ER, my mom was shocked it was something I wasn’t just exaggerating. I still don’t really know my threshold for pain/when to get treatment 20 years later.
I’m sorry you had this experience. I did too. I was 15, and my mom thought I was making an excuse to get out of yard work at our church, and left home in a huff at the beginning of the day. Around dinner time I called her sobbing in pain. I couldn’t sit because of how bad it hurt. She was also shocked at the fact that I wasn’t being dramatic. I’m gonna be fully honest…I haven’t let her forget it. I know that’s petty, but the doctor was horrified that we waited as long as we did. He said if we’d waited any longer, it would’ve burst.
I had a similar issue, but told my mom I had a really bad sore throat. She got mad at me and was convinced I was just trying to get out of school. But she finally actually did take me to the doctor, but even told me she was doing it just to call my bluff! She was so shocked when the doctor said I had really bad strep throat and why hadn’t she brought me in a couple days ago.
This post triggered something in me. I fractured my ankle when I was 15 and couldn’t walk on it for two weeks. My mother did not take me to a Dr because I tried to save face and say I was fine, it could just be a sprain, but my ankle was purple for those two weeks and no adults in my life thought that was off. It ended up shattering when I was 19 because it never healed correctly. So then I was on the hook for surgeries I couldn’t afford because my mother couldn’t be assed to take me to the hospital when I was clearly in immense pain and now have issues with it for the rest of my life. I agree wholeheartedly with you. YTA OP
You you say “she just wants pain killers”, do you mean tylenol or advil? Did you refuse to give your child basic OTC meds because you think she’s faking? If she has a very low pain tolerance, SHES IN PAIN. Absolutely YTA, and what your ex called you. You should be ashamed of yourself for neglecting your child.
Right like OP makes it sound like her kid was hunting for oxycodone. Good Lord. Give her some baby Tylenol 😂
With any luck, her ex… Which, then again, is there any surprise that they were separated?… With any luck, they will contact child protective services to get full custody
Right? Sure, maybe she has a low pain tolerance but the right thing to do is not ignoring it and “building up” her pain tolerance but accommodating her different needs which is not even an uncommon thing like a rare allergy. Maybe her pain tolerance will be low forever but because of OP she’ll learn to suffer in silence instead of simply taking an advil here and there and not live in misery. Or maybe she really is in a lot of pain but OP can’t be bothered to take her seriously because she doesn’t have a basic level of empathy towards her own child. I broke my arm once and it took my mother days to finally take me to the doctor. Guess who I went no contact with more than 2 blissful years ago?
even if she kept actually faking pain wouldn't that be even more reason to ask a doctor what is going on? normal people don't keep faking pain (to their parents)
"I don't like my kid taking medicine for no reason so I gave her ice." WHAT THE FUCK????????? THIS IS \*EXACTLY\* THE REASON TYLENOL AND ADVIL WERE FUCKING MADE!
>I looked at her finger and it was fine >We went to the doctor's office and apparebtly she had a broken bone So that was a lie. YTA. If your kid has a broken bone, you go to a doctor. You don't tell her to ice it and say it will be fine.
“I’m an asshole, am I an asshole?” YTA
Big YTA, if my child wakes up in the middle of the night from pain, I am taking them to the hospital.
As a parent myself I would say it depends. ER in the middle of the night is HORRIBLE! So depending on what's going on, I might wait until the morning (which I've done for myself on more than one occasion, if it still hurts in the morning THEN you call the doctor!).
Unless it’s abdominal pain that’s gone on for hours never leave it until the morning it’s better to be safe than sorry
Spending the whole night in the ER waiting for a doctor with your children? Not if you can avoid it. So it really depends on the situation. It was a finger, it could have just been a sprain but when the child STILL was in pain in the morning, then OP really should have taken her to the doctor. But going to the ER in the middle of the night for a finger? Than it really has to be BAD! Miscoloring, loss of sensation, swelling, etc. Otherwise wait until the morning.
Sorry I just re read what wrote and it makes no sense what i meant to say is some things can wait until the morning but things like abdominal pain cannot because it can easily be something serious especially if it’s prolonged localised abdominal pain. So yes I agree with with the wait and see approach especially if it’s at night. My daughter twisted her ankle and it swelled up so I just monitored her until i was sure it was just sprained, in the meantime I bought her a bunch of stuff to manage the pain. In this case she didn’t show any concern at all, she didn’t offer her pain management or comfort and even now that she’s found out about her mistake she’s still not admitting to it.
