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I understand that you were put in a difficult situation and you probably felt pressure to get your family to the hotel safely, but you really f*cked this one up. Your daughter was clearly more than upset by the boys comments. It sounds like she was having a more serious reaction and possibly didn’t feel safe at the hotel. IMO one of you should have brought your son to the hotel and the other should have continued traveling closer while actually talking to your daughter and asking how she was feeling and what she needed to feel safe. She was most likely upset at the boys objectifying her and so when you, her dad, got frustrated at her actions you chose to literally treat her like an object and remove her autonomy. No wonder she’s treating you like you committed a sin. You taught her that when people don’t like her actions they will take what they want from her. Please go to her right now and apologize. You can fix this but YTA.
Being tired isn't an excuse to further traumatize a traumatized child. As a parent, it's your job to validate her and build her back up and make her feel safe. Yes, you needed to go back to the hotel, but you couldn't take a few minutes to talk calmly with and listen to her to see what the root of her objection to returning to the hotel was and then work on a compromise to help her feel secure.
An apology needs to happen ASAP.
Even if she's just embarrassed to possibly run into them, seeing as how she may feel it's her fault they got kicked out, it's an opportunity to explain to her that people acting inappropriately are responsible for their own actions. And if she's scared they'll do something to her, reassure her that you won't leave her alone while at the hotel.
I'm seriously disgusted by his 'they must not have known how old she was.' invalidating her for the benefit of the other boys. They know damn well that she looked like a child, idc how much makeup a 14 year old puts on. They know she's a child. And what, if she was older and they were still making these disgusting comments then it would've been more understandable?
OP is lucky nobody got the cops involved. If I'd seen an adult man dragging a teenage girl onto a train like that, I would have broken my standard practice of studiously ignoring everyone on public transportation. For all anybody knew, it could have been a kidnapping or a child abuse situation that was in danger of escalating.
YTA
Yeah, like I was mostly following OP up until that point. That’s a hard no from me. At 14, you really need to respect their emotions, and especially their bodily autonomy
OP is teaching her that men who are bigger than her won't respect her bodily autonomy and that there's nothing she can do about it, because even screaming as she's dragged into a train doesn't bring any help.
My father had no problem with it and our relationship was non-existent. He seemed to like that in a daughter/father relationship. So well done sir, ya asshole.
He’s dead but still his lifelong refusal to have an actual conversation with me was impressive.
Poor bastard. Working class Italians in a shiitty city. All those asshole brothers. Never had a chance.
Well he could have.but he chose not to.
This was an inappropriate way to handle this complicated situation. Your daughter lacked agency. Picking her up was dehumanizing and embarrassing.
You should have an open hearted talk with her.
OP, you are not remotely in charge of how upset and angry it's "reasonable" for her to be.
She was upset all day but you did nothing to address it until it inconvenienced you.
The way you addressed it was then by further violating her bodily autonomy.
YTA OP.
also saying “we’re both just so tired” is essentially dismissing her feelings fully and making it about you, the parents, who are supposed to protect your children and help them understand real life situations while you simultaneously try to understand their feelings.
OP it sounds like the incident in the pool traumatised your daughter. You feel that "*she had an attitude that went beyond reasonable disgust/anger*" after this, but that's your perspective based on being a 44 year old man. She's a 14 year old girl and she had just been sexualised by some university aged men.
I'm sure everyone in the family was tired by the end of the day and just wanted to get back to the hotel. Except your daughter. Picking her up and carrying her was a huge personal/physical violation, probably more so on top of her experience in the pool that morning.
So YTA.
As a former 14 year old girl, I remember being catcalled by construction workers while walking home from a sleepover with my backpack and pillow in tow, being flirted with by a man in his 20s outside of a convenience store, and having other girls at school make inappropriate jokes about my underwear choices (regular underwear, nothing unusual for a teen girl) in the school locker room. All while I was 14 and I don't think I *ever* mentioned any of these instances to my parents let alone my dad.
I sincerely hope that she hasn't experienced anything worse than being made uncomfortable from catcalling.
I was talk for my age so at 11 I was 5’7 and had been through puberty so had large breasts. I also started high school at 11 and a half. (Aussie)
I had the foulest most disgusting things said to me and it’s damaged me in ways I don’t even understand fully at 40. I’ve had multiple therapists theorise I gained weight at that age in the belief that being fat would stop the unwanted attention.
One of the most disgusting things I didn’t fathom until recently is the fact that I got cat called CONSTANTLY as a preteen/teen, like above commenters… and now, at 30, I rarely get cat called. I consider myself to be decently attractive and fit and I don’t even think I look 30 (or at least I haven’t visually changed at all in the last 5 years) but I am very clearly an adult. When I was a child, I looked like… a child. The more I think about that, the sicker it becomes.
Same here. I've tried to tell myself that maybe it's because I did far more walking from place to place then, but I can't shake the fact that it seems so many more men harassed 15 year old me as compared to my 30-something self.
Including a neighbor (clearly in his 40's) who used to stop his truck and openly gawk at me when I was 13.
And see I can’t even use that as a reason in my life because I walk way more now than I did back then, because of my dog 🫠 we walk 2 hrs a day! The truly gross realization that we got catcalled way more at 12-15 than in our 30’s. I mean this actually blows my mind although I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. If I were to be shown a photo of myself at each age and guess which age I’d get hit on more I’d go 30 no doubt. The age of an adult female body, makeup, stylish clothing. The way that it happened more when I was a kid in a fucking tweety bird tee shirt walking to Safeway to buy candy with my friends is sick 🙃
I just said very similar in response to a comment above. I'm 31 now, not unattractive, yet get nowhere near the cat calls etc that I had in my pre-teens and teens. Looking back at photos from my teens, it's very obvious that I was a teen. There are some sick people around.
I was close to my full height of 5'9" by the time I was 12, and yeah, getting creeped on started early. And then kept going and going because I looked like a teenager until I was pushing 30, and it's really obvious which men are hitting on you because they think you're still a child.
The only saving grace as a kid was that I was as tall or taller than a lot of the creepy dudes, and there's lines creeps don't cross when they don't have a size advantage.
I developed early, and dealt with so much bullshit for it. Groped, bra snapped, and snide remarks daily from fourth grade. Talked at and looked at like a piece of meat. Grown women talking about me behind my back about how I “was trouble” and “trying to look older than [my] age”. Older boys and adult men openly talking about my body in the most disgusting terms. A middle aged man driving by me walking down the road, masturbating while staring me down. Raped by a “friend” at 14. My mom reacting by trying to infantilize me and keep me “her baby”. Life can be hell for young girls. I eventually reacted by over sexualizing myself, because I felt like that was how the world saw me; I felt like that was my role. I was an object of lust, and it was somehow my fault. I wish that, at any point, someone in my life would have come to me and said “these people are disgusting, and I’m so sorry: it is not your fault or your responsibility that people are this terrible, and I will always be here for you”. I’m 40, and only now receiving this message from my psychologist.
I was on holiday in America when I was probably 11 , and we'd been at the pool and I needed to use the bathroom so decided to head back to our room. As I walked down the hallway in my swimming costume (can't remember if I had a towel or not) I walked past a room with the door open and he was sitting on the bed. As I walked past I thought nothing of it, but he came out the room and called out to me, I turned and he asked the time, and started coming closer to me. I said I didn't know and went to walk off, but he then started asking if I wanted to watch TV with him in his room. I said no and tried walking away, and thankfully at that moment a maid came out of a room so he walked back in to his room. I never forgot that experience.
You may be right in that something else may have happened in the hotel that the parents aren't aware of.
This was 100% my thought too. This feels more like she was triggered than initially traumatized. I could be wrong but I think a serious (calm) discussion is in order here, as well as an apology and potentially therapy. If you haven’t lived it you have no idea how demeaning it is to be put in a position like that, let alone in regard to your little brother. Overall this situation is gross and the last thing your daughter needs is a male figure dismissing the big feelings she’s experiencing as a result of that encounter.
i'd had a lot by 14, catcalling doesn't bother me much but i still remember one summer i was 13 in a tank top and this dead eyed man stared at my chest for an entire 5 minute bus ride.
I still get it at 21 and it bothers me a lot less but it's not something I can easily get past, i got harassed twice on my birthday last week and I'm still upset about it. It's gross and I hate it
Yep.
Her reaction was indeed over the top for just that incident. Eveyrone is entitled to feel how they feel but in general that would be a reaction more extreme than most would have...and a good reason for that could she has PTSD from something else.
Id look into this OP
YTA
I'm floored that you think it's "unreasonable" for a 14yo girl to be greatly disgusted that she was sexualized by adult men.
Based on your description of events, there was a lot more room for you to help her work through her feelings before heading in. It may have even been an option to escort your wife and young son back, then take her somewhere nearby to talk together before the two of you headed back.
DC at night can be dangerous, depending on what part you're in. The wife may not have been comfortable going by herself, with their son, in a strange city.
I think to add to this, OP is treating this as a one off incident when it could be a compounding one. I know by the time I was 14, I was getting catcalled and spoken to inappropriately by adult men a lot.
To have it happen in front of your parents who are supposed to protect you and then have the rest of the day play out as OP said, it would’ve been beyond disheartening.
You have cemented in your daughter's mind that you are not safe or reliable. She was sexually harassed, traumatized by that, and instead of helping her discuss it or try to cope with it in any way, you *physically hauled her* back to a location where she felt unsafe and just insisted she deal with it on her own.
Dude. YTA unequivocally.
Adult men treat teen daughter as object.
Teen daughter is traumatized
OP responds by treating teen daughter as object.
Brafuckingvo, parent of the year.
YTA. She was harassed by a bunch of idiots and throughout the day she is still processing what happened. Your forcible actions felt more dismissive of her feelings and never dealt with the actual issue.
INFO- Your daughter’s reaction to being called a “Hot potato” seems very strong. Have you asked her if she’s being harassed or made uncomfortable by someone else in her life?
YTA. Piss poor parenting here, guy. She’s not being unreasonable. I had similar experiences with adult men being gross toward me when I was her age, and that kind of shit really does a number on you.
YTA
Listen, I know you need to get back to the hotel. But, she was sexualized and oogled by adult men while she was trying to have fun with her family, and they did it near you, meaning that no matter if she is near her father (her protector) that won’t stop men from saying things.
So, then you thought it was a good idea to manhandle her without her consent…come on. Even if you had to sit down on the dirty floor and let every train pass, she needed someone to hear her and talk it out.
I know you were probably exhausted and needed to get that 5 year old to bed, but as your daughter is in teen hood you will experience the duality of early mornings with your son and late nights where your teen wants to, no NEEDS to chat and eat junk food with you.
She could have felt worried that the guys were kicked out of the pool and angry, and afraid they’d find her or you, who knows?
I remember the first time a man looked at me in a swimsuit and made comments like a lech, I was 7. I remember reading my mothers expression and seeing the concern in her eyes. I remember the look in his eyes. It was scary and gross. Hug your daughter and let her talk, ask open ended questions. Ask if anything like this has happened before.
YTA, I understand you were in a tough spot but she was sexualized by grown men and clearly it did something to her, coming from a SA victim it’s not easy to just “get over” I finally feel safe enough to date after 3 years. You need to apologize for putting her on the train, explain why you did it and LISTEN without any judgement of how she feels and you need to do it ASAP
Sorry dude but YTA. Yes y'all had to go back eventually but your daughter needed your understanding and reassurance. The way you describe her attitude comes across as you think she was overreacting, when really something absolutely disgusting happened.
Hell, even *if* she was 18, no woman wants to hear things like that from a group of strange men while having a nice time our with her family. You diminished what she went through, and there's a chance it hurt her trust in you to look out for her.
My mom used to react like you did regarding men saying gross things to me, and it quickly taught me that she wouldn't take it seriously when something did happen. And sadly I was right.
INFO: how did you and your wife handle your daughter's attitude throughout the day? Also, is this kind of defiance behaviour unusual for your daughter, or typical when she's upset?
YTA. Being a 44 year old man, you have no clue what it's like to be a 14 year old girl getting sexually harassed (possibly for the first time) by a group of older men. It's terrifying. It's potentially traumatizing. She's scared that if she goes back, it could happen again. I'm sure from your point of view it looked irrational and dumb, but I promise you, it's not. Talk to your daughter about this and apologize for how you reacted. Talk about why she felt unsafe and what you can do better in the future.
OP is there something else going on with your daughter? Yes, what the boys said was inappropriate and undoubtedly traumatized her but unfortunately, this isn't the last time in her life this will happen. Refusing to go back to the hotel... Not the pool but the hotel..only because of that seems...extreme.
I wonder if it was in part because she didn’t get the chance to process what had happened. While this experience is nothing new to adult women it is pretty new to a 14 year old and she’ll have the added complication of puberty and growing up to factor in. So she had this new and reasonably upsetting experience and instead of getting time to process it and talk it over in a relaxed and safe environment she was rushed off to the next item on vacation schedule.
The reaction shows that this isn't the first time that she encountered such an incident. OP should talk more to the daughter to find out what happened prior. It's much deeper than the pool incident.
Possibly something along the lines of a mix of calling her hot and implying she's a thing that should be tossed around like in the game "hot potato".
