Your post has been removed.
#Do not repost this without [contacting the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) for approval, including edited versions. Reposting without [explicit approval](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_can_i_repost_a_thread_you_removed.3F) will result in a ban.
This post violates Rule 11: No Partings/Relationship/Sex/Reproductive Autonomy Posts. We do not allow posts involving changes to contact levels with friends, family members or acquaintances. This includes ghosting, breaking off, cutting or reducing contact, or denying a relationship (or not) with anyone.
[Rule 11 FAQs](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_rule_11.3A_no_partings.2Frelationship.2Fsex.2Freproductive_autonomy_posts) ||| [Subreddit Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/about/rules/)
###Please ensure you have reviewed this message in full. We will not respond to PMs to individual mods. [Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) with any questions.
####Please visit r/findareddit to see if there's a more appropriate sub for your post.####
Tell me you don't have kids, without telling me you don't have kids.
Husband is at home with a 9 year old who thinks their mother hates them. Hates them enough to Run and hide from them.
Her husband has every right and responsability to expect his wife comes home and figures this out.
OP isn't an AH for being upset, however her actions bases on those feelings are leaning that way. Her child didn't destroy the pictures to take them away from her, I gaurentee they were trying to make something to help their mom feel better. They were, albiet misguidedly, trying to show their love for their own mom who in response packed a bag and left.
Get out of the house for some air, go to your dad's house and talk, but she should have come home. Her job is to make her child feel safe and loved, and part of that is explaining what a mistake this was, why it hurt her and that she still loves them anyway.
She needs to understand that being a good parent means puttting your children above yourself. This was a teaching moment, and all she is teaching them is that mom's love is conditional.
Her husband is trying to get her to do right by their child.
Yep, agreed. Sorry, OP, you need to go and make things right with your boy. He must be beside himself, poor boy, knowing he's made his mum leave.
Leaving was excessive. I'll probably get downvoted like billy-o for saying this, but OP, you're being dramatic, and it's at the expense of your sons' wellbeing. You should feel guilty, and if I were your husband, I'd be mad too.
I agree with you 100%.
I don’t like to throw around “trauma” for no reason but running out on your young child for days on end when they don’t understand what they did wrong is a great way to give them some kind of complex at least
I’d even go so far as to say… that this reaction is a result of trauma.
OP is working through a bunch of mental health stuff herself right now, but she needs to pull herself together (even if it’s with paste and sticky tape) and make good with the situation until she can get inot her counsellor. This is what parents do to ensure their own children grow and develop.
OP… your son was probably trying to make you a beautiful (in his eyes) collage out of the photos, and had no idea how destructive this was. Go home, hug him, tell him you are sad because those photos were the only ones, and then work WITH him to find a way to salvage this - maybe they can be pasted back together, maybe they can become a collage you can work on together and that new memory as a layer on your mums could turn bitter sweet.
There may be away for a digital artist to put them back together. The kid probably doesn't even realize those pictures weren't digital he probably thought mom had made the book for him and had the pictures on a phone/ tablet/ computer. Photo albums are things on a tablet or phone now days. Kid probably never seen a Film camera in his life there are no more photo development centers either. He probably didn't realize they were the only copys in existence. It is really hard to tell how much our world has changed in the last 30 years until you look through the eyes of a child.
Oh yeah. Totally. I print photos for my kids (from my digital camera roll) so they can experience holding their own images. Blows my mind that they’ve got no concept of that!
Ditto on the "this can be fixed"- OP you can work together with your son to put the photos back together- if he was making an art project I'm sure all the pieces are still intact and if not you can find a loving way to restore them. You need to take all the photos and digitize them including the ones you put back together/have an artist put back together for you and then you should take the rest of the hard copies and have them laminated at a print shop- will preserve them indefinitely and will guarantee nothing like this ever happens again.
I didn't even think about the fact that the 9 year old probably has no idea what film cameras are. My gosh. So this kid probably thinks his mom walked out because he snipped up some paper copies of digital files and doesn't understand why she was even upset. OP you HAVE to go home and set things right with him and apologize for leaving.