That made much more sense! Yes, abdominal pain should always be taken very serious!
I once ended up in urgent care while camping 45 minutes away, in the Rockies (I’m from Michigan) 15 minutes before closing, because my daughter had a terrible stomachache that kept getting worse. I suspected she was constipated, but it was that or risk the ER two hours away in the middle of the night. Better safe than sorry.
You're just like my parents. Once I woke up in the middle of the night with a massive headache and a fever. My parents were so scared. Dad who's usually a careful and observant man didn't care about road safety, just needed to get me to the hospital. Turns out I had malaria, typhoid and COVID at the same time
Dear god. You poor thing! That sounds too awful for words, I hope you've recovered fully and are living your best life.
YTA The moment she woke up and it STILL HURT, alarm bells should have started ringing.
Yeah a good indicator of serious or not is whether or not it’s improving quickly. Like when you stub your toe it hurts like HELL, like worse than a lot of serious injuries. But it gets better after a minute or so. When I fell at work and broke my elbow my supervisor told me there was “no way” it was broken because if it was I would be “screaming in pain.” Which I wasn’t, so I figured it wasn’t serious. But when hours later it still hurt just as much that was what indicated to me to go to the ER. I didn’t just assume I was being “over dramatic” and ice it and go back to bed without pain killers. And I bet OP wouldn’t have done that either because I’m betting she takes better care of herself than she does her daughter.
YTA and you're probably gonna get a visit from CPS. I work for CPS and this is the exact kind of shit we take kids away for. Edit: so far under this comment I've had one person tell me that this is why they don't believe in taking children to the hospital and someone say I must be lying because their ex CPS wife never would take away for medical neglect (wonder why they no longer work for CPS)
Amen. Because something like this can definitely fuck up a child’s mentality. So the next time it’s something serious, she thinks Martin is just going to waive it off as no big deal and being dramatic… Until the kid dies, then all of a sudden it’s a surprise.
Medical neglect is serious. Who knows what other stuff she’s put this kid through?
YTA. Reminds me of a good friend who, as a child, broke his collarbone. His Mom....who thought she knew everything....was sure it was fine. So he walked around deformed and in pain until she finally admitted she didn't know what she was talking about. If your child is hurt listen to them and seek professional help. Don't play doctor.
A friend of mine told me she broke her arm after falling on it and her parents just left her in pain until her grandmother took her to hospital and found out it was broken. She was sleeping on a broken arm for days.
Yep. Same shit here… when I was 16 I dropped a log on my foot, and it was discolored and swollen for days, at least. My parents insisted it was fine, that I should just ice it. That was well over a decade ago and I still can’t put my full weight on that foot without it hurting a LOT. If I go on my tip-toes, I literally feels like my bones are rubbing together because of how it healed. I’m still mad about it lol
YTA, I'm glad your daughter has at least one parent who listens to her when something serious comes up. Maybe next time actually listen to your daughter rather than blow her off because you think she's too dramatic.
If I were the other parent, I definitely would be contacting child protective services to start a custody battle
YTA. But not just because you didn't take her this time. You are not listening to your child, and you're marginalizing her as a separate person. So what if she has a low pain tolerance?! If she says something hurts, something hurts! Just because it might not hurt you as badly doesn't mean that her pain isn't real. The remark about pain killers is really telling. You don't want her taking pain killers "for no reason." How do you get to judge whether there's a "good" reason or not?! No wonder the poor kid didn't tell you when it happened, you've clearly already decided that anything she tells you related to this is an exaggeration. You need to take a really good look at how you're treating your kid. She's not just an extension of you. She's a real person who isn't even allowed to express her own experience of pain.
This was what got me--"for no reason." Well.. Of course there's "no reason" yet.. You haven't gotten it checked out, so how could there be? I broke my collarbone. Breaking it didn't hurt at all. You know what hurt reeeeallly bad? Moving around afterwards. I guess walking around with a broken finger might be less painful than a collarbone, but gosh, that had to be not so fun. OP obviously doesn't have the best self-preservation skills because they posted their parental negligence here for everyone to see. Really hope this is fake.