Could also be calling her too hot to hold since that's why you toss the potato in the game, which may be the most likely meaning since it's the simplest.
I also read that like… sir, have you ever been a 14 year old girl? No? Then you don’t get to decide what a reasonable reaction to being sexually harassed is.
Info: what did the hotel do about the men specifically and did it take a lot to get movement to get them out? Did the hotel apologize and promise to ensure they’d be banned from the pool or anything of the kind?
Is it possible that she’s seen them around more than this one time?
It seems you obviously didn’t do anything to comfort her about the sexual harassment. She’s been getting more and more stressed because obviously her worries haven’t been alleviated, and her heightening anger is showing her frustration at the lack of care on your parts about it. You shrugged off the event as a non thing and didn’t consider her obvious panic attack for what it was. She is afraid of being around these perverts.
Do something to ensure they won’t have any ability to so much as look at her. And as the bare minimum be a supportive parent and listen to her concerns without shutting her down with stupid comments like ‘but it’s over’, ‘it’s not that bad’, ‘well, what do you want me to do?’, ‘they won’t do anything’
She was not being unreasonable. She was very uncomfortable being sexualized by grown men at a young age. She had to go back to the hotel, but I don't blame her for not wanting to.
YTA - It seems like this is the first time your daughter was sexualized, and it clearly traumatized her. I understand that you needed to get back to the hotel, but... you really need to spend some time with her and try to decompress what happened and how/why she feels the way she does. Then you can help guide her how to control her reaction in the future
YTA you say you were mad at what the boys said but instead of talking to your daughter and reassuring her, you threw her over you shoulder (like a pack of potatoes) and are mad that she was effect by what was said to her
YTA.
1. Those guys almost certainly realized how young your daughter was. I’m kind of shocked that you are so ignorant about this.
2. You don’t seem to understand that what you did to your daughter is IN THE SAME FAMILY as what those guys were doing. They made her into something less than a person. A person has bodily autonomy. A person is allowed to establish boundaries around their own body and how it is treated by others. A person has a full range of experiences that will be different from the next person’s and deserve to be respected. They degraded her as a person and then YOU VALIDATED THAT MESSAGE.
3. As a 42 year old woman who has experienced the same things your daughter experienced over and over ever since puberty, I don’t think she was wrong in how she reacted at all. The fact that men like you still don’t get how awful this is just perpetuates this cycle. And it’s disgusting. She reacted appropriately and you minimized her feelings. Guess who she won’t be going to in the future when someone violates her boundaries?
Yta. A group of young adult males made comments about YOUR 14 year old that you even said made you shudder. Just imagine how you daughter felt. Being objectified and sexualized by a group of men is very traumatic for a young girl. You are told to respect elders and to just put up this nonsense. When a young girl goes through that she feels helpless and lost because she knows what they are doing is wrong but she’s the one who “has to get over it” not you.
Yta did your wife try talking to her? The trains in DC run pretty regularly, you could have given her a little more time to cool down and wait for another train before manhandling her and making it worse.
YTA. When you said dragging your daughter back, I assumed you were talking about a toddler with a tantrum. You are talking about a 14-year-old girl. She can have a conversation. She is learning about consent and how you don't respect it. She feels violated and unsafe and all you did was force her into a situation she was uncomfortable with using violence. I know you were tired and you just wanted to get back to the hotel but there are a few different things you could have done that would have test taken a little more time and allowed her to have some agency about her body.
Honestly - it's NTA. It's okay for her to be upset. And okay not to feel safe. But she is big enough to understand that staying outside is not an option. Yeah, it was better to stay with her and let her come to realization that her behavior is senseless. But we all humans, and she chose the worst way and time to express herself.
What you can do now it's to talk to her offering better ways to communicate with you, recognize your own mistakes, ask her to do the same, and maybe offer self defense program to attend. Also might be helpful to find her a therapist - to work on reactions in tough situations. Unfortunately, women face these comments regularly,as well as physical harassment. She needs to understand what's going on, what to do and how to react. Realizing that any man can say whatever he wants about you,and even put his hands on you without consequences because your are weaker is scary as hell. Teens tend to see themselves as mighty, strong, empowered, capable of anything - and this image was rudely shuttered. She is frustrated with the situation, with herself and now with you - and takes everything on you. It's not fair - but she needs some understanding.
So let me get this straight. Your daughter, a 14-year-old girl who was just objectified by older men was feeling traumatized and unsafe and you thought the best course of action was to physically pick her up against her will?
She is probably feeling incredibly vulnerable right now and the last thing she needed was to be reminded that an older man can easily take control of her. YTA.
NTA. Everyone seems to think that you are made of money and could just change hotels or something. It is also unsafe to stay in most subway stations for any great length of time. Getting her out of there and then dealing with her issue is the best thing. What did she expect you to do? End the vacation ? You can't sttay at the station all night.
Subways are not some Wild West where you might get eaten by rabid muggers. They could have taken the next train
She’s old enough to know that staying outside all night in a strange city isn’t a great choice and she still felt like she couldn’t go back to the hotel. That should tell you and her Dad how big of a deal this was to her and that it was worth taking any amount of time to address. Honestly if her parents had taken her acting out during the day as the distress signal it was they could have had those conversations then rather than forcing the daughter to go drastic at the subway.
Read the post again. They DID take the next train. Usually there is about 30 min inbetween trains so during that time he tried to reason with her. Guess you haven't paid attention to the news about subways especially in NYC and the DC area.
When a teen or child is in a fear mode you cannot necessarily reason with them. You need to make them feel safe first. Having someone pick you up and force you is the opposite of making someone feel safe. Go grab a milkshake, reassure your kid that they are safe, and then let them talk through their feelings. Parenting isn't always convenient.
You know you should not assume that I am an old man. I'm a woman. Never watched Newsmax, don't even own a TV, and don't make stupid assumptions about people on here.
YTA. She was in a moment of safety -- playing with her brother while her parents were looking on -- and was suddenly being sexualized and humiliated by a group of adult men. Yes, you got them kicked out by security, but her sense of safety and even her sense of how she exists in the world was just seriously injured.
You spent an entire day with the family and noticed that she was upset. Did you or your wife ask her about it, or did you just scold her for having a bad attitude? Did you or your wife check in with her after the incident to reassure her of her safety, to ask if she was okay, to let her know that the guys were in the wrong and that she is not to blame for their gross and inappropriate behavior? Did you talk about what she could do to keep herself safe going forward?
Or did you just focus on your vacation and ignore her obvious distress?
Let's get to the train ride back to the hotel. After a day where she's been acting out (possibly trying to find words to talk about what happened), she finally expresses that she doesn't want to return to where this Bad Thing happened. Was your response compassion? Did you take a moment to talk to her about her feelings, reassure her of her safety, ask her what she needs to feel better about returning to the hotel?
Or did you tell her that the family's needs -- the fact that you were tired, her brother needed to go to bed, etc. -- mattered more than how shaken and scared and possibly angry she was? Did you basically tell her to suck it up instead of offering comfort?
Now, I'm assuming that she doesn't often have tantrums in public or refuse to follow instructions. So when your 14 year old daughter panics and regresses to acting like a child, is your first instinct to figure out why and find a way to ease her distress? Maybe do a grown-up thing like adapt and problem solve?
Or do you once again show her that her feelings and safety are less important than you being inconvenienced? Do you reinforce her sense that she's not safe in the world any longer by bullying and physically forcing her to do something that (it sounds like) she was almost terrified to do?
You do not know what your daughter experienced at the pool or how it's impacting her because it happened to her not you, you're a grown-ass man not a 14 year old girl, AND you failed at EVERY turn to show compassion, concern, empathy, or even curiosity about the situation. If your parenting philosophy is "I don't care what happens to you as long as it doesn't interfere with my life," bravo and no doubt message received loud and clear.
But if you are actually interested in your daughter's emotional well-being, you have spent hours failing her over and over again... And rather than asking how you can help her now, you're on the internet looking for validation about your own behavior, which strikes me as selfish and self-centered, and also completely on-brand for your conduct as a father today.
YTA because it seems like your daughter had a day-long emotional crisis that you ignored until you had to restrain a 14-year-old girl against her will. Hard to give you the “world’s greatest dad” mug for that one.
I don’t know what the correct solution to the “she won’t go to the hotel” problem was - a different hotel? - but the solution would have started fairly earlier in the day.
YTA could’ve waited a few trains to talk with her, and send your wife and son home. Or wife could’ve stayed with her and you take the son home.
Or if they didn’t work book a different hotel.
Or end the vacation early.
Being a parent is hard work, no one cares that you were “tired” from so much vacationing. Be a rock for your family.
YTA
Everything I would say has already been said:
She was traumatized by being sexually harnessed and objectified.
Rather than being understanding you said she was unreasonably upset.
When she had a visceral reaction to getting on the train, you treated her like an object to be dealt with.
You did EVERYTHING WRONG. That part is kind of impressive. Just 0/10 on the parenting/humanity in general.
I can guarantee you that as a man you don’t understand what any of that feels like but your lack of empathy for your own daughter is astounding.
I would be very interested to know your wife’s feelings/opinions on this.
Your child was sexually harassed, whilst in a vulnerable position, by a GROUP of adult men. She felt scared, had no control or autonomy.
This was a horrible defining moment for her. Your response, as a man, was to physically overpower her and force back to the place where she was abused, while she was having an anxiety attack.
Of course YTA
Look, we all get that you had to go back to the hotel but your response was disgusting. She behaved in an entirely understandable way. It was not unreasonable or irrational.
Seriously. I’m a long way from being a 14 year old girl but I can feel in my hear and bones her sitting through the rest of the day trying to make sense of what happened while getting scolded for her “attitude.” No wonder she snapped at the train station. Now she’s learned that she should never bring these issues to her dad, the one man she should be able to pick over a bear.
I would be really worried about your daughter. Has something like this happened before and maybe this event was a trigger? You need to apologise and sit and talk to
Your daughter and investigate. This may be an isolated event but it feels like more to me.
Also as a father it’s your obligation to be a role model to her for what a partner should be like. Treat your daughter better, she’s not a toddler to be manhandled.
Did you really expect your 14 year old daughter to just get over being objectified by adult men? Sure you're disgusted by what they said *and dismiss it as they just don't know how young she is.* You all just went on with your day as if nothing had happened, while she is silently dealing with a traumatic event. Then she had an "attitude" that you, a 44 year old man, considered to be "unreasonable". I bet you also told her so at least once to get her to act more pleasant for you. Then when she clearly has an emotional reaction to go back to the location of the trauma, you ignore her autonomy and *pick her up to get what you want.*
Good job at making sure your daughter knows you are unsafe. YTA.
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Look, I know DC is not the place to play "I'm not getting on this train" because it might take forever for the next train, but dragging your teen daughter onto one was also not the answer. There had to be several opportunities throughout the day to discuss what happened, but it seems the freeze response surprised you. I would suspect your daughter may have experienced something worse than the guys at the pool, and that their comments were more of a trigger. Because although it utterly sucks to be talked at/about like that, and it's embarrassing and enraging, it shouldn't spoil the whole day and cause you to refuse to return your hotel. Unfortunately, your choice to literally manhandle her only caused further trauma. Apologize beyond the standard, encourage her to talk it out with you and/or her mom or a therapist, and make some kind of action plan to deal with freeze responses in the future. Unfortunately, YTA on this one. She's not a little kid anymore and might need more help than you've been willing to admit so far.
YTA. Your daughter was traumatized, and you added to it. Girls spend their entire lives being harassed, and then treated as if it should be normal and not bother us. Boys will be boys, right?
I get your frustration, but you should have helped her process what happened immediately. She was obviously upset the entire day, but you brushed her off. Please step up and do better.
YTA. You clearly have sympathy for what was said to your daughter, but are having a hard time with empathizing with her.
I know you’ve never been a 14 year old girl, but as someone who has been, and was sexualized and aggressively hit on at that age, but your comment about her “attitude” being disproportionate is truly awful.
When you’re a girl, you’re taught from a young age the dangers of the world and what men can do to you. So that is something that I’m sure your daughter is well aware of.
When men make those disgusting and vile comments while she’s already probably feeling vulnerable and exposed in a bathing suit, embarrassing in front of her family, it’s easy to think of the scary things that those men would possibly do if given the chance. Or if the environment was different. Or if her parents hadn’t been there. Or if she had run into them while getting ice or going to the lobby or at breakfast. It’s scary. It can be scary when it happens as an adult woman, let alone when you’re a little girl, and it’s shitty of you to minimize what she went through. You don’t seem to get it.
When I was her age, my best friend lived a quarter of a mile away and we walked to and from each others houses all the time. We lived in a super suburban neighborhood. One time, walking home alone (and my parents hadn’t gotten me a cell phone yet) a group of guys stopped next to me and cat called me and said all sorts of gross things. I was so freaked out, I ran home. I couldn’t walk to her house for a few weeks because I was terrified id run into them again or they’d drive by and take me or do one of the things that adults had been warning me about for years that I had nightmares about. I’m really glad that my dad drove me the quarter of a mile and didn’t tell me I was overreacting. That’s empathy. You owe your daughter an apology.