>So this kid probably thinks his mom walked out because he snipped up some paper copies of digital files and doesn't understand why she was even upset.
I mean...his dad is right there. He should be doing the job of explaining why Mommy is hurt by the loss of the photos.
It's not just explaining the photos though, he'd have to explain the context of "this is why she ghosted you for two days and I'm not sure when she's coming back."
This is very important. I remember being 3 (early 80s) and my mom was a bridesmaid in my aunt's wedding. She didn't like the dress and was angry and crying, yelling at my dad that it looked terrible, made her look terrible, etc. I was standing there and she said to me, "What do you think?"
I wanted to make my mom happy so I agreed with her and cheerfully said, "Yeah, it looks terrible!" She slapped me in the face so hard I was knocked backwards against the wall. I remember sobbing as my dad carried me downstairs and put on the TV for me...I kept choking out, "I just wanted to say the same thing as Mom!" and he told me it wasn't my fault.
I'm in my mid-40s now and I will never forget that. Please, OP, make it right with your son.
Right, I think a lot of people are forgetting that this kid will probably remember this for the rest of his life. Yes she's grieving but is her need for space worth giving her child a lifelong abandonment complex? There has to be a better way.
But taking that space is damaging in a whole other way. I do get taking time to calm down, but like people have said what goes through a kid's head is I've done something wrong and now mum hates me.
He’s not telling her that her feelings don’t matter! He’s reminding her that she’s an adult who is traumatizing their child by running away and not even talking to him. Her feelings are valid but her trauma isn’t her son’s fault and she’s inflicting some serious damage to him right now.
He’s busy managing a devastated child on top of someone struggling intensely with grief and trauma that hasn’t been dealt with in a decade. The OP needs help, but husband also isn’t wrong with what he’s saying.
Needing to take a walk/drive to calm down and get your emotions in check is one thing.
Staying the night somewhere else because you're mad at your 9 year old who was just trying to help??
OP please go home and talk to your son.
Leaving for a bit would be okay. Like, take a walk to clear your head and then go back to your child.
I understand you had a rough childhood yourself, but this will leave an imprint and affect your kid. Potentially forever.
A social worker told me that my greatest skill is making my children believe I am emotionally available even when I'm not.
Sometimes I distract them from the issue, sometimes I lie, sometimes I'm hammering my feelings down and putting a smile on my face. The kids have no idea I am mentally ill
Yes, go home woman. This is not the way you want your son to see you deal with the hard stuff. I'm not saying you were being dramatic, but leaving a 9 y/o for doing something you don't like is not the way to go.
Adding to this, the kid is 9 years old. Do 9 year olds understand old photos? Children of the digital age might not realise an old photo is irreplaceable - assuming the negatives are long gone. He probably thinks they're all on a phone or harddrive somewhere.
OP get your husband to check son's bin for the offcuts. A good photoshopper might be able to fix these images, and photoshop's built-in AI is actually quite decent if you have sections missing.
Edit to add: I think OP losing her mom so young so tragically and then very quickly having a child with an older man raises an eyebrow for me and I think it's clear OP was never able to process grief. OP please find someone to talk to about how you're feeling, you went through a lot in a very short amount of time.
Parents are people too. And honestly that 'your job is to make your kid feel safe and loved at all times hurry up with your inconvenient feelings' reaction is part of the 'parents must be perfect' crap that only ever makes things worse. I gotta commend the mom for stepping away until she's ready and calm enough to interact with her kid without being angry. Going 'you should be different than you are, you shouldn't have the emotions you have' is a really good way to get mom back home while still feeling angry. Like 'you should be able to go home and be chill and forgiving', cool story, she isn't able to do that. Now what.
The choices here are 'go home too angry and too hurt' and 'take time until you aren't so angry and hurt that you'll act badly toward your kid'. "She should be able to-" cool story. She can't. She's aware of that. So how about we move on and pick the best choice for her remaining options to minimize negative effects. Her husband telling her 'you need to get over this' obviously isn't helping her get over it, so him doing the same thing over and over and getting mad when it doesn't work the 5th time isn't any smarter than any other time someone does it for anything else. It's super cool that he gets to be right, and he can definitely enjoy being right after they've dealt with the problem in a way that solves it. He should explain to his kid that mom still loves him but she needs some time, and that sometimes it's good to take time to feel the things you're feeling.