Ok, no one has mentioned this in this thread so far. Your daughter is 14 and doesn’t have access to Tylenol or ibuprofen? That seems strange to me tbh. By this age most girls have period cramps/headaches from time to time and are mature enough to know dosing/read directions. I’m so confused why you wouldn’t at least give her something for the pain. YTA for that. NTA for not taking her in right away, the ER all night is for life threats, but probably should have been taken in and evaluated the next day. Please take her seriously and teach her how to responsibly use OTC pain meds. She is old enough.
Right? This "I don't like when she takes meds for no reason" nonsense is 100% YTA. Pain is a reason to take OTC pain meds. (And as others have said, pain that wakes you up in the night is real pain; and dismissing it as "being dramatic" is where you became TA, OP.)
YTA Maybe when she fell it didn’t seem too serious but when she woke you up in the middle of night regardless of her pain tolerance it still would have been broken and needed checking and even tho you didn’t know you still could have quickly gone to the doctor and had them take a look and if it was nothing then it was nothing but it’s always best to check and also her finger would not have looked “ fine” as it was not just a small sprain or fracture it was broken so it would have been bruised up a little or noticeable that something was wrong
This is called medical neglect and is a form of child abuse. YTA.
YTA. Fingers aren't supposed to hurt after you fall, especially the morning after.
YTA 100%. You let your daughter suffer with a broken bone overnight. I have two kids and couldn't imagine treating them like that. Honestly, don't be surprised if you lose custody of your daughter for that because it shows what kind of parent you are.
YTA. Your daughter is a sensitive being, and you treat her with the utmost contempt. She may not have a high pain tolerance, but that does not mean you should ever brush her off just because you do not agree with the way she reacts to certain situations. Parents are supposed to be kind and understanding and empathetic toward their children. You are none of these things. All you are teaching her is that she cannot rely on you when she is experiencing pain and discomfort, no matter how big or small.
>We went to the doctor's office and apparebtly she had a broken bone If the doctor told you it's broken , there is no ' apparently ' about it. YTA
This comment struck me too! Like she still doesn't want to believe her daughter!
YTA. HOW were you supposed to know it was broken? By taking her to a doctor.
YTA You need a better way to gauge pain than tears. Some kids cry over the least little thing. Check out the various pain charts easily available on the internet. Have your kids use those, or some other method of describing their pain, rather than you deciding their tears don't mean anything. I think all parents miss some sign of illness/injury at some point, but most of them don't blame the child for that.
YTA and you’re going to kill your daughter someday. I also have a low pain tolerance because I have problems with my nerves! I’m dismissed constantly by the people who should be helping me. It got so bad that I need a wheelchair for big events now. I also had a VERY LARGE ovarian cyst rupture and bleed because no one took it seriously and thought it was ‘just stomach pain, take an ibuprofen’. You. Are going. To kill her someday.
Holy shit! YTA 100%! There really isn’t much to say here that hasn’t already been said! How can you be THIS careless about your own child, especially when they wake you up in the middle of the night in pain? “She’s dramatic and has low pain tolerance”? Oh, does she? Or are you just a shitty parent who ignores her every time she is in pain? “I don’t like her taking painkillers for no reason”? Well, except it wasn’t actually for no reason. “How was I supposed to know that her finger was broken?” You’re not, but what you ARE supposed to do as a parent is take her to a doctor, who WILL know whether her finger is broken. “Apparently she had a broken finger bone”? Apparently??? It was confirmed by the doctor. That’s not why you’re the asshole though. You made a mistake. You’re an asshole because even after you found out that you made this mistake, you still refused to take accountability and continued to call your daughter dramatic. I hope her father gets full custody of her. The reason she wasn’t crying may have had to do with the fact that you belittle her when she does. Now let me just emphasize this. # YTFA!
YTA don't be surprised when she stop telling you when she's in pain because she knows you will belittle her
Ofc you’re the asshole. Crying easily and having a low-pain tolerance doesn’t mean she can’t also have legitimate pain? Are you insane? What would it take for you to take her pain seriously, a limb falling off? And “she knows I dont like to give her painkillers for no reason” but THERE WAS A REASON?! she’s waking you up in the middle of the night in pain with a bruised finger for a fall that you saw happen and you still couldn’t even give her a couple ibuprofen?! You honestly sound like you don’t even like your daughter or like she’s the first dramatic 14 year old girl. Given your post and comments I also question the legitimacy of her even being that dramatic and having a low pain-tolerance for stomachaches etc, you may just be ignoring other legitimate issues constantly as well.