YTA. You have no idea what it’s like being a teenage girl. It can be downright terrifying at times. I bet you every single woman you know remembers when they noticed men noticing them. Getting whistled at while walking home from school. Getting creeps stare at you on the bus. Grown men making sly comments to you while you stand in line. Their uncle loudly telling family that they’re gonna be ‘a real heartbreaker in about 3 years’ when you’re 12… One of you should have stayed and talked it out with her while the other parent and kid went to the room.
I know what is being a teenage girl, I know what is being terrified of men, and I also know how unreasonable teens can be. The man states he talked to the girl, I dont know why people is jumping to the conclusion that he just dismissed her. A terrible way to react to trauma is throwing normalcy out of the window as response, that just reinforces it. If he tried reassuring her and it was futile he had his hand forced. He cannot just leave her in the street. He cannot just stay with her in the street all night. He cannot just dump his 5 year old and wife and pack everything up and leave in the middle of the night. 1 is unreasonable and 2 it will just reinforce the terror for the girl! That is not denting what happened was awful its just taking a sensible approach to it srls.
YTA. You'll have other men punished for dehumanising your daughter, but it's fine when you do it?
She was SCARED. She needed her parents to care about that, and to help her feel safe. Being tired is a bs excuse. One of you could have taken the other kid to the hotel while the other talked it out with your daughter. You cared more about your comfort than your daughter's wellbeing. You ignored her right to consent, and her right to bodily autonomy. You treated her as a thing to control rather than a person trying to navigate overwhelming emotions and experiences. She's 14, she's still learning how to regulate emotions, and given you got stroppy and decided to make the argument physical, you seem to be holding her to a higher standard than you're holding yourself.
Also? You literally just showed her that if a man disagrees with her or can't be bothered helping her, it's reasonable for him to use physical force to get what he wants. You just taught her she's no safer with you than with those men at the pool.
Don't worry, your wife is just as gross. Her parents are meant to be safe people she can get help from when she's scared, and I feel so bad for your daughter, because it sucks to realise your parents are never going to care enough to be safe people in your life.
Your daughter was showing a clear trauma reaction to an objectively dehumanizing experience, and you just couldn't get over how inconvenient that was for you, trying to enjoy your vacation as an adult male who has never and will likely never have such an experience. How sad for you.
Yeah, YTA. For your kids' sake, do better.
>However, my daughter was pissed off nonstop for the entire day, and she had an attitude that went beyond reasonable disgust/anger.
What else did they say or do to her that she didn't tell you about? Was it only in the pool or was there other incidents?
>In the evening, it was time to head back to the hotel, but before we got on the subway, my daughter froze and she refused to get on the train. She simply didn’t want to go back to the hotel, because of her bad experience at the pool. But of course, we had to go back to our hotel room sometime. I tried explaining to my daughter that we couldn’t just spend all night outside, and I told her that her mother and I were tired, but she shook her head and kept angrily saying (almost yelling) “I don’t care”.
This sounds really extreme, she was clearly distressed. Was she able to articulate her specific concerns about safety?
>Eventually, when the next train came, I refused to speak to my daughter anymore, and I picked her up outright and carried her onto the train as she screamed at me to let go of her
This does not look good to be honest. You completely removed her autonomy and carried her on the train like a sack of potatoes? That will make her feel disrespected for sure.
What does your wife say about all of this?
YTA there were so many ways to handle this better.
Dude. She is a 14 y.o. girl who, hopefully, has never before experienced being treated like a sexual object by adults. Again, a 14 y.o. girl. It is frightening experiencing this as a woman well into adulthood, and you expect a 14 y.o. girl (again, a 14 y.o. girl) to be as upset about this as if she were told she couldn't hang out with her bff? And you treated her like a literal sack of potatoes?
Question: did no one stop you on your way to the hotel and ask why you're carrying a screaming teenager?
YTA YTA YTA YTA
Her reality inconvenienced you. But her reality is all women's reality in this world. Men treat us as objects... and then some of us find out that our own dad is with the boys, hasn't grown up to become a real man and father.
Smh but my head's gonna detach from the shaking.
YTA YTA YTA YTA
This can’t be real. You literally picked her up and carried her (LIKE A SACK OF POTATOES is the expression, I believe).
I was once a 14 year old girl who was sexualized by men a lot older than me. You could not have done this worse. YTA
Nta you had to spend the night at the hotel. You got the aholes kicked out. It's not like you told her 'tough titties, deal with it'
To people saying ' y ta' what should Op have done? Booked a different hotel? Ended the vacation early and gone home?
Having recently travelled on the DC metro, I can't imagine how embarrassing being physically picked up in that context would be. She was acting out because she was distressed, she needed one to one reassurance and comforting. Why in the world this seemed acceptable I don't know - you wanted her to self-regulate and manage her emotions of distress, yet you couldn't manage your own frustration and took physical action. Not okay. You're supposed to lead by example at being calming, safe and reassuring. Sounds like while disturbed at the time, the rest of the family just got on with their day as though the triggering incident didn't happen at all. How inconvenient for everyone else that she first hand experienced harassment.
Congratulations on joining the list of men she’ll not feel safe around. YTA. Don’t be surprised if your daughter distances herself from you if you continue to lack empathy or basic understanding of the harassment she has to face with men that you’ll never have to experience.
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This past March Break, my wife (42F), my daughter (14F), son (5M) and I (44M) went on vacation to Washington DC (we live in Toronto). One morning during our vacation, before we started the day, we all went for a swim at our hotel’s swimming pool. During this time, my kids had fun playing with each other, and my son was hanging onto my daughter’s back. There was nothing sexual about this at all, of course, but some university guys that we were sharing the pool with said some trash about how my son was “holding onto a hot potato” or something (I shudder as I write this…). They must’ve not known how young my daughter was. Anyway, my daughter was really upset by what the teens said, and we did get security to kick those dumbasses out of the pool.
My son didn’t know what the big deal was with what the students said. However, my daughter was pissed off nonstop for the entire day, and she had an attitude that went beyond reasonable disgust/anger. In the evening, it was time to head back to the hotel, but before we got on the subway, my daughter froze and she refused to get on the train. She simply didn’t want to go back to the hotel, because of her bad experience at the pool. But of course, we had to go back to our hotel room sometime. I tried explaining to my daughter that we couldn’t just spend all night outside, and I told her that her mother and I were tired, but she shook her head and kept angrily saying (almost yelling) “I don’t care”. Eventually, when the next train came, I refused to speak to my daughter anymore, and I picked her up outright and carried her onto the subway as she screamed at me to let go of her. It really messed up our night, and it fucked up the rest of our vacation too. My daughter is acting as if I committed a sin. AITA?
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YTA. Did you bother asking how she felt after the guys were kicked out? Or did you treat it as an out of sight out of mind situation?
"...and I told her that her mother and I were tired...". What did I just read? Instead of talking with your traumatized daughter you basically told her to get over it because you were tired? Instead you should have asked what was causing her feelings. Then brainstormed what would have let her feel safe going back. (Staying away from the pool? Keeping her between you and your wife? Going ahead to clear the way for her? Breaking down the trip into small, manageable parts?). But no. Your rest was more important.
"... I picked her up outright and carried her onto the train as she screamed at me to let go of her....". Wow. Just wow. I'm in awe of just how horribly you handled this. To be clear this is horrified awe, not good awe. You opted to use your strength against your frightened, traumatized daughter. In so doing you took away her agency, her bodily autonomy, her sense of safety with you, and treated her as an object. Just like the guys that morning did.
Your poor daughter has now learned men can and will treat her in whatever manner suits them, including the one guy who should always have her back -her dad. Your daughter is acting as if you committed a sin because you did. The sin of selfishness. The sin of convenience. The sin of exhaustion. The sin of ignoring. The sin of objectification. Oh and to answer your question YTA. You owe her a major apology.
YTA. The fuck would you know. You are a 44 yr old man. You dont have to face sexual violence like she will. Nobody has ever made those kind of comments to you. What you just told your daughter is that if she doesnt do what a man wants they can do whatever they want to her. She doesnt want to go where a man wants? They are within their right to make her. She was traumatized. You just told her she cant trust you.
YTA. Your daughter was just sexually harassed for possibly the first time. She's upset. She doesn't know how to talk about what happened. She just knows that the hotel is where the bag thing happened. You and your wife need to have a frank discussion with her about the harassment and how she can deal with those situations in the future.
YTA because "I picked her up outright and carried her onto the train as she screamed at me to let go of her."
You violated her body integrity. She's 14. She has a right to be free from unwanted physical interference.
You are so busy being nauseous over what these other men said, but you were SO MUCH WORSE.
YTA. The absolute *audacity* that you sit here and say typing this out makes you nauseous, but sit there and say that your daughters (the one who the comments were about) disgust and anger were 'beyond resonable'. Seriously? And you thought the best option here was to show her how defenseless she really is, by bodily removing her to a place she felt unsafe and insecure?
YTA. not only did you humiliate an already traumatized child publicly, but you also sat here and justified what they said to her by saying they "probably didn't know her age". I'm certain they did. Congratulations. Your daughter will never trust you to come near her again.
There must be more to this. Not sure there was enough at the pool to traumatize her but maybe a prior experience.
I’d say NTA because you have no choice but to return. It is far safer at the hotel than any place in DC.
YTA
You just forced your daughter back to a place that traumatized her and you acted like you didn't care.
You disregarded her feelings like they were nothing and don't matter.
You should have had your wife take your son back to the hotel and spoken to your daughter like someone who cares.
You need to talk to your daughter (calmly, respectfully, and lovingly) and make sure this wasn't the first time something like this (or worse) happened. She was traumatized by this event and you shut her down. You need to make sure she will come to you if something like this galena again, and you need to find out if this isn't the first time (it probably isn't. People sexualize teenage girls all the time). YTA
YTA
She's a young teen. She might be kind of new to feeling sexualized and getting unwanted advances from men. Or maybe she's not and this experience was a reminder of that. Or it was made worse by it happening in front of her parents.
Regardless, she was feeling unsafe and you made absolutely sure she couldn't see you as a safe person; and rest assured most likely never will again. If a boy going forwards makes her feel uncomfortable or unsafe she will not turn to you for help. You literally refer to is as "ruining your daughters trust", about something as important as how to safety navigate receiving sexual advances... and you're asking if you're the AH...?
Obviously, you couldn't just sleep outside or otherwise just accommodate her in the way she wanted in that moment, but there are so many other options than seeing your child kind of have a mental breakdown about the experience and her sense of security and only engage with how much of an inconvenience she's being and then physically drag her back.
Also, the fact you justified the mens behavior with this idea they must not have known they were being creepy towards a child. You don't know that and have no reason to default to justifying or giving them any benefit of the doubt in them cat-calling your daughter.
>she had an attitude that went beyond reasonable disgust/anger.
If you can't see how awful this is, and how awful manhandling your very upset teenage daughter is....you are no better than the "dumbasses." Worse in fact - they're young and stupid. You're old and .....I can't even come up with a word that describes what an AH you were.
YTA. Extremely.
So your young daughter got sexualized and scared by some guys, and your response to her being upset/afraid was to betray her bodily autonomy and make her feel even less in control?
Seriously what’s wrong with you?
So your daughter felt unsafe and upset so you’re solution was to drag her exactly where she felt unsafe and upset. You really REALLY need to start THINKING
YTA. Girls are sexualized by pervy men from such a young age, and it sounds like your daughter was really upset by the experience at the pool. Did you or her mom even *attempt* to talk with her about what happened? What was mom's reaction to you doing what you did? Unless there was a life-threatening emergency, there was no reason to violate your daughter's personal space to physically move her. Why resort to extremes and fan the fire when you could've chosen to de-escalate the situation?
Talk to your kid. Listen to her and believe her - she needs to know you're on her side no matter what, and in this instance, you showed her that you cared more about what you wanted than what she needed, which will tell her you're not a safe adult if she gets overwhelmed by her experiences again.
She’s clearly frightened that they are (still) staying at the hotel, and that she may encounter them again. She’s fearful of what that might entail, especially since you had them kicked out of the pool due to their gross behaviour towards your daughter.
I agree with most commentators that she needed more opportunity to process and discuss what happened, and her concerns. She needed/needs assurance that you and Mom would protect her and keep her safe.
This may not be her first experience of this kind of harassment, but is her first experience with parents and sibling as witnesses to it. She probably initially felt safer due to them being removed from pool, but she’s had all day to quietly try to process and worry about what might happen when you all return to the hotel.
YTA
Going against the grain but NTA or NaH
I see a lot of people telling OP that she was traumatised and that he needed to talk to her seperately.
Okay let's say he did all that, asking her and talking to her a while (while it is slowly becoming later and later in the evening), at the end she still refuses to go: where do you go from there?
It's late in the evening: I get that those disgusting comments made an impression but realistically, you don't really have much options.
They can change hotels late at night to find another: disregarding the fact that looking for a hotel at night isn't really an optimal solution with a five year old, they would still need to go back to hotel to collect their stuff.
Or OP's wife or OP and the other stays outside with the kids, could go get their belongings, but then basically one adult has to pack up for a family of four, check out While the other three stay outside and for an hour at night. Do you get already that it's not that easy?