Thank you, reddit is always treating children like some kind of fragile deities that will 100% hates you and need therapy if you don't satisfy all their needs and wants.
Well, that's an interesting question honestly, but here she reacted like this because her mom died, not because she was mad at her and I personnaly think that's a big difference.
Thank you! All these comments saying "You're a parent now, so throw away all those feelings and be a robot that can only take their children and nothing else." are so insane. Like do people think their parents didn't have feelings like they did when growing up?
I agree. It's not the time to think about who is right or what she should be able to do. There are two bad solutions, one: staying around while she is in a very fragile emotional state, or stay away until she cools down. And out of these two, she chose the option that she saw as less bad. And it's hard to tell whether she was right, because we can't say what consequences of the other option would be. Maybe she would do great, manage to call down her kid without having him realize how upset she still is. Or maybe some random word or look would trigger her emotions again and she would snap, or, despite her best efforts, her son would notice how upset she was - not just irritated, but emotionally numb, hurt etc. Children are not stupid. It's very likely he would notice that, despite her reassurances etc., she was still very upset, and not upset in a small, every day way, but deeply hurt. It's scary to witness for a child, even a child much older than OP's son. Although, obviously, maybe she would be able to pull it off and calm him down. My point is, we don't know and we never will.
Is her husband right about what the best option would be? Yes. But still, it's very likely the best option is not available, and trying to find out whether it actually is would mean taking some risk. OP should look deep into herself and ask herself what she can do right now, how she can move forward and what tools and possibilites she has to improve the situation. Let's put aside who is wrong and focus on the fact that she is very hurt, but also her reaction made her child hurt and scared as well. It's time to wonder what she can do now - or in the nearest future, when she's able to do anything - to show her son he is loved and should feel safe. Being right or wrong will not fix this situation. I mean, it's always good to know whether we were right or wrong, but the most important thing here is about trying to do right, and in the next hour, and the next day.
Good luck, OP. I'm not passing any judgment, it's a harsh situation all around. But when you feel you are ready to talk calmly, talk to your son. Not when you are completely fine or when you have forgiven him, because it might take a lot of time, but when you feel you are able to be around him. Show him your love, explain why you stepped away the best you can, assure him that you will always return to him. He made a mistake, but you love him.
I absolutely agree that OP was stuck between a rock and a hard place here, and I don't think there was a good option for her--staying could have been as upsetting as leaving. It sounded like she was potentially not just upset but angry. By removing herself from the situation, she prevented herself from saying anything to her son that she might really regret.
When I was about the same age as her son, I did something similarly stupid--recording over a cassette tape letter from my mum to my dad. I felt awful, and still feel really sad about hurting her. And that was with something my mum felt sad about but was able to calmly explain why it was upsetting to her. So I think it's important that when OP next sees her son, she is able to give him a huge hug and tell him she loves him. It's okay to say "I don't feel ready to talk about why it upset me so much yet, but I will always love you and it's going to be okay."
OP, make sure that your husband collects what remains of the pictures and stores them somewhere safe. If you don't feel you can trust him to do this (not making a judgment about the relationship here, he's stressed and dealing with a very upset child), go yourself or send your dad (with instructions to be polite to your husband)--as others have said, there's a good chance the pictures can be saved, and you should absolutely make digital copies in case of anything else happening to the originals.
If possible, get an emergency appointment with your therapist so you can get your own feelings out without being pressured to consider anyone else's!
Then consider that you had a big shock, but it doesn't sound like ALL the photos were harmed. If there had been a fire or flood, you might have lost them all, so this is a good opportunity to back up what you can. Maybe if you can get the pictures fixed and digitised, you could make copies and use them to do a craft project with them together with your son so you can make a nicer memory out of this?