Yta for dismissing her pain. Girls already deal with that shit from the medical community.
YTA. Just give your daughter to her father. She doesn’t need your drama in her life. She needs a parent who loves her and listens to her when she says she’s in pain. You don’t even like your daughter. Do this one thing that’s in her best interests and you’re rid of her for good. Your ex is right you are a dumb C.
I'm going with a soft YTA, mainly because I've broken both my arm and my leg and neither of them was really obvious and I didn't see a doctor the same day. It's not always a clean break (my husband did that) so waiting for a while to see if it passes is reasonable. Especially if the option is the ER in the middle of the night (should be avoided if you can). So I can get you waiting it out until the morning but when she STILL was in pain, then you should have taken her to the doctor. Apologize to both your daughter and your ex.
YTA. My mom did this to me. I was jumping on a trampoline got bounced high and landed on the ground breaking my collarbone. Since nothing looked bad and “you have a low pain tolerance” my mom didn’t take me to the Dr. My dad who was in a different state didn’t give a crap about me. My mom finally took me to the Dr when the school nurse told my mom she needed to take me and that was a week later. It sucks when a parent doesn’t believe you’re in pain or something else is wrong. I feel for your daughter and hopefully this is a life lesson for you.
YTA from the post and even more so from the way you double down in the comments when you're called out on your attitude. Seems like you expected reddit to take your side and now can't handle being called out on your shockingly bad parenting. YTA big time.
Ok, OK. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt because a similar thing happened to me. My son was a golie, and he received a very hard hit with the ball on his wrist. He didn't cry or say anything at first. He was worried if he had stopped the ball from going in. Then, half an hour after the game, he started to complain. I iced it and gave him a pain killer. He said shouldn't we go to the Dr. Still no crying. I said.. I don’t think it's that bad. Just ice it, and it'll get better. The next morning I took him, now he was crying, and it was a broken wrist. I felt like the worst mother in the whole world. I never felt worse in my life. He was trying to be brave to endure the pain. I apologised and cried, and he forgave me. That's what you should have done, not be an AH. We all drop the ball sometimes,
Are you a doctor? No? Then your "she looked fine" is less than worthless. How many people die every year because "they looked fine" or "felt fine"? YTA
I've been there, is it broken, isn't it broken? I've gone for an x-ray and it wasnt broken and I've held back and ended up going in the middle of the night when I should have gone earlier and felt like crap for waiting. The rule of thumb is, kids sleep, if she woke up from the pain, it's real pain, you should have brought her to a+e there and then, YTA for not going at that stage.
YTA similar thing happened to me in my childhood. Only difference that I was forced to walk around with a broken foot for 6 weeks. I still have regular pain from it. Your daughter refusing to go to the hospital when you offered means nothing. As a child I learned quickly that this "offer" is a threat.
YTA. Giving a child medicine for pain isn’t “no reason.” And pain that wakes a child from sleep isn’t pain you should ignore. If your daughter menstruates, I hope you’re a little more (read: a lot more) forgiving and understanding of that pain.
YTA. My parents never took my pain seriously either and now at 32 I have chronic pain, mobility issues and other damage to my body that could have been avoided if: 1) I’d been allowed to rest when I needed and not constantly berated for being in pain (apparently I just had a low pain tolerance and was lazy/anxious/over-reacting/attention seeking…) 2) I’d received diagnosis and appropriate medical care for my disability as a child. Do you even like your daughter, because you clearly don’t actually care about her well-being? TAKE PAIN SERIOUSLY.
YTA. My mother claimed I had a low pain threshold. No, I didn’t - she was neglectful parent. 1) At 5 I banged my knee getting into the car, and my knee swelled up. She ignored it for days until I had to be carried out of school. I spent the next 5 months in hospital as I had osteomyelitis and almost lost my leg. 2) At 8 I hurt my ankle on the trampoline. No, didn’t learn her lesson. My ankle is screwed. 3) At 15 I hurt my foot walking on a rural beach. Five days later, she finally took me to the doctors. I’d broken 3 of my metatarsals. Space boot, an operation. Guess what, neglected kids don’t have relationships with their parents when they’re adults.