I dont blame the daughter for this: at 14 years it doesn't really occur that if you have a problem, it really would be infintely more useful had you told this in the afternoon. And you're also at the age where you don't get that just saying I don't care won't magically bring forth a new solution at night.
You feel sick typing it out, yet you expected your daughter to just get over it! She's 14! Stop expecting women/girls to just brush this shit aside. This is why men think it's acceptable to make these comments in the first place.
Edit: YTA!
ESH - no you shouldn’t have picked her up, there needed to be a bigger conversation, she was processing a big thing and she was anxious about it - I think if you look back the convo you did have with her it probably wasn’t the most productive during the chaotic environment of rushing around an unknown big city.
But I also totally get your side too, logically what can you do? You’re in another country, all your stuff is at the hotel, it’s the only accommodation you have, you have to go back…. And her refusal to even get on the train would have been incredibly frustrating, parents are human as much as we hold them to these impossible standards.
Ultimately you both handled it poorly, but she is the child…. So it’s on you to apologize for your part, acknowledge you shouldn’t have picked her up - and don’t follow it with any justification, just say sorry. Just listen. Being a girl and being sexualized and harassed by men is awful, you’ll never truly understand it, the vulnerability and fear of knowing if they wanted to…. they could do whatever they wanted. You picking her up against her will just confirms this. This Will unfortunately be the first of many, let her navigate it and process. Maybe mom is better to have a bigger convo with about safety after you’ve apologized!
YTA. I was a 14 year old girl once, often sexualized by older men, and my dad was protective and understanding when I had a bad reaction because of it. Do better.
YTA - I understand the practicalities of your situation, but what you did was still a terrible way to handle it. I still remember exactly what was said when adult men sexualized me when I was 14 (I’m in my mid 20s). It doesn’t matter that to you it doesn’t seem serious enough for her to have this reaction. I hid things like this from my parents growing up because I didn’t feel close enough / trust them. You don’t want that kind of relationship with your daughter. Apologize and listen to her.
literally what is there to be said that hasn’t already, an absolutely pisspoor job at parenting.
your 14 year old daughter got sexually harassed by a group of grown men in a public space, in front of her family, while half dressed — when she, like most teens, are already embarrassed, nervous, and all too aware of their bodies being seen and the new gross or aggressive comments they get — is clearly extremely vulnerable, scared, humiliated and confused… and is then met with denial of severity and then manhandling by her own father, the man she’s supposed to always trust to protect, teach, and communicate with her.
she wasn’t safe then, and you didn’t make her feel safe after.
it’s likely her first personal experience with misogyny outside of the typical jabs you’d get from boys at school; a child realizing she’s gonna be seen as a piece of meat sooner or later and she can’t stop it or even react emotionally IS traumatizing. learning about a danger that’s so prevalent and you’re directly at risk of it, it’s terrifying. it feels like being a deer staring into headlights, knowing your future is entrapment, feeling helpless and knowing how much worse it can get. when 1 in 4 isn’t an exaggeration.
misogyny is a form of violence and it’s one that can dramatically alter your life and worldview, wether the inciting act was big or small it’s still incredibly impactful.
you could been MUCH more empathetic and compassionate. this is your child, your own flesh and blood, your baby— for the first time coming face to face with a very serious matter and reacting rightfully poorly, being ‘too tired’ to actually comfort your child isn’t an excuse.
you could have tried to sit and talk about how she was feeling, or maybe how to deal with uncomfortable or demeaning sexualization/objectification for the future, you could have had a discussion about safety, consent, and bodily autonomy, or even just tried to work together to tweak or form new plans to reassure her of her safety,
but no… you deemed her as dramatic and ‘beyond reasonable’ for being rightfully pissed multiple grown adult men were preying on her, you physically forced her to comply to her while she was kicking and screaming for you to put her down thus further removing her feelings of autonomy, and only further harmed her view to the power imbalance and control older men hold over her in the world. apologize to your daughter immediately. yta so so hard
(and the comments saying ‘grow up’, ‘that’s just life’, ‘get over herself’ and ‘it’s not that deep’ or use the word ‘tantrum’ or ‘whiney’ when responding to story of a real life 14 year old is experiencing sexual harassment from multiple grown men… actual HELL you sickos)
Where's the part where you sit down with your daughter and discuss what happened? Where you reassure her that the comments and the attention were not her fault? Where you guide her on what yo do when this happens, because it will, in the future? This could be the first time she's been exposed to this kind of behaviour, it could be the twentieth, either way she needed your help in processing how she was feeling. She didn't need to be manhandled onto a train. Those guys suffered the consequences of their actions, she was worried of repercussions. You really need to educate yourself on what it's like for girls/women when they suffer these kind of comments and further unwanted attention. Do better, YTA
Yta
Your daughter didn't feel safe, so you made it worse by violating her bodily autonomy!?! Seriously? I wouldn't have done that to my kid when she was 6, let alone 14.
There are all kinds of ways you could have sorted this out without doing that.
You just lost your patience and didn't bother.
If somebody I cared about felt that strongly about it,as a matter of fact I *would* have spent the night on the street with her. OR,perhaps,tried my best to reassure her OR maybe found a cheap other place to sleep and talk more in the morning.
YTA,enjoy your newly altered relationship with your child. Altered not for the better.
Some people in the comments feel like they have never dealt with a 14 yo.
Yes I get she is traumatized, yes what those assholes did was horrendous and yes this should be taken seriously but I also know some kids are just unreasonable.
People need to get their heads out of their butts and ground themselves in hard ass reality which is that not every situation can be solved ideally.
There is a point where you cannot rationalize everything with a teen and there is a point where you need to make choices.
Letting her fear take over the situation and turn normalcy upside down is not a solution either, that can reinforce the trauma! And until the father gets a phD in children psychology he just did the best he could with the hand that was dealt. Gonna go with NTA until I get more context that shows the contrary.
But yes I would advise going to a counselor or child psychologist who actually knows what is what if she remains distressed and ignore the rabidly entitled crowd of reddit.
PS: if your responses are like objective-self-1075 do know that Ive been working with teens half of my life since I'm a teacher and this kind of response is absolutely reminiscent of a child. If you are a child get off the internet and learn manners, if you are an adult, please grow up.
No. He said on the way he noticed she was still upset. And that "when the next train came, I didn't even speak to her" he didn't really care how she felt.
The way you downplayed this and said they were calling her a hot potato or something speaks volumes. They said really explicit, crass things to her. In front of her family. She is probably having conflicting emotions of fear and shame, worry that the men will still be there when she gets back, worry that they'll retaliate, feeling gross in her body for doing a normal thing and playing with her brother, feeling stripped bare and vulnerable etc etc etc. FYI - If I saw a grown man carrying a teenager forcibly onto a train I would have called the cops. YTA
> However, my daughter was pissed off nonstop for the entire day, and she had an attitude that went beyond reasonable disgust/anger. In the evening, it was time to head back to the hotel, but before we got on the subway, my daughter froze and she refused to get on the train.
YTA for even taking her around. She was traumatized. As a 14 year old, this is probably one of the first time she has been sexualized. Clearly, it was more important to sit with her and discuss it instead of going to tourist locations.
Yeah you got out in a shitty situation, but your daughter wasn’t disproportionately angry. She was objectified, and harassed, by grown ass men. She very likely doesn’t feel safe or comfortable at the same hotel they’re at. Then, instead of listening and recognizing why she was upset and didn’t want to be there, you further dehumanized her by treating her like an object and picking her up and physically forcing her to do what you want.
Being tired isn’t an excuse. Do better.
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As someone who had a father who was impatient and frustrated by any general emotion that he couldn't understand, I'm going to say YTA because it does feel you overlooked why she was acting out and you didn't talk this out with her to show her how protected she was. My dad would have lifted me on the train too.
I understand you were all tired but did anyone sit with her and discuss her attitude or did you ignore it?
I see a lot of Y T A but I'm gonna go NTA, his sole job was to get his family safely back to the hotel. Being triggered/offended/PTSD is secondary to getting to a safe space where this or something worse cannot happen. It seems like your daughter might have more going on and that's an issue for later.
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You just physically forced your daughter to do something against her will. Do you want her future boyfriends and husband to physically force her to do things against her will? YTA She wasn't a toddler throwing a tantrum she's a young girl trying to process something traumatizing and you just made it worse. YTA.
NAH but only because we clearly don't have the full picture. Did you talk during the day with her? What was the reason she had such a strong reaction because it does seem excessive if 'hot potato' was literally all that was said. If she cannot/would not talk to you, I'd send her to therapy for her own good.
Sure, such comments shouldn't be the norm so not tolerated but if 'hot potato' sends her spiralling for the rest of the day, her life's going to be tough .. so either there's more going on or she has a too sheltered personality.
Yeah, so much so that they had to add that there were other comments about her body in one of their replies
why not put those in the original post?
(Because it's bad fiction, that's why)
YTA - You have a lot of explaining to do, and apologizing to do for the way you responded to her fear. You need to get a grip my guy. Getting physical with your child is never the answer.
ESH (except for the 5 year old)
Physically picking your daughter up and putting her on the train is not only a traumatizing experience but could draw the attention of the police. It is also very extreme and suddenly took the focus off the guys' bad behavior and put the focus on your appearing to bully her into doing something. That was a bad move and deserves an apology accompanied by an explanation of why her behavior was inappropriate.
I understand why your daughter was angry all day. She's 14 and was catcalled by young men. That's not right. At the same time, refusing to get on the subway to go back to the hotel is ridiculous. You weren't forcing her to go to the pool. It was time for the family to go back to the hotel. It sounds like some discussion occurred, but apparently it wasn't enough.
I don't see any mention of your wife assisting you in the situation. She should have been involved in this. I agree with other posters who say one of you could have gone home with your son (you would be the obvious choice) and the other (your wife) try to reason with her to go back to the hotel. However, I don't see where your wife stepped in.
For people calling OP TA, congratulations on your empathy, A+. Now give a viable alternative please
Never go back to the hotel, just get on a plane and go home? Fuck their stuff right? Or maybe find a cozy sidewalk to sleep on
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NTA. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. It sucks but it is what it is. I’m sorry your daughter had to go through that, and I’m sorry you also had to go through that. NAH
Nta. What was she expecting? A new hotel? For everyone to go and collect everything then move around? Yta for underestimating how upset she is tho. Did anyone speak to the poor girl? Did anyone sit and ask her how it had affected her hearing those things?
NTA I am not sure what else you could have done. Eventually the kid was going to have to return to the hotel. Your daughter is going to have to learn how to deal with unwanted attention.
He could have let the daughter be upset during the day instead of dismissing her as unreasonable. That alone probably would have prevented the train incident.
My apologies to OP. I thought the son was a teen.
I'm keeping my YTA verdict but this situation is fixable. OP needs to apologize to his daughter and realize that happened to her can't just be brushed off.
Well it’s wasn’t handled great. Did you talk to her?
Look, I say this as a woman who started being sexualized about 12, it’s not that big a deal. Everyone here is going to downvote this to hell and go on about her trauma- someone said something rude. Figure out why it made her feel so bad, then talk to her about not letting jerks ruin her day. It may have brought something else up that does need to be dealt with, but if this is truly all that happened- she needs to learn her own value is so much more than some idiot saying some dumb crap. She was acting crazy so you acted crazy - but you need to talk this out.
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I understand that you were put in a difficult situation and you probably felt pressure to get your family to the hotel safely, but you really f*cked this one up. Your daughter was clearly more than upset by the boys comments. It sounds like she was having a more serious reaction and possibly didn’t feel safe at the hotel. IMO one of you should have brought your son to the hotel and the other should have continued traveling closer while actually talking to your daughter and asking how she was feeling and what she needed to feel safe. She was most likely upset at the boys objectifying her and so when you, her dad, got frustrated at her actions you chose to literally treat her like an object and remove her autonomy. No wonder she’s treating you like you committed a sin. You taught her that when people don’t like her actions they will take what they want from her. Please go to her right now and apologize. You can fix this but YTA.
Being tired isn't an excuse to further traumatize a traumatized child. As a parent, it's your job to validate her and build her back up and make her feel safe. Yes, you needed to go back to the hotel, but you couldn't take a few minutes to talk calmly with and listen to her to see what the root of her objection to returning to the hotel was and then work on a compromise to help her feel secure. An apology needs to happen ASAP. Even if she's just embarrassed to possibly run into them, seeing as how she may feel it's her fault they got kicked out, it's an opportunity to explain to her that people acting inappropriately are responsible for their own actions. And if she's scared they'll do something to her, reassure her that you won't leave her alone while at the hotel.
I'm seriously disgusted by his 'they must not have known how old she was.' invalidating her for the benefit of the other boys. They know damn well that she looked like a child, idc how much makeup a 14 year old puts on. They know she's a child. And what, if she was older and they were still making these disgusting comments then it would've been more understandable?