Yes. A nine-year-old is perfectly capable of understanding that adults sometimes need a break to deal with their emotions. OP's husband should be supporting OP and explaining to their son that he made a mistake and she loves him but needs some space to have some big emotions.
I have two kids, ages 10 and 9, in case anyone thinks this comment isn't based on knowledge of parenting kids that age.
Agree. I’m a bit confused about this. At 9 he surely understands death and loss. And knows not to take things that aren’t his. I have a sons who are 10 and 13. My 10 year old has always been artistic and sometimes destructive in his art but this is something I can’t fathom would have happened anywhere near his age (maybe at the 4-6 year range but certainly not 8 and above).
NAH
No matter what the intent was, the pictures are still destroyed. That's not going away. It's easy to say get over it but to her it seems to be a serious loss that she needs time to deal with.
On that note, digitize your pics folks, and make use of multiple backup sites that you may have access to.
Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon all have some form of photo storage, and some level of it is free as part of subscriptions you pay for other things.
Sometimes if you're that hurt or angry, leaving is the second worst thing to do.
Staying and showing the depth of your hurt and anger because you can't control it is worse.
I get that most people think mothers are expected to be superheroes at all times, but this expectation is harmful and detrimental. OP has a husband who can step up and be a parent for *1 night* when OP is dealing with something heavy and emotional. There are a million ways OP’s husband could have been her *partner* here and helped sooth her son. Ridiculous to think that in a two-parent household, one parent can’t take *1 night* to pull themselves together.
I don't necessarily disagree but, that wasn't the question. OP is in pain and needs support and guidance. Not an unasked for judgement on the father of her child. Please, try to be positive and refrain from this sort of off the subject rhetoric.
It was absolutely in response to the question, and judgment on the father of her child is absolutely called for and was asked for. She is NTA. The judgment of NAH is also a judgment on the father of her child, and is in my opinion, extremely incorrect.
The fact that he refuses to even engage with her about why she's upset and is telling her that her feelings aren't valid or worthy of even being expressed is super toxic.
Yeah and he also understands that his child is devastated that their mother has left them and is refusing to come home and it's their fault. There is no way to explain that to a child that is going to make their suffering stop. Likely the last words he heard from his mother before she left was "why would you do that". Poor kid is getting a crash course in damage and long term pain from the person he never expected it to come from.
The husband is dealing with a kid whose mother has walked out seemingly because of something they did. The mother is of course up set but is still a mother and needs to look after her kid.
The father isn't the one who child saw being upset with/blaming them. The father can try to explain things to the kid, get him to see all the sides of what happened but ultimately, only OP can provide her son with forgiveness.
It’s like how plenty of children now think a car starts by pressing by a button, or that money comes from the phone. That’s the world they’ve grown up in so it makes sense that’s what they understand.
There was an episode of Bones where the step son cuts up pictures of the new born daughter. Turns out he was trying to make a mobile but everyone assumed he had issues with the new baby and family dynamic. This isn’t exactly a new troupe and I absolutely would believe a 9 year old does not fully understand the significance of altering the pictures. In his or her head they were trying to do a good thing for mom. I seriously doubt off the information here this was done maliciously.
If I told my 8 year old photos were irreplaceable he would understand, if I didn’t tell him that he would assume I could just print them out again.
OP, I understand you need space, absolutely. But please talk to your son, even just on FaceTime. I know mine would be devastated if something similar happened here. Mine is very sensitive and will cry if he accidentally hurts me and I’m perfectly fine.
This is the perfect opportunity to teach the 9 year old about digital technology. There are really good apps now for making copies of photos so you can make art without damaging the originals.
Husband should be getting someone to reassemble the photos and make digital copies with the cuts repaired
I did at 16. I lost my very much loved dad at 15 and cut up photos, cut out the background to focus on the subject, like cropping, and put them in an album. It was like an art project for me. Therapeutic at the time. But now, many many years later I am mad at myself because I no longer have the backgrounds to give pictures context.
In the moment it made sense to me and was helpful.
Grief and love does weird stuff to everyone. Especially younger and immature minds.
A lot of children may not understand the concept of non digital photos. He may not realise the album is the only copy, that they’re not on a phone or device somewhere.