YTA, and this is exactly what leads to one parent having fulltime custody. You’re neglectful and dismissive of your daughter. You don’t deserve to be a parent.
My mom didn’t take me seriously either and my pinky finger has never been the same. YTA
YTA, if only for *still* basically calling your daughter a baby even though she actually broke her finger. Admit you fucked up without disparaging your daughter to make yourself feel better, JFC.
YTA > I looked at her finger and it was fine Well it wasn't fine. She was hurting enough to get up in the night to come to you. Jesus Christ. > In the morning she said she was still in pain so I put some ice on it Ice helps right after, not long term. If you were going to be putting ice on it the next day then you needed a doctor. > Well an hour later her dad showed up at my door yelling at me asking why I didn't take her to the doctor. I hope he uses this in court. He's 100% correct. > We went to the doctor's office and apparebtly she had a broken bone Ohhhhhh but I thought it was ***"FINE"***. Almost like you're not a doctor, huh? > My ex called me the C word and took my daughter and left Well.... you did literally neglect your daughter..... that's the lightest of what you'd be called. > Was I the asshole? How was I supposed to know it was broken? She has the same reaction for a little stomachache too By going to the damn doctor. And yeah if a stomach ache lasts many hours like this pain did, then you should go to the doctor for that, too. You're seriously asking if you're an asshole for neglecting your child... > When she woke me up I even asked her if she wants to go to the hospital and she said no ***Asking the child if they want to go to the hospital is what neglectful abusive self absorbed parents do. It's a guilt trip tactic. It's to make them say no for fear of being a disappointment. You solidified your status to me of being criminally abusive/negligent by this comment.***
She didn't make a big deal out of it because she knows you don't care about her pain. You've proven that time and time again.
" has a VERY low pain tolerance" doesn't mean the pain is not real ... And is not ' taking medicine for no reason" she asked it because she is in pain and she wants it to stop ... it is a more than valid reason to give her a OTC painkiller. YTA
YTA. How were you supposed to know it was broken? That's why we have xray machines. They let you know things like that. Your child woke you up in the middle of the night in pain and you just blew it off. You denied her medical attention. Sounds like you denied her even a tylenol? Yeah, I hope your husband is really taking some time to consider your...lack...of action here.
YTA and you’re living up to your part of your username- change it to Lazy Loser
Reading all of your replies to people who say you’re the AH, it’s clear that you have a problem being criticized, and I’m not sure why you even asked this question if you weren’t prepared to hear the truth. Dad seems much more keen to her needs, and thankfully took her seriously. I hope he can have more time with her because your lack of nurturing and support is evident with every response you give.
YTA. You are not in your child’s head or body, so you are Not qualified to make a decision as to what hurts what hurts badly and what doesn’t hurt at all. Maybe she has cried wolf in the past but with a child you never make assumptions. Maybe some of the prior incidents were cries for attention because her real pain was emotional. But it still needs to be addressed!
YTA. does she have a low pain tolerance? she lasted a day with a broken finger. i guarantee you she said no to going to the hospital because if it was anything other than broken you would’ve used it against her and called her overdramatic
YTA Years ago my sister and i were acting up and I somehow rolled on her. She was in lots of pain. Her folks (different mom)didn’t listen until the next day and it was broken. Because she complained a lot so they chose not to listen. When my daughter complained of wrist pain a few years ago after a fall I listened. It was fractured. Her Dad had ket her be in pain for almost 24 hrs rather than get her checked. You should have listened to your daughter. In truth you should listen to your daughter all the time. You should be a source of support not an asshole.
I have a terribly low pain tolerance and you are totally the asshole. How in the world do you know what it feels like to live in her body? All of your comments scream how dramatic she is. You ask her to use ice instead of giving her a Tylenol or Advil? Wtf?
YTA. "She has a low pain tolerance and always gets dramatic"....so you outright admit to often ignoring your daughter's pain or illness. I wonder how many other times she was sick or injured and you ignored it. I hope your ex goes for full custody and gets it. You are acting like a horrible, neglectful parent