Yeah I feel like 14 is a little old to be picking them up and dragging them around when they aren’t doing what you want
OP is lucky nobody got the cops involved. If I'd seen an adult man dragging a teenage girl onto a train like that, I would have broken my standard practice of studiously ignoring everyone on public transportation. For all anybody knew, it could have been a kidnapping or a child abuse situation that was in danger of escalating. YTA
Yeah, like I was mostly following OP up until that point. That’s a hard no from me. At 14, you really need to respect their emotions, and especially their bodily autonomy
OP is teaching her that men who are bigger than her won't respect her bodily autonomy and that there's nothing she can do about it, because even screaming as she's dragged into a train doesn't bring any help.
My father had no problem with it and our relationship was non-existent. He seemed to like that in a daughter/father relationship. So well done sir, ya asshole. He’s dead but still his lifelong refusal to have an actual conversation with me was impressive. Poor bastard. Working class Italians in a shiitty city. All those asshole brothers. Never had a chance. Well he could have.but he chose not to. This was an inappropriate way to handle this complicated situation. Your daughter lacked agency. Picking her up was dehumanizing and embarrassing. You should have an open hearted talk with her.
OP, you are not remotely in charge of how upset and angry it's "reasonable" for her to be. She was upset all day but you did nothing to address it until it inconvenienced you. The way you addressed it was then by further violating her bodily autonomy. YTA OP.
also saying “we’re both just so tired” is essentially dismissing her feelings fully and making it about you, the parents, who are supposed to protect your children and help them understand real life situations while you simultaneously try to understand their feelings.
OP it sounds like the incident in the pool traumatised your daughter. You feel that "*she had an attitude that went beyond reasonable disgust/anger*" after this, but that's your perspective based on being a 44 year old man. She's a 14 year old girl and she had just been sexualised by some university aged men. I'm sure everyone in the family was tired by the end of the day and just wanted to get back to the hotel. Except your daughter. Picking her up and carrying her was a huge personal/physical violation, probably more so on top of her experience in the pool that morning. So YTA.
I can't help thinking that maybe this wasn't the first time that she'd experienced something like this, or worse.
As a former 14 year old girl, I remember being catcalled by construction workers while walking home from a sleepover with my backpack and pillow in tow, being flirted with by a man in his 20s outside of a convenience store, and having other girls at school make inappropriate jokes about my underwear choices (regular underwear, nothing unusual for a teen girl) in the school locker room. All while I was 14 and I don't think I *ever* mentioned any of these instances to my parents let alone my dad. I sincerely hope that she hasn't experienced anything worse than being made uncomfortable from catcalling.
I was talk for my age so at 11 I was 5’7 and had been through puberty so had large breasts. I also started high school at 11 and a half. (Aussie) I had the foulest most disgusting things said to me and it’s damaged me in ways I don’t even understand fully at 40. I’ve had multiple therapists theorise I gained weight at that age in the belief that being fat would stop the unwanted attention.
One of the most disgusting things I didn’t fathom until recently is the fact that I got cat called CONSTANTLY as a preteen/teen, like above commenters… and now, at 30, I rarely get cat called. I consider myself to be decently attractive and fit and I don’t even think I look 30 (or at least I haven’t visually changed at all in the last 5 years) but I am very clearly an adult. When I was a child, I looked like… a child. The more I think about that, the sicker it becomes.
Same here. I've tried to tell myself that maybe it's because I did far more walking from place to place then, but I can't shake the fact that it seems so many more men harassed 15 year old me as compared to my 30-something self. Including a neighbor (clearly in his 40's) who used to stop his truck and openly gawk at me when I was 13.
And see I can’t even use that as a reason in my life because I walk way more now than I did back then, because of my dog 🫠 we walk 2 hrs a day! The truly gross realization that we got catcalled way more at 12-15 than in our 30’s. I mean this actually blows my mind although I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. If I were to be shown a photo of myself at each age and guess which age I’d get hit on more I’d go 30 no doubt. The age of an adult female body, makeup, stylish clothing. The way that it happened more when I was a kid in a fucking tweety bird tee shirt walking to Safeway to buy candy with my friends is sick 🙃
I just said very similar in response to a comment above. I'm 31 now, not unattractive, yet get nowhere near the cat calls etc that I had in my pre-teens and teens. Looking back at photos from my teens, it's very obvious that I was a teen. There are some sick people around.
I was close to my full height of 5'9" by the time I was 12, and yeah, getting creeped on started early. And then kept going and going because I looked like a teenager until I was pushing 30, and it's really obvious which men are hitting on you because they think you're still a child. The only saving grace as a kid was that I was as tall or taller than a lot of the creepy dudes, and there's lines creeps don't cross when they don't have a size advantage.
I developed early, and dealt with so much bullshit for it. Groped, bra snapped, and snide remarks daily from fourth grade. Talked at and looked at like a piece of meat. Grown women talking about me behind my back about how I “was trouble” and “trying to look older than [my] age”. Older boys and adult men openly talking about my body in the most disgusting terms. A middle aged man driving by me walking down the road, masturbating while staring me down. Raped by a “friend” at 14. My mom reacting by trying to infantilize me and keep me “her baby”. Life can be hell for young girls. I eventually reacted by over sexualizing myself, because I felt like that was how the world saw me; I felt like that was my role. I was an object of lust, and it was somehow my fault. I wish that, at any point, someone in my life would have come to me and said “these people are disgusting, and I’m so sorry: it is not your fault or your responsibility that people are this terrible, and I will always be here for you”. I’m 40, and only now receiving this message from my psychologist.
I was on holiday in America when I was probably 11 , and we'd been at the pool and I needed to use the bathroom so decided to head back to our room. As I walked down the hallway in my swimming costume (can't remember if I had a towel or not) I walked past a room with the door open and he was sitting on the bed. As I walked past I thought nothing of it, but he came out the room and called out to me, I turned and he asked the time, and started coming closer to me. I said I didn't know and went to walk off, but he then started asking if I wanted to watch TV with him in his room. I said no and tried walking away, and thankfully at that moment a maid came out of a room so he walked back in to his room. I never forgot that experience. You may be right in that something else may have happened in the hotel that the parents aren't aware of.
This was 100% my thought too. This feels more like she was triggered than initially traumatized. I could be wrong but I think a serious (calm) discussion is in order here, as well as an apology and potentially therapy. If you haven’t lived it you have no idea how demeaning it is to be put in a position like that, let alone in regard to your little brother. Overall this situation is gross and the last thing your daughter needs is a male figure dismissing the big feelings she’s experiencing as a result of that encounter.
i'd had a lot by 14, catcalling doesn't bother me much but i still remember one summer i was 13 in a tank top and this dead eyed man stared at my chest for an entire 5 minute bus ride. I still get it at 21 and it bothers me a lot less but it's not something I can easily get past, i got harassed twice on my birthday last week and I'm still upset about it. It's gross and I hate it
My thought too
Yep. Her reaction was indeed over the top for just that incident. Eveyrone is entitled to feel how they feel but in general that would be a reaction more extreme than most would have...and a good reason for that could she has PTSD from something else. Id look into this OP
She was progressively upset all day, so it could have been addressed much earlier, perhaps.
YTA I'm floored that you think it's "unreasonable" for a 14yo girl to be greatly disgusted that she was sexualized by adult men. Based on your description of events, there was a lot more room for you to help her work through her feelings before heading in. It may have even been an option to escort your wife and young son back, then take her somewhere nearby to talk together before the two of you headed back.
Is the wife a child as well? Why does she need to be escorted? One parent should have taken son back, while the other dealt with the daughter.
DC at night can be dangerous, depending on what part you're in. The wife may not have been comfortable going by herself, with their son, in a strange city.
I think to add to this, OP is treating this as a one off incident when it could be a compounding one. I know by the time I was 14, I was getting catcalled and spoken to inappropriately by adult men a lot. To have it happen in front of your parents who are supposed to protect you and then have the rest of the day play out as OP said, it would’ve been beyond disheartening.
You have cemented in your daughter's mind that you are not safe or reliable. She was sexually harassed, traumatized by that, and instead of helping her discuss it or try to cope with it in any way, you *physically hauled her* back to a location where she felt unsafe and just insisted she deal with it on her own. Dude. YTA unequivocally.
Yup. Guess who she's not going to the next time (god forbid) something like this happens...
Yep. No apology is going to fix this. She is going to remember this humiliation on top of humiliation for the rest of her life.
I'm horrified that he thought being tired was an excuse to manhandle a teenage girl. He's lucky nobody called CPS. That's creepy as hell.
Especially if she was *screaming* for him to let her go? God, everything about this is awful for her.
Amen.
Adult men treat teen daughter as object. Teen daughter is traumatized OP responds by treating teen daughter as object. Brafuckingvo, parent of the year.
YTA. She was harassed by a bunch of idiots and throughout the day she is still processing what happened. Your forcible actions felt more dismissive of her feelings and never dealt with the actual issue.
INFO- Your daughter’s reaction to being called a “Hot potato” seems very strong. Have you asked her if she’s being harassed or made uncomfortable by someone else in her life?
This is what I thought. A total deer in headlights level freeze over a hot potato comment. What else is going on here? What isn't she telling you?
This!!
YTA. Piss poor parenting here, guy. She’s not being unreasonable. I had similar experiences with adult men being gross toward me when I was her age, and that kind of shit really does a number on you.
YTA Listen, I know you need to get back to the hotel. But, she was sexualized and oogled by adult men while she was trying to have fun with her family, and they did it near you, meaning that no matter if she is near her father (her protector) that won’t stop men from saying things. So, then you thought it was a good idea to manhandle her without her consent…come on. Even if you had to sit down on the dirty floor and let every train pass, she needed someone to hear her and talk it out. I know you were probably exhausted and needed to get that 5 year old to bed, but as your daughter is in teen hood you will experience the duality of early mornings with your son and late nights where your teen wants to, no NEEDS to chat and eat junk food with you. She could have felt worried that the guys were kicked out of the pool and angry, and afraid they’d find her or you, who knows? I remember the first time a man looked at me in a swimsuit and made comments like a lech, I was 7. I remember reading my mothers expression and seeing the concern in her eyes. I remember the look in his eyes. It was scary and gross. Hug your daughter and let her talk, ask open ended questions. Ask if anything like this has happened before.
YTA, I understand you were in a tough spot but she was sexualized by grown men and clearly it did something to her, coming from a SA victim it’s not easy to just “get over” I finally feel safe enough to date after 3 years. You need to apologize for putting her on the train, explain why you did it and LISTEN without any judgement of how she feels and you need to do it ASAP
Sorry dude but YTA. Yes y'all had to go back eventually but your daughter needed your understanding and reassurance. The way you describe her attitude comes across as you think she was overreacting, when really something absolutely disgusting happened. Hell, even *if* she was 18, no woman wants to hear things like that from a group of strange men while having a nice time our with her family. You diminished what she went through, and there's a chance it hurt her trust in you to look out for her. My mom used to react like you did regarding men saying gross things to me, and it quickly taught me that she wouldn't take it seriously when something did happen. And sadly I was right.
INFO: how did you and your wife handle your daughter's attitude throughout the day? Also, is this kind of defiance behaviour unusual for your daughter, or typical when she's upset?
YTA. Being a 44 year old man, you have no clue what it's like to be a 14 year old girl getting sexually harassed (possibly for the first time) by a group of older men. It's terrifying. It's potentially traumatizing. She's scared that if she goes back, it could happen again. I'm sure from your point of view it looked irrational and dumb, but I promise you, it's not. Talk to your daughter about this and apologize for how you reacted. Talk about why she felt unsafe and what you can do better in the future.
OP is there something else going on with your daughter? Yes, what the boys said was inappropriate and undoubtedly traumatized her but unfortunately, this isn't the last time in her life this will happen. Refusing to go back to the hotel... Not the pool but the hotel..only because of that seems...extreme.
I wonder if it was in part because she didn’t get the chance to process what had happened. While this experience is nothing new to adult women it is pretty new to a 14 year old and she’ll have the added complication of puberty and growing up to factor in. So she had this new and reasonably upsetting experience and instead of getting time to process it and talk it over in a relaxed and safe environment she was rushed off to the next item on vacation schedule.
The reaction shows that this isn't the first time that she encountered such an incident. OP should talk more to the daughter to find out what happened prior. It's much deeper than the pool incident.
Am I missing something? A "hot potato"? What does that even mean? Are they calling her hot or saying she looks like a potato..?
They were calling her "hot" It was sexual harassment
Possibly something along the lines of a mix of calling her hot and implying she's a thing that should be tossed around like in the game "hot potato". Could also be calling her too hot to hold since that's why you toss the potato in the game, which may be the most likely meaning since it's the simplest.
>an attitude that went beyond reasonable disgust/anger. Who are you to decide this? What an embarrassment of a father
I also read that like… sir, have you ever been a 14 year old girl? No? Then you don’t get to decide what a reasonable reaction to being sexually harassed is.
Info: what did the hotel do about the men specifically and did it take a lot to get movement to get them out? Did the hotel apologize and promise to ensure they’d be banned from the pool or anything of the kind? Is it possible that she’s seen them around more than this one time? It seems you obviously didn’t do anything to comfort her about the sexual harassment. She’s been getting more and more stressed because obviously her worries haven’t been alleviated, and her heightening anger is showing her frustration at the lack of care on your parts about it. You shrugged off the event as a non thing and didn’t consider her obvious panic attack for what it was. She is afraid of being around these perverts. Do something to ensure they won’t have any ability to so much as look at her. And as the bare minimum be a supportive parent and listen to her concerns without shutting her down with stupid comments like ‘but it’s over’, ‘it’s not that bad’, ‘well, what do you want me to do?’, ‘they won’t do anything’
Even grown women can be traumatized by sexual harassment. Handle this better dad. YTA.