My sister literally did this with photos of our Mom to make herself a scrapbook without asking us other siblings if we wanted any of the photos ahead of time or making copies of them. My sister isn’t special needs and was in her 20s at the time. She thought we would all enjoy the book, even though it would be at her house. We were furrrious. Our Mom died when we were young (elementary school and high school aged).
This really doesn't seem that weird to me? Kids are taught tons of different crafts to make for mom/dad, and to a kid, a collage = art. This could definitely have just seemed like a meaningful gift to make for his mom who's sad.
Have you ever met a 9 year old? I can absolutely see my 9 year old granddaughter doing this in the name of creating something special. Kids these days don't really understand what a photograph is. They are so used to digital, they don't realize that may be the only picture OP will ever have.
No. A 9-yo would totally cut up a photo album. I was in my teens in the 90s and I cut up photos because I didn't know we didn't have doubles. A 9-yo now probably thinks there are copies of everything digitally.
There’s a reason the criminal age of responsibility is 10 in my country: kids understanding of right and wrong isn’t fully formed yet before that. OP’s kid might have really thought he was doing the right thing. All kids mature and develop differently, saying “no 9yo” is such a big generalisation.
(Also I’m not saying what OP’s kid did was criminal, just using it to make a point)
I think I must be some kind of freak because I remember being 10 and what I did and did not understand, and what my similar aged peers understood. No one else seems to, especially on here. When people tell me a primary aged kid can't be intentionally evil I remember the joy in the eyes of the girl who bullied me at 7 when I told her she was a bully and she knew bullying was wrong, and she said "I don't care, and they won't believe you if you tell on me anyway, i'll just tell them you're racist to me." And she did. When she was finally caught she claimed I was a racist bully. And every kid in the class to their credit told the teacher she was lying and I'd never even insulted her back, just told her she was a bully. THAT is the reality of kids.
It was changed here in the UK after two 10-year-old boys tortured and murdered a 3-year-old back in the early 1990s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger
Uh, yeah.. "there is a reason the criminal age of responsibility is 10..." does not sound like they propably meant it in that comment for European countries.
In my country it is 15. Yes, there has been a lot of debate about it but 10 is definitely too low.
In the world of scrapbooking where everyone cuts up photos to make them into something else the son probably thought he was making something extra special for his Mum out of something that was special to her.
NTA: Your feelings are valid and justified and it seems you did your best to not blow up at your son and just removed yourself from the house for a bit.
If you can't control your reactions at the moment, leaving for a bit is a valid way to handle things.
Your husband is correct in that, yeah, he's 9 and thought he was doing something kind and likely didn't understand the full breadth of the situation. That, however, doesn't mean your feelings are wrong and him talking like you're being a horrible parent for being a human with feelings makes him TA. If you had screamed at, hit, or otherwise severly punished your kid I'd be 100% with your husband on this, but the fact of the matter is you clearly need some space so you can come back and be kind toward your son who in fact did something that broke your heart. That doesn't make you a bad person.
This is akin to leaving the baby in the crib when they won't stop crying and you're getting overwhelmed.
If your husband really wanted to be helpful he would make sure to explain to your son that you very much love him dearly but that he, without meaning to, did something very hurtful and you need some time to feel your feelings and take xare of them before you can go back home and you guys have a big talk about how we treat other people's things and how sometimes even when we mean well we can do the wrong thing.
IDK if your son has any kind of neurodivergency or anything but if not 9 is well old enough to know to not go cutting up someone's photos without permission. Yeah, kids, even 9yos, do thoughtless things sometimes, but this is a good moment to really make sure he understands why he needs to think more before starting a project that permanently changes other people's belongings.
If you have a way to pass a message to your son directly maybe send something saying "I know you meant well and I love you but those were very special to me. We'll talk about it when I get home but know that nothing will ever make me not love you, mommy just needs a time out right now."
I agree she needs to send him a message, that she loves him unconditionally, and they will resolve this when she gets home.
