Should a 16-year-old choose friends over family for her birthday dinner?

[ADHDMumstruggles]

DD is about to turn 16. She wants to go out for dinner with a group of friends on her birthday.

I don’t have a problem with this. We will spend the day together - have a nice lunch and open presents.

DH hit the roof. He wants his Mum to come and stay and go for dinner with family. Wants her to rearrange her friends to another night.

i feel like she’s 16 - she s not having a party because a lot of her friends are on holiday and she’s had a really tough year. I feel like he’s making it about him and he’s embarrassed in front of his mum.

am I wrong here? She’s currently crying in her room and the heat isn’t helping!!!

(used AI title as summed it up pretty well!!)

He’s being really horrid about this. Fancy making her cry because she wants to see her friends for her birthday!

What an arse your husband is.

Wtf - whose birthday is this? Completely out of order and selfish of your DH. He should be ashamed of his selfishness - why on earth would a 16 yr old want to spend their birthday evening with their granny?

Agree he’s a prat. It’s just all so unnecessary.

but don’t worry about the crying - she feels things strongly and gets over things quickly. She’s ok now and is trying to convince me she should get her nails done tomorrow 🙄

You are not in the wrong here. DH should be delighted she has a group of friends to celebrate her birthday with.

Her gran can celebrate in the day with you all. She’ll probably want to go to bed early anyway!

I’ll pay with our marital assets.

I’d be packing up and leaving the bastard. How dare he talk to you like that when you’re raiding his child.

He said that to the child - not me.

Why do you think he’s being such a prick?

Your poor dd 😢

Your dh sounds awful.

Hopefully it’s just the heat getting to him!

she’s extremely defiant and parenting her is not easy. I think he feels we need to be tougher but he picks odd battles. And this is one I think

She should be with her friends, where let’s face it, she’s going to have more fun.

Surely it’s all ages that people celebrate their birthday with their friends. People have birthday parties for their children with friends from school and whatnot throughout their whole lives. Why would that stop when they were sixteen?

He doesn’t have an issue with the friends being there - it’s the fact he isn’t!!!

Oh that’s so awful of her dad making her feel bad for wanting to see her friends on her birthday!! O hope he comes round!

H sounds a bit of a knob tbh, I doubt your d has been the cause of all the awful year.

No she hasn’t - we had an awful school experience but she’s done really well at her new school and is thriving academically so I also want to recognise that

He’s odd @ADHDMumstruggles. Normally all you want for your DC is for them to enjoy their day.

Of course she should! Friends are by far the most important people at that age (arguably, at any age).

Is it about his feelings or about appearance for his mum? If the latter I would be really furious. DD’s feelings should be his priority. Its her birthday and at this age friends are more important.
Tbh it doesn’t matter what your DH was doing on his 16th birthday. He did what he preferred, even if it was dinner with his family. Your DD is her own person and can do everything differently.
Your DH needs to change his attitude, spending time with family should be seeing by DD as a joy not a duty.

Agreed!

Does he often suffer from main character syndrome!?

Making her birthday about him and wielding his economic power. Nice. Dad of the year there.

Your DH is being very unreasonable!

Why would she want to celebrate or spend time with him? He thinks his feelings are more important and he’s made her cry.

Yeah I don’t know what going on - he isn’t like this often. We’ve also had issues with her dismissing our feelings which I know is normal for teens but given everything else it’s really hard to be put through the wringer and have to try and bury everything inside.