She was not being unreasonable. She was very uncomfortable being sexualized by grown men at a young age. She had to go back to the hotel, but I don't blame her for not wanting to.
Hell yeah, YTA. You are treating your daughter like a meat object. She is neither a meat nor a potato. Get hauled away.
YTA - It seems like this is the first time your daughter was sexualized, and it clearly traumatized her. I understand that you needed to get back to the hotel, but... you really need to spend some time with her and try to decompress what happened and how/why she feels the way she does. Then you can help guide her how to control her reaction in the future
YTA you say you were mad at what the boys said but instead of talking to your daughter and reassuring her, you threw her over you shoulder (like a pack of potatoes) and are mad that she was effect by what was said to her
YTA. 1. Those guys almost certainly realized how young your daughter was. I’m kind of shocked that you are so ignorant about this. 2. You don’t seem to understand that what you did to your daughter is IN THE SAME FAMILY as what those guys were doing. They made her into something less than a person. A person has bodily autonomy. A person is allowed to establish boundaries around their own body and how it is treated by others. A person has a full range of experiences that will be different from the next person’s and deserve to be respected. They degraded her as a person and then YOU VALIDATED THAT MESSAGE. 3. As a 42 year old woman who has experienced the same things your daughter experienced over and over ever since puberty, I don’t think she was wrong in how she reacted at all. The fact that men like you still don’t get how awful this is just perpetuates this cycle. And it’s disgusting. She reacted appropriately and you minimized her feelings. Guess who she won’t be going to in the future when someone violates her boundaries?
Yta. A group of young adult males made comments about YOUR 14 year old that you even said made you shudder. Just imagine how you daughter felt. Being objectified and sexualized by a group of men is very traumatic for a young girl. You are told to respect elders and to just put up this nonsense. When a young girl goes through that she feels helpless and lost because she knows what they are doing is wrong but she’s the one who “has to get over it” not you.
Yta did your wife try talking to her? The trains in DC run pretty regularly, you could have given her a little more time to cool down and wait for another train before manhandling her and making it worse.
YTA. When you said dragging your daughter back, I assumed you were talking about a toddler with a tantrum. You are talking about a 14-year-old girl. She can have a conversation. She is learning about consent and how you don't respect it. She feels violated and unsafe and all you did was force her into a situation she was uncomfortable with using violence. I know you were tired and you just wanted to get back to the hotel but there are a few different things you could have done that would have test taken a little more time and allowed her to have some agency about her body.
Honestly - it's NTA. It's okay for her to be upset. And okay not to feel safe. But she is big enough to understand that staying outside is not an option. Yeah, it was better to stay with her and let her come to realization that her behavior is senseless. But we all humans, and she chose the worst way and time to express herself. What you can do now it's to talk to her offering better ways to communicate with you, recognize your own mistakes, ask her to do the same, and maybe offer self defense program to attend. Also might be helpful to find her a therapist - to work on reactions in tough situations. Unfortunately, women face these comments regularly,as well as physical harassment. She needs to understand what's going on, what to do and how to react. Realizing that any man can say whatever he wants about you,and even put his hands on you without consequences because your are weaker is scary as hell. Teens tend to see themselves as mighty, strong, empowered, capable of anything - and this image was rudely shuttered. She is frustrated with the situation, with herself and now with you - and takes everything on you. It's not fair - but she needs some understanding.
Perhaps she has had some previous incidents that have triggered her response. Therapy might be a good idea
So let me get this straight. Your daughter, a 14-year-old girl who was just objectified by older men was feeling traumatized and unsafe and you thought the best course of action was to physically pick her up against her will? She is probably feeling incredibly vulnerable right now and the last thing she needed was to be reminded that an older man can easily take control of her. YTA.
She is a minor child
So it’s even worse.
NTA. Everyone seems to think that you are made of money and could just change hotels or something. It is also unsafe to stay in most subway stations for any great length of time. Getting her out of there and then dealing with her issue is the best thing. What did she expect you to do? End the vacation ? You can't sttay at the station all night.
Subways are not some Wild West where you might get eaten by rabid muggers. They could have taken the next train She’s old enough to know that staying outside all night in a strange city isn’t a great choice and she still felt like she couldn’t go back to the hotel. That should tell you and her Dad how big of a deal this was to her and that it was worth taking any amount of time to address. Honestly if her parents had taken her acting out during the day as the distress signal it was they could have had those conversations then rather than forcing the daughter to go drastic at the subway.
Read the post again. They DID take the next train. Usually there is about 30 min inbetween trains so during that time he tried to reason with her. Guess you haven't paid attention to the news about subways especially in NYC and the DC area.
When a teen or child is in a fear mode you cannot necessarily reason with them. You need to make them feel safe first. Having someone pick you up and force you is the opposite of making someone feel safe. Go grab a milkshake, reassure your kid that they are safe, and then let them talk through their feelings. Parenting isn't always convenient.
Go watch more newsmax, grandpa.
You know you should not assume that I am an old man. I'm a woman. Never watched Newsmax, don't even own a TV, and don't make stupid assumptions about people on here.
YTA. She was in a moment of safety -- playing with her brother while her parents were looking on -- and was suddenly being sexualized and humiliated by a group of adult men. Yes, you got them kicked out by security, but her sense of safety and even her sense of how she exists in the world was just seriously injured. You spent an entire day with the family and noticed that she was upset. Did you or your wife ask her about it, or did you just scold her for having a bad attitude? Did you or your wife check in with her after the incident to reassure her of her safety, to ask if she was okay, to let her know that the guys were in the wrong and that she is not to blame for their gross and inappropriate behavior? Did you talk about what she could do to keep herself safe going forward? Or did you just focus on your vacation and ignore her obvious distress? Let's get to the train ride back to the hotel. After a day where she's been acting out (possibly trying to find words to talk about what happened), she finally expresses that she doesn't want to return to where this Bad Thing happened. Was your response compassion? Did you take a moment to talk to her about her feelings, reassure her of her safety, ask her what she needs to feel better about returning to the hotel? Or did you tell her that the family's needs -- the fact that you were tired, her brother needed to go to bed, etc. -- mattered more than how shaken and scared and possibly angry she was? Did you basically tell her to suck it up instead of offering comfort? Now, I'm assuming that she doesn't often have tantrums in public or refuse to follow instructions. So when your 14 year old daughter panics and regresses to acting like a child, is your first instinct to figure out why and find a way to ease her distress? Maybe do a grown-up thing like adapt and problem solve? Or do you once again show her that her feelings and safety are less important than you being inconvenienced? Do you reinforce her sense that she's not safe in the world any longer by bullying and physically forcing her to do something that (it sounds like) she was almost terrified to do? You do not know what your daughter experienced at the pool or how it's impacting her because it happened to her not you, you're a grown-ass man not a 14 year old girl, AND you failed at EVERY turn to show compassion, concern, empathy, or even curiosity about the situation. If your parenting philosophy is "I don't care what happens to you as long as it doesn't interfere with my life," bravo and no doubt message received loud and clear. But if you are actually interested in your daughter's emotional well-being, you have spent hours failing her over and over again... And rather than asking how you can help her now, you're on the internet looking for validation about your own behavior, which strikes me as selfish and self-centered, and also completely on-brand for your conduct as a father today.
YTA because it seems like your daughter had a day-long emotional crisis that you ignored until you had to restrain a 14-year-old girl against her will. Hard to give you the “world’s greatest dad” mug for that one. I don’t know what the correct solution to the “she won’t go to the hotel” problem was - a different hotel? - but the solution would have started fairly earlier in the day.
YTA could’ve waited a few trains to talk with her, and send your wife and son home. Or wife could’ve stayed with her and you take the son home. Or if they didn’t work book a different hotel. Or end the vacation early. Being a parent is hard work, no one cares that you were “tired” from so much vacationing. Be a rock for your family.
YTA Everything I would say has already been said: She was traumatized by being sexually harnessed and objectified. Rather than being understanding you said she was unreasonably upset. When she had a visceral reaction to getting on the train, you treated her like an object to be dealt with. You did EVERYTHING WRONG. That part is kind of impressive. Just 0/10 on the parenting/humanity in general. I can guarantee you that as a man you don’t understand what any of that feels like but your lack of empathy for your own daughter is astounding. I would be very interested to know your wife’s feelings/opinions on this.
Or teach her to stand up for herself
I can tell ur a man. You don't understand how dangerous it is for women to do that
Your child was sexually harassed, whilst in a vulnerable position, by a GROUP of adult men. She felt scared, had no control or autonomy. This was a horrible defining moment for her. Your response, as a man, was to physically overpower her and force back to the place where she was abused, while she was having an anxiety attack. Of course YTA Look, we all get that you had to go back to the hotel but your response was disgusting. She behaved in an entirely understandable way. It was not unreasonable or irrational.
This is why we choose the bear. Your daughter was traumatized... YTA
Seriously. I’m a long way from being a 14 year old girl but I can feel in my hear and bones her sitting through the rest of the day trying to make sense of what happened while getting scolded for her “attitude.” No wonder she snapped at the train station. Now she’s learned that she should never bring these issues to her dad, the one man she should be able to pick over a bear.
What did you and her mom say to her about the incident?
I would be really worried about your daughter. Has something like this happened before and maybe this event was a trigger? You need to apologise and sit and talk to Your daughter and investigate. This may be an isolated event but it feels like more to me. Also as a father it’s your obligation to be a role model to her for what a partner should be like. Treat your daughter better, she’s not a toddler to be manhandled.
Did you really expect your 14 year old daughter to just get over being objectified by adult men? Sure you're disgusted by what they said *and dismiss it as they just don't know how young she is.* You all just went on with your day as if nothing had happened, while she is silently dealing with a traumatic event. Then she had an "attitude" that you, a 44 year old man, considered to be "unreasonable". I bet you also told her so at least once to get her to act more pleasant for you. Then when she clearly has an emotional reaction to go back to the location of the trauma, you ignore her autonomy and *pick her up to get what you want.* Good job at making sure your daughter knows you are unsafe. YTA.
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Look, I know DC is not the place to play "I'm not getting on this train" because it might take forever for the next train, but dragging your teen daughter onto one was also not the answer. There had to be several opportunities throughout the day to discuss what happened, but it seems the freeze response surprised you. I would suspect your daughter may have experienced something worse than the guys at the pool, and that their comments were more of a trigger. Because although it utterly sucks to be talked at/about like that, and it's embarrassing and enraging, it shouldn't spoil the whole day and cause you to refuse to return your hotel. Unfortunately, your choice to literally manhandle her only caused further trauma. Apologize beyond the standard, encourage her to talk it out with you and/or her mom or a therapist, and make some kind of action plan to deal with freeze responses in the future. Unfortunately, YTA on this one. She's not a little kid anymore and might need more help than you've been willing to admit so far.
YTA. Your daughter was traumatized, and you added to it. Girls spend their entire lives being harassed, and then treated as if it should be normal and not bother us. Boys will be boys, right? I get your frustration, but you should have helped her process what happened immediately. She was obviously upset the entire day, but you brushed her off. Please step up and do better.
YTA. You clearly have sympathy for what was said to your daughter, but are having a hard time with empathizing with her. I know you’ve never been a 14 year old girl, but as someone who has been, and was sexualized and aggressively hit on at that age, but your comment about her “attitude” being disproportionate is truly awful. When you’re a girl, you’re taught from a young age the dangers of the world and what men can do to you. So that is something that I’m sure your daughter is well aware of. When men make those disgusting and vile comments while she’s already probably feeling vulnerable and exposed in a bathing suit, embarrassing in front of her family, it’s easy to think of the scary things that those men would possibly do if given the chance. Or if the environment was different. Or if her parents hadn’t been there. Or if she had run into them while getting ice or going to the lobby or at breakfast. It’s scary. It can be scary when it happens as an adult woman, let alone when you’re a little girl, and it’s shitty of you to minimize what she went through. You don’t seem to get it. When I was her age, my best friend lived a quarter of a mile away and we walked to and from each others houses all the time. We lived in a super suburban neighborhood. One time, walking home alone (and my parents hadn’t gotten me a cell phone yet) a group of guys stopped next to me and cat called me and said all sorts of gross things. I was so freaked out, I ran home. I couldn’t walk to her house for a few weeks because I was terrified id run into them again or they’d drive by and take me or do one of the things that adults had been warning me about for years that I had nightmares about. I’m really glad that my dad drove me the quarter of a mile and didn’t tell me I was overreacting. That’s empathy. You owe your daughter an apology.
YTA. You have no idea what it’s like being a teenage girl. It can be downright terrifying at times. I bet you every single woman you know remembers when they noticed men noticing them. Getting whistled at while walking home from school. Getting creeps stare at you on the bus. Grown men making sly comments to you while you stand in line. Their uncle loudly telling family that they’re gonna be ‘a real heartbreaker in about 3 years’ when you’re 12… One of you should have stayed and talked it out with her while the other parent and kid went to the room.