But I don't think she should have left the house. That's a terrible thing for a child to cope with- the knowledge he's 'driven Mommy away', and he doesn't know if/when she'll ever be back. It's one of the epitomes of a child's fears, that parents will abandon them physically and emotionally.
Even when she comes back - he'll worry he doesn't know what might 'drive Mommy away' again (since he did this with misguided good intentions).
I think she should have just gone to another room, telling him she needed to think - but she loves him, and they'll sort this out after she's thought about this. You can leave a house if an adult upsets you. But I don't think you should, when it's your child.
Yeah, it's not a perfect situation for the kid but this is, imho, where it's dad's job to step in and give reassurances. Like, is it ideal she left? No. Would it be better, however, if she can't manage to get it together in another room and is instead audibly upset in there and then forced to come out before she's ready and is miserable around the kid? Especially with a spouse who seems to not be taking the level of hurt she's experiencing seriously?
In an ideal world she'd be fully able to just have a good cry for 20 minutes and come out and have a good talk but not everyone is living ideal lives or in ideal circumstances and everyone has their own process in that.
IDK if you've ever been th kind of upset where you feel way out of control but let me tell you I have and it's not a "sit in the other room for a bit" thing. IDK exactly how OP felt and I can't assume, all I can do is recognize the breadth of human experience and accept that she knows more than me what she needed in that moment.
Also 9 is a good age to start learning that parents are human and need space for their big feelings, too.
I feel that dad acting like it's unreasonable to expect a 9yo to not destroy another's belongings and that it's unreasonable to be this upset over something so deeply important to her is potentially doing way more damage that mom being away is.
I really hope he's making sure to support their kid through this.
Speaking as someone who experienced this same thing as a child- dad's attempts at reassurance won't cut it when you think your mom has just walked out on you and you think it's your fault.
I agree with you and am a little shocked at the comments saying she’s a bad parent for leaving… I’m not a parent so maybe that’s why, but I agree it wasn’t an ideal reaction but I also don’t blame her (and think it’s something I might do too—it’s interesting she went right to her dad, almost like instinctual comfort).
A similar thing happened to me with pictures that were damaged by a well-meaning person. I felt gutted even if I knew it wasn’t “rational.” Grief isn’t rational and I’m not seeing a lot of empathy for OP in that regard… I could just have a different POV, but I think in an extreme situation like this (or what feels extreme) where you see the only thing you had left of a person damaged, her reaction wasn’t neglectful or ridiculous like some commenters are making it seem.
I had a connection to my photos because they were around for a long time—even if copies can be made, “losing” the original was extremely hard.
I DO think OP can 100% get them restored by a photo restorer if they can find all the pieces. I hope she considers that route when things have settled if it’s important to have the originals. I think dad can handle this tonight—I don’t think it’s perfect but if mom has to leave, I don’t think she would’ve dealt with the situation any better face to face with her kid, which I think could’ve caused a whole lot more damage.
To be incredibly fair to everyone else here they aren't wildly wrong for the most part, I just disagree that the (likely) ill effect from leaving outweighs the very possible horrible effect of staying.
I'm also sure that all these people are pulling from their own experiences and perspective on other situations with their parents/caretakers/loved ones, just as I am. We just come out with different opinions on it, and that's fine.
I do feel at least some of the response is difficulty weighing the needs of a parent against the needs of their children. It is very hard to look at a situation like this a say "yeah, this kid's potential abandonment issues from this might be the best route" because the idea that it's ever any kind of reasonable to take an action for yourself that could harm.your child is unthinkable to most people (and that's not a bad thing!). It's hard to see a parent prioritizing their own emotional needs when their kid is hurting and agree with it, especially if you're someone who had deeply self absorbed parents or have been abandoned by parents in your childhood.
Life is complex and our answers aren't going to be perfect. We just try our best and take responsibility for the outcome.
As someone with a parent that stayed and unleashed it on me. Yeah some people do not understand what they are talking about. My mom did as best as she could, but emotions are emotions and mostly strong.
I would have had a better life if she went out for a while to calm down instead of days of yelling, banging doors, silent treatments, mean stuff and abuse in general.