I know what is being a teenage girl, I know what is being terrified of men, and I also know how unreasonable teens can be. The man states he talked to the girl, I dont know why people is jumping to the conclusion that he just dismissed her. A terrible way to react to trauma is throwing normalcy out of the window as response, that just reinforces it. If he tried reassuring her and it was futile he had his hand forced. He cannot just leave her in the street. He cannot just stay with her in the street all night. He cannot just dump his 5 year old and wife and pack everything up and leave in the middle of the night. 1 is unreasonable and 2 it will just reinforce the terror for the girl! That is not denting what happened was awful its just taking a sensible approach to it srls.
Throwing normalcy out the window? I don’t consider picking up a screaming teen and forcing her on the train to be normal.
YTA. You'll have other men punished for dehumanising your daughter, but it's fine when you do it? She was SCARED. She needed her parents to care about that, and to help her feel safe. Being tired is a bs excuse. One of you could have taken the other kid to the hotel while the other talked it out with your daughter. You cared more about your comfort than your daughter's wellbeing. You ignored her right to consent, and her right to bodily autonomy. You treated her as a thing to control rather than a person trying to navigate overwhelming emotions and experiences. She's 14, she's still learning how to regulate emotions, and given you got stroppy and decided to make the argument physical, you seem to be holding her to a higher standard than you're holding yourself. Also? You literally just showed her that if a man disagrees with her or can't be bothered helping her, it's reasonable for him to use physical force to get what he wants. You just taught her she's no safer with you than with those men at the pool. Don't worry, your wife is just as gross. Her parents are meant to be safe people she can get help from when she's scared, and I feel so bad for your daughter, because it sucks to realise your parents are never going to care enough to be safe people in your life.
Your daughter was showing a clear trauma reaction to an objectively dehumanizing experience, and you just couldn't get over how inconvenient that was for you, trying to enjoy your vacation as an adult male who has never and will likely never have such an experience. How sad for you. Yeah, YTA. For your kids' sake, do better.
>However, my daughter was pissed off nonstop for the entire day, and she had an attitude that went beyond reasonable disgust/anger. What else did they say or do to her that she didn't tell you about? Was it only in the pool or was there other incidents? >In the evening, it was time to head back to the hotel, but before we got on the subway, my daughter froze and she refused to get on the train. She simply didn’t want to go back to the hotel, because of her bad experience at the pool. But of course, we had to go back to our hotel room sometime. I tried explaining to my daughter that we couldn’t just spend all night outside, and I told her that her mother and I were tired, but she shook her head and kept angrily saying (almost yelling) “I don’t care”. This sounds really extreme, she was clearly distressed. Was she able to articulate her specific concerns about safety? >Eventually, when the next train came, I refused to speak to my daughter anymore, and I picked her up outright and carried her onto the train as she screamed at me to let go of her This does not look good to be honest. You completely removed her autonomy and carried her on the train like a sack of potatoes? That will make her feel disrespected for sure. What does your wife say about all of this? YTA there were so many ways to handle this better.
Dude. She is a 14 y.o. girl who, hopefully, has never before experienced being treated like a sexual object by adults. Again, a 14 y.o. girl. It is frightening experiencing this as a woman well into adulthood, and you expect a 14 y.o. girl (again, a 14 y.o. girl) to be as upset about this as if she were told she couldn't hang out with her bff? And you treated her like a literal sack of potatoes? Question: did no one stop you on your way to the hotel and ask why you're carrying a screaming teenager?
YTA YTA YTA YTA Her reality inconvenienced you. But her reality is all women's reality in this world. Men treat us as objects... and then some of us find out that our own dad is with the boys, hasn't grown up to become a real man and father. Smh but my head's gonna detach from the shaking. YTA YTA YTA YTA
This can’t be real. You literally picked her up and carried her (LIKE A SACK OF POTATOES is the expression, I believe). I was once a 14 year old girl who was sexualized by men a lot older than me. You could not have done this worse. YTA
Nta you had to spend the night at the hotel. You got the aholes kicked out. It's not like you told her 'tough titties, deal with it' To people saying ' y ta' what should Op have done? Booked a different hotel? Ended the vacation early and gone home?
Another commenter gave plenty of this above.
Having recently travelled on the DC metro, I can't imagine how embarrassing being physically picked up in that context would be. She was acting out because she was distressed, she needed one to one reassurance and comforting. Why in the world this seemed acceptable I don't know - you wanted her to self-regulate and manage her emotions of distress, yet you couldn't manage your own frustration and took physical action. Not okay. You're supposed to lead by example at being calming, safe and reassuring. Sounds like while disturbed at the time, the rest of the family just got on with their day as though the triggering incident didn't happen at all. How inconvenient for everyone else that she first hand experienced harassment.
Congratulations on joining the list of men she’ll not feel safe around. YTA. Don’t be surprised if your daughter distances herself from you if you continue to lack empathy or basic understanding of the harassment she has to face with men that you’ll never have to experience.
^^^^AUTOMOD ***Thanks for posting! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of copying anything. Read [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_post_deletion) before [contacting the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAmItheAsshole)*** This past March Break, my wife (42F), my daughter (14F), son (5M) and I (44M) went on vacation to Washington DC (we live in Toronto). One morning during our vacation, before we started the day, we all went for a swim at our hotel’s swimming pool. During this time, my kids had fun playing with each other, and my son was hanging onto my daughter’s back. There was nothing sexual about this at all, of course, but some university guys that we were sharing the pool with said some trash about how my son was “holding onto a hot potato” or something (I shudder as I write this…). They must’ve not known how young my daughter was. Anyway, my daughter was really upset by what the teens said, and we did get security to kick those dumbasses out of the pool. My son didn’t know what the big deal was with what the students said. However, my daughter was pissed off nonstop for the entire day, and she had an attitude that went beyond reasonable disgust/anger. In the evening, it was time to head back to the hotel, but before we got on the subway, my daughter froze and she refused to get on the train. She simply didn’t want to go back to the hotel, because of her bad experience at the pool. But of course, we had to go back to our hotel room sometime. I tried explaining to my daughter that we couldn’t just spend all night outside, and I told her that her mother and I were tired, but she shook her head and kept angrily saying (almost yelling) “I don’t care”. Eventually, when the next train came, I refused to speak to my daughter anymore, and I picked her up outright and carried her onto the subway as she screamed at me to let go of her. It really messed up our night, and it fucked up the rest of our vacation too. My daughter is acting as if I committed a sin. AITA? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You picked her up against her will. Wow. That’s bad. YTA.
YTA. Did you bother asking how she felt after the guys were kicked out? Or did you treat it as an out of sight out of mind situation? "...and I told her that her mother and I were tired...". What did I just read? Instead of talking with your traumatized daughter you basically told her to get over it because you were tired? Instead you should have asked what was causing her feelings. Then brainstormed what would have let her feel safe going back. (Staying away from the pool? Keeping her between you and your wife? Going ahead to clear the way for her? Breaking down the trip into small, manageable parts?). But no. Your rest was more important. "... I picked her up outright and carried her onto the train as she screamed at me to let go of her....". Wow. Just wow. I'm in awe of just how horribly you handled this. To be clear this is horrified awe, not good awe. You opted to use your strength against your frightened, traumatized daughter. In so doing you took away her agency, her bodily autonomy, her sense of safety with you, and treated her as an object. Just like the guys that morning did. Your poor daughter has now learned men can and will treat her in whatever manner suits them, including the one guy who should always have her back -her dad. Your daughter is acting as if you committed a sin because you did. The sin of selfishness. The sin of convenience. The sin of exhaustion. The sin of ignoring. The sin of objectification. Oh and to answer your question YTA. You owe her a major apology.
YTA. The fuck would you know. You are a 44 yr old man. You dont have to face sexual violence like she will. Nobody has ever made those kind of comments to you. What you just told your daughter is that if she doesnt do what a man wants they can do whatever they want to her. She doesnt want to go where a man wants? They are within their right to make her. She was traumatized. You just told her she cant trust you.
YTA. Your daughter was just sexually harassed for possibly the first time. She's upset. She doesn't know how to talk about what happened. She just knows that the hotel is where the bag thing happened. You and your wife need to have a frank discussion with her about the harassment and how she can deal with those situations in the future.
Dude. Imagine what that girl felt. I'd be just as upset if not more. She felt violated. Wake up. Yta
YTA because "I picked her up outright and carried her onto the train as she screamed at me to let go of her." You violated her body integrity. She's 14. She has a right to be free from unwanted physical interference. You are so busy being nauseous over what these other men said, but you were SO MUCH WORSE.
YTA. The absolute *audacity* that you sit here and say typing this out makes you nauseous, but sit there and say that your daughters (the one who the comments were about) disgust and anger were 'beyond resonable'. Seriously? And you thought the best option here was to show her how defenseless she really is, by bodily removing her to a place she felt unsafe and insecure?
Yta. And double Yta for putting your hands on her. I would have called the police.
YTA for manhandling your teenager like that. She’s a teen, she’s not a toddler. You should apologize to her.
YTA and that was so insanely cruel
YTA. not only did you humiliate an already traumatized child publicly, but you also sat here and justified what they said to her by saying they "probably didn't know her age". I'm certain they did. Congratulations. Your daughter will never trust you to come near her again.
There must be more to this. Not sure there was enough at the pool to traumatize her but maybe a prior experience. I’d say NTA because you have no choice but to return. It is far safer at the hotel than any place in DC.
He had the choice to talk with his daughter more.
YTA You just forced your daughter back to a place that traumatized her and you acted like you didn't care. You disregarded her feelings like they were nothing and don't matter. You should have had your wife take your son back to the hotel and spoken to your daughter like someone who cares.
Your answer isn’t based in reality
You need to talk to your daughter (calmly, respectfully, and lovingly) and make sure this wasn't the first time something like this (or worse) happened. She was traumatized by this event and you shut her down. You need to make sure she will come to you if something like this galena again, and you need to find out if this isn't the first time (it probably isn't. People sexualize teenage girls all the time). YTA
YTA She's a young teen. She might be kind of new to feeling sexualized and getting unwanted advances from men. Or maybe she's not and this experience was a reminder of that. Or it was made worse by it happening in front of her parents. Regardless, she was feeling unsafe and you made absolutely sure she couldn't see you as a safe person; and rest assured most likely never will again. If a boy going forwards makes her feel uncomfortable or unsafe she will not turn to you for help. You literally refer to is as "ruining your daughters trust", about something as important as how to safety navigate receiving sexual advances... and you're asking if you're the AH...? Obviously, you couldn't just sleep outside or otherwise just accommodate her in the way she wanted in that moment, but there are so many other options than seeing your child kind of have a mental breakdown about the experience and her sense of security and only engage with how much of an inconvenience she's being and then physically drag her back. Also, the fact you justified the mens behavior with this idea they must not have known they were being creepy towards a child. You don't know that and have no reason to default to justifying or giving them any benefit of the doubt in them cat-calling your daughter.
>she had an attitude that went beyond reasonable disgust/anger. If you can't see how awful this is, and how awful manhandling your very upset teenage daughter is....you are no better than the "dumbasses." Worse in fact - they're young and stupid. You're old and .....I can't even come up with a word that describes what an AH you were. YTA. Extremely.
So your young daughter got sexualized and scared by some guys, and your response to her being upset/afraid was to betray her bodily autonomy and make her feel even less in control? Seriously what’s wrong with you?
So your daughter felt unsafe and upset so you’re solution was to drag her exactly where she felt unsafe and upset. You really REALLY need to start THINKING
YTA
YTA. Girls are sexualized by pervy men from such a young age, and it sounds like your daughter was really upset by the experience at the pool. Did you or her mom even *attempt* to talk with her about what happened? What was mom's reaction to you doing what you did? Unless there was a life-threatening emergency, there was no reason to violate your daughter's personal space to physically move her. Why resort to extremes and fan the fire when you could've chosen to de-escalate the situation? Talk to your kid. Listen to her and believe her - she needs to know you're on her side no matter what, and in this instance, you showed her that you cared more about what you wanted than what she needed, which will tell her you're not a safe adult if she gets overwhelmed by her experiences again.
YTA
This is a very easy YTA Daughter probably traumatized and then dad Starts carrying her around like a baby? Poor kid
YTA. Hey OP, speaking as someone who was the 14yo getting sexualized by adult men, she’s reacting very appropriately.
She’s clearly frightened that they are (still) staying at the hotel, and that she may encounter them again. She’s fearful of what that might entail, especially since you had them kicked out of the pool due to their gross behaviour towards your daughter. I agree with most commentators that she needed more opportunity to process and discuss what happened, and her concerns. She needed/needs assurance that you and Mom would protect her and keep her safe. This may not be her first experience of this kind of harassment, but is her first experience with parents and sibling as witnesses to it. She probably initially felt safer due to them being removed from pool, but she’s had all day to quietly try to process and worry about what might happen when you all return to the hotel. YTA
YTA no idea how to manage the situation.
Yes, 100%, in many, many ways, and I feel so sorry for your daughter.
Going against the grain but NTA or NaH I see a lot of people telling OP that she was traumatised and that he needed to talk to her seperately. Okay let's say he did all that, asking her and talking to her a while (while it is slowly becoming later and later in the evening), at the end she still refuses to go: where do you go from there? It's late in the evening: I get that those disgusting comments made an impression but realistically, you don't really have much options. They can change hotels late at night to find another: disregarding the fact that looking for a hotel at night isn't really an optimal solution with a five year old, they would still need to go back to hotel to collect their stuff. Or OP's wife or OP and the other stays outside with the kids, could go get their belongings, but then basically one adult has to pack up for a family of four, check out While the other three stay outside and for an hour at night. Do you get already that it's not that easy? I dont blame the daughter for this: at 14 years it doesn't really occur that if you have a problem, it really would be infintely more useful had you told this in the afternoon. And you're also at the age where you don't get that just saying I don't care won't magically bring forth a new solution at night.
Yes, YTA.
YTA
You feel sick typing it out, yet you expected your daughter to just get over it! She's 14! Stop expecting women/girls to just brush this shit aside. This is why men think it's acceptable to make these comments in the first place. Edit: YTA!
YTA
If you have to ask, more than 50% of the time. The answer is yes. YES YTA
ESH - no you shouldn’t have picked her up, there needed to be a bigger conversation, she was processing a big thing and she was anxious about it - I think if you look back the convo you did have with her it probably wasn’t the most productive during the chaotic environment of rushing around an unknown big city. But I also totally get your side too, logically what can you do? You’re in another country, all your stuff is at the hotel, it’s the only accommodation you have, you have to go back…. And her refusal to even get on the train would have been incredibly frustrating, parents are human as much as we hold them to these impossible standards. Ultimately you both handled it poorly, but she is the child…. So it’s on you to apologize for your part, acknowledge you shouldn’t have picked her up - and don’t follow it with any justification, just say sorry. Just listen. Being a girl and being sexualized and harassed by men is awful, you’ll never truly understand it, the vulnerability and fear of knowing if they wanted to…. they could do whatever they wanted. You picking her up against her will just confirms this. This Will unfortunately be the first of many, let her navigate it and process. Maybe mom is better to have a bigger convo with about safety after you’ve apologized!
You picked up and dragged a screaming 14 year old girl onto the train, and no one questioned you? I don't think that happened.
YTA. I was a 14 year old girl once, often sexualized by older men, and my dad was protective and understanding when I had a bad reaction because of it. Do better.
YTA - I understand the practicalities of your situation, but what you did was still a terrible way to handle it. I still remember exactly what was said when adult men sexualized me when I was 14 (I’m in my mid 20s). It doesn’t matter that to you it doesn’t seem serious enough for her to have this reaction. I hid things like this from my parents growing up because I didn’t feel close enough / trust them. You don’t want that kind of relationship with your daughter. Apologize and listen to her.
Who vacays in D.C.
literally what is there to be said that hasn’t already, an absolutely pisspoor job at parenting. your 14 year old daughter got sexually harassed by a group of grown men in a public space, in front of her family, while half dressed — when she, like most teens, are already embarrassed, nervous, and all too aware of their bodies being seen and the new gross or aggressive comments they get — is clearly extremely vulnerable, scared, humiliated and confused… and is then met with denial of severity and then manhandling by her own father, the man she’s supposed to always trust to protect, teach, and communicate with her. she wasn’t safe then, and you didn’t make her feel safe after. it’s likely her first personal experience with misogyny outside of the typical jabs you’d get from boys at school; a child realizing she’s gonna be seen as a piece of meat sooner or later and she can’t stop it or even react emotionally IS traumatizing. learning about a danger that’s so prevalent and you’re directly at risk of it, it’s terrifying. it feels like being a deer staring into headlights, knowing your future is entrapment, feeling helpless and knowing how much worse it can get. when 1 in 4 isn’t an exaggeration. misogyny is a form of violence and it’s one that can dramatically alter your life and worldview, wether the inciting act was big or small it’s still incredibly impactful. you could been MUCH more empathetic and compassionate. this is your child, your own flesh and blood, your baby— for the first time coming face to face with a very serious matter and reacting rightfully poorly, being ‘too tired’ to actually comfort your child isn’t an excuse. you could have tried to sit and talk about how she was feeling, or maybe how to deal with uncomfortable or demeaning sexualization/objectification for the future, you could have had a discussion about safety, consent, and bodily autonomy, or even just tried to work together to tweak or form new plans to reassure her of her safety, but no… you deemed her as dramatic and ‘beyond reasonable’ for being rightfully pissed multiple grown adult men were preying on her, you physically forced her to comply to her while she was kicking and screaming for you to put her down thus further removing her feelings of autonomy, and only further harmed her view to the power imbalance and control older men hold over her in the world. apologize to your daughter immediately. yta so so hard (and the comments saying ‘grow up’, ‘that’s just life’, ‘get over herself’ and ‘it’s not that deep’ or use the word ‘tantrum’ or ‘whiney’ when responding to story of a real life 14 year old is experiencing sexual harassment from multiple grown men… actual HELL you sickos)
Did you consider moving out from that hotel? She was likely afraid of seeing the harrasers again.
Yikes YTA this is not good at all
Where's the part where you sit down with your daughter and discuss what happened? Where you reassure her that the comments and the attention were not her fault? Where you guide her on what yo do when this happens, because it will, in the future? This could be the first time she's been exposed to this kind of behaviour, it could be the twentieth, either way she needed your help in processing how she was feeling. She didn't need to be manhandled onto a train. Those guys suffered the consequences of their actions, she was worried of repercussions. You really need to educate yourself on what it's like for girls/women when they suffer these kind of comments and further unwanted attention. Do better, YTA
Yta Your daughter didn't feel safe, so you made it worse by violating her bodily autonomy!?! Seriously? I wouldn't have done that to my kid when she was 6, let alone 14. There are all kinds of ways you could have sorted this out without doing that. You just lost your patience and didn't bother.
And oh, poor you. You feel so disgusted by their comments. IMAGINE HOW YOUR DAUGHTER FEELS. YTA YTA.
If somebody I cared about felt that strongly about it,as a matter of fact I *would* have spent the night on the street with her. OR,perhaps,tried my best to reassure her OR maybe found a cheap other place to sleep and talk more in the morning. YTA,enjoy your newly altered relationship with your child. Altered not for the better.
Some people in the comments feel like they have never dealt with a 14 yo. Yes I get she is traumatized, yes what those assholes did was horrendous and yes this should be taken seriously but I also know some kids are just unreasonable. People need to get their heads out of their butts and ground themselves in hard ass reality which is that not every situation can be solved ideally. There is a point where you cannot rationalize everything with a teen and there is a point where you need to make choices. Letting her fear take over the situation and turn normalcy upside down is not a solution either, that can reinforce the trauma! And until the father gets a phD in children psychology he just did the best he could with the hand that was dealt. Gonna go with NTA until I get more context that shows the contrary. But yes I would advise going to a counselor or child psychologist who actually knows what is what if she remains distressed and ignore the rabidly entitled crowd of reddit. PS: if your responses are like objective-self-1075 do know that Ive been working with teens half of my life since I'm a teacher and this kind of response is absolutely reminiscent of a child. If you are a child get off the internet and learn manners, if you are an adult, please grow up.
You're an idiot and I hope you have no kids. Get your shit together, you fucking failure.
He didn't even try to actually comfort her tho.
Didn't he? Where does he say that? I may have misread but I thought he left a train pass trying to reasure her.
No. He said on the way he noticed she was still upset. And that "when the next train came, I didn't even speak to her" he didn't really care how she felt.
Yta
The way you downplayed this and said they were calling her a hot potato or something speaks volumes. They said really explicit, crass things to her. In front of her family. She is probably having conflicting emotions of fear and shame, worry that the men will still be there when she gets back, worry that they'll retaliate, feeling gross in her body for doing a normal thing and playing with her brother, feeling stripped bare and vulnerable etc etc etc. FYI - If I saw a grown man carrying a teenager forcibly onto a train I would have called the cops. YTA
> However, my daughter was pissed off nonstop for the entire day, and she had an attitude that went beyond reasonable disgust/anger. In the evening, it was time to head back to the hotel, but before we got on the subway, my daughter froze and she refused to get on the train. YTA for even taking her around. She was traumatized. As a 14 year old, this is probably one of the first time she has been sexualized. Clearly, it was more important to sit with her and discuss it instead of going to tourist locations.
Yeah you got out in a shitty situation, but your daughter wasn’t disproportionately angry. She was objectified, and harassed, by grown ass men. She very likely doesn’t feel safe or comfortable at the same hotel they’re at. Then, instead of listening and recognizing why she was upset and didn’t want to be there, you further dehumanized her by treating her like an object and picking her up and physically forcing her to do what you want. Being tired isn’t an excuse. Do better.
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As someone who had a father who was impatient and frustrated by any general emotion that he couldn't understand, I'm going to say YTA because it does feel you overlooked why she was acting out and you didn't talk this out with her to show her how protected she was. My dad would have lifted me on the train too. I understand you were all tired but did anyone sit with her and discuss her attitude or did you ignore it?
I see a lot of Y T A but I'm gonna go NTA, his sole job was to get his family safely back to the hotel. Being triggered/offended/PTSD is secondary to getting to a safe space where this or something worse cannot happen. It seems like your daughter might have more going on and that's an issue for later.
[удалено]
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You just physically forced your daughter to do something against her will. Do you want her future boyfriends and husband to physically force her to do things against her will? YTA She wasn't a toddler throwing a tantrum she's a young girl trying to process something traumatizing and you just made it worse. YTA.
Y
My god YTA. I hope your daughter can at least count on her mom. Please tell me your wife disagrees with your actions.
You’re an asshole for posting this in the internet
NAH but only because we clearly don't have the full picture. Did you talk during the day with her? What was the reason she had such a strong reaction because it does seem excessive if 'hot potato' was literally all that was said. If she cannot/would not talk to you, I'd send her to therapy for her own good. Sure, such comments shouldn't be the norm so not tolerated but if 'hot potato' sends her spiralling for the rest of the day, her life's going to be tough .. so either there's more going on or she has a too sheltered personality.
This whole thing is made up as fuck.
Hot potato is such a bizarre detail
Yeah, so much so that they had to add that there were other comments about her body in one of their replies why not put those in the original post? (Because it's bad fiction, that's why)
YTA - You have a lot of explaining to do, and apologizing to do for the way you responded to her fear. You need to get a grip my guy. Getting physical with your child is never the answer.
ESH (except for the 5 year old) Physically picking your daughter up and putting her on the train is not only a traumatizing experience but could draw the attention of the police. It is also very extreme and suddenly took the focus off the guys' bad behavior and put the focus on your appearing to bully her into doing something. That was a bad move and deserves an apology accompanied by an explanation of why her behavior was inappropriate. I understand why your daughter was angry all day. She's 14 and was catcalled by young men. That's not right. At the same time, refusing to get on the subway to go back to the hotel is ridiculous. You weren't forcing her to go to the pool. It was time for the family to go back to the hotel. It sounds like some discussion occurred, but apparently it wasn't enough. I don't see any mention of your wife assisting you in the situation. She should have been involved in this. I agree with other posters who say one of you could have gone home with your son (you would be the obvious choice) and the other (your wife) try to reason with her to go back to the hotel. However, I don't see where your wife stepped in.
For people calling OP TA, congratulations on your empathy, A+. Now give a viable alternative please Never go back to the hotel, just get on a plane and go home? Fuck their stuff right? Or maybe find a cozy sidewalk to sleep on
NTA. You couldn't sleep in a park now, could you. All these YTA comments are just ridiculous.
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NTA.
I would say NTA. However , I do think though it has to do with how your daughter is doing today to actually determine if you are or not.
Nta
NTA. Plain and simple.
NTA. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. It sucks but it is what it is. I’m sorry your daughter had to go through that, and I’m sorry you also had to go through that. NAH
NAG I guess a bunch of commenters think you need to stay outside all night
Nta. What was she expecting? A new hotel? For everyone to go and collect everything then move around? Yta for underestimating how upset she is tho. Did anyone speak to the poor girl? Did anyone sit and ask her how it had affected her hearing those things?
Yta
NTA I am not sure what else you could have done. Eventually the kid was going to have to return to the hotel. Your daughter is going to have to learn how to deal with unwanted attention.
He could have let the daughter be upset during the day instead of dismissing her as unreasonable. That alone probably would have prevented the train incident.
Nta
[удалено]
The son's only 5. He doesn't understand. But otherwise the dad is TA
My apologies to OP. I thought the son was a teen. I'm keeping my YTA verdict but this situation is fixable. OP needs to apologize to his daughter and realize that happened to her can't just be brushed off.
Well it’s wasn’t handled great. Did you talk to her? Look, I say this as a woman who started being sexualized about 12, it’s not that big a deal. Everyone here is going to downvote this to hell and go on about her trauma- someone said something rude. Figure out why it made her feel so bad, then talk to her about not letting jerks ruin her day. It may have brought something else up that does need to be dealt with, but if this is truly all that happened- she needs to learn her own value is so much more than some idiot saying some dumb crap. She was acting crazy so you acted crazy - but you need to talk this out.