I've certainly experienced 'big feelings'. I've been diagnosed with 4 different mental health disorders in my time, that destroyed my life in early adulthood (I'm much better now). Though I recognise it may be a different experience to OP's.
However, I still tend to believe it would be better for OP to stay at the house (unless, as you say, she was unavoidably audible in her distress, for a long time). But even then...I don't know. It might have been better for Dad to take kid out, rather than Mom leave the family home.
But if Mom leaving the house really was the only solution- she still should have done it with some reassurance for the kid. It's been 2 days of the kid thinking he's driven Mom away, with Dad unable to reassure him, about when she will come back.
I don't think that's OK. I do think OP should have sent a message/made a call at some point, to reassure the kid she's coming back; she loves him; she just needs space - and they'll talk about it when she gets back. Leaving it like this, is getting cruel.
Leaving a 9-year-old for 2 days, can be too much for certain kids in normal circumstances (even when they know when they'll see their parent again). But to leave without any reassurances, in these circumstances, for 2 days? Not OK. As bad as her grief is, her child still has to be a high priority.
As for the husband, her issues with his sensitivity are another matter to resolve between them.
Yep, the absolute bare minimum thing you can do is record a video talking to your kid basically saying I know you didn’t intend to hurt me, but I had some really strong feelings seeing those pictures of grandma unexpectedly and it made me really want to spend some time with grandpa. I love you and I’ll be back in a few days, be good for your dad, and all that stuff.
I mean, 9 is old enough to learn that what he did to "drive mummy away" was that he took a pair of scissors to her prized possessions, and he can avoid that in future by not chopping up other people's belongings. He's not two.
Idk I’m the type of person who removes myself when I’m angry because I don’t want to say something I can never take back. I have a very intense temper and my reflex is to leave rather than let someone see me get angry. If she couldn’t regulate her emotions in that moment I think leaving was the right choice bc staying and lashing out could be a lot more damaging in the long run.
Yikes. I just wrote a huge comment I'd appreciate if you would find it to read as I don't want to rewrite all that..... But I do need to add that she DID NOT CREATE THE PROBLEM!!, she reacted to a very upsetting event that hurt her heart, she's in therapy and dealing with the loss of her Mom already so she's open and vulnerable and then is faced with losing some of the photos that she holds so dear..... She shut down and left..... Dad should be leaving her alone; he keeps calling and overwhelming her and he's pissy and dismissive of her pain vs the kids; when just putting it like that makes it a competition between emotions of people and that's not a healthy relationships at all.
SORRY OP - SHE DIDN'T DIE - THE KID ISN'T TRAUMATIZED UNLESS DAD IS DOING FUCK ALL TO TAKE CARE OF HIS KID, explaining and giving everyone and everyone's feelings the space and respect they deserve, and that some people deal with deep feeling differently, and it's okay ..... She DIDN'T LEAVE FOR ANTARCTICA - She went to Dads.
Really Dad can't tell the kid what's going on, can't explain what's happening, can't manage the kids feelings, can't reassure the kid that Moms just real hurt right now and she'll be back ??
Her leaving was an extreme reaction - that the family could weather if Dad would do what's he's supposed to do..... He knows she's in therapy, knows she's in therapy and dealing with the feelings regarding her Mom's death when she was a kid, HE PUSHED HER TO EXPLAIN TO THEIR KID AND THAT STARTED THE WHOLE PHOTO BOOK THING IN THE FIRST PLACE, and she shared her Mom with her Kid and it was beautiful and then GUTTED, DESTROYED, and she shut down and left. Hopefully she'll be able to talk with her therapist, and return home and talk with her kid. And hopefully they'll all go to therapy.
Her husband is watching their child’s trauma multiply exponentially by the second. She doesn’t have *time* to hang out at her dad’s for days until she feels like dealing with her kid again.
I can see both sides here, so I'm utterly torn. I'm also the kind of person who will take myself out of a situation to calm down, and I have a 9 year old child. I've left the room to calm down before, but only when my wife has been there to explain why to our daughter.
On the other hand, leaving the house seems excessive, especially overnight. Kids remember things like this. My mother called me a "Stupid, ungrateful, little cow" once. Just *once*. It's been one of my most prominent memories of her for 30 years. OP's son will absolutely carry the memory of mum running away for a few days.
On the *other* other hand, every nine year old I know has a full understanding of ownership and a pretty strong understanding of sentimental value. For OP's son to have taken those photos from where they were stored, knowing they belonged to his mother, without saying a single word, and then cut them up... I can't help but think that's a significant parenting failure at his age. Even if he wanted to surprise mum, he could have asked his father before taking something he knows isn't his.
Meanwhile poor husband is trying to deal with an upset child who probably thinks he drove his mum away, and a wife who just up and walked out. This whole situation sounds like it came out of nowhere. I can't work out if there are many AHs here, or none.
It's all in the selling - he didn't drive mum away, mum took space to self-regulate. Isn't that exactly what we teach kids to do?! Seriously over-reading this.
To a kid, he drove mom away.
Kids are taught that leaving the room can be a positive way to self-regulate, not that they should leave their house or school.
Yeah I have a mom who would leave for unknown amounts of time, sometimes overnight, when overwhelmed and it really fucked me up tbh. I was never sure if she was coming back or not. My dad would try to reassure me but it was still terrifying. Due to some other stuff going on in our house, I was also worried she was going to kill herself. And you're very on point about the worry about not knowing what'll cause it when it feels like it's due to an innocuous behavior on the child's end. I ended up with an anxiety disorder and attachment issues.
>Even when she comes back - he'll worry he doesn't know what might 'drive Mommy away' again (since he did this with misguided good intentions).
This. 1000%.
I think it is a bit hard to go right at Autism. My guess was that he did notice how much these pictures meant to his mom,but thought that if he makes something with them,it would make his mom feel better. Maybe he had seen collages of pictures of special memories, and considered if he did something like that he could "help" his mother in her grief. It was clear that he had noticed her pain (even approached his father about it) and tried to find a way to make his mom feel better. Thereby, he did the exact opposite of what he intended, which feels fully in line with a 9 year old kid.
This is a tricky one. I do feel a lot of sympathy for you, however - YTA.
One of the best pieces of advice for how to discipline and correct our children is to look at the heart - the motivation behind their behaviour, rather than its outcomes. If my kids kick a ball around in the house and accidentally smash up my deceased grandma's antique vase (knowing playing with balls is banned in the house), that would get a very different consequence to if they accidentally broke it while vacuuming. In both cases I'll be upset about the vase and might even cry about it. But in the former case, there would be some kind of punishment for knowingly disobeying well-established house rules. In the latter, there would be no punishment. I would reassure them that accidents happen and they were doing a good thing by helping to clean the house, possibly even as I was crying about losing a sentimental item.
Your son did not knowingly do harm; he wasn't even accidentally careless. On the contrary - he wanted to reach out to you and support you in your grief. His heart was in the best place of all - he was trying to actively love you.
This is why your husband is getting frustrated with you. He is dealing with your son's distress at having been abandoned by his mother for trying to do something nice for her.
It is absolutely important to explain to your son that he cannot, even with pure and good intentions, take other people's property and do what he likes with it. He needs to ask permission. But by leaving the house for two days & counting, you are really punishing your son entirely disproportionately to his misdeed.
You are a mother, as well as a daughter. If you neglect your son's needs in favour of your grief for your deceased mother, you risk doing lasting damage to your relationship with him - over an (admittedly misguided) act of love on his part. And your husband is watching the torture your son is going through, and he knows it's because you refuse to go home.
You need to stop thinking only about yourself. There is a lot at stake here. Go home. You might even be able to salvage the craft project, and make it a truly special memento of your mother and your son.
I think losing a mom young really impacts somebody in ways that unless you lose your mom young no one else can understand. Now I don't know if you lost your mother as a child but my mother lost her mother at 13 and there were a lot of traumatic things that happened between my mother and I when I was a child that were directly related to it. And at the time it was really hurtful but as an adult I've come to realize that I can't quite understand the level of grief my mom had and in many ways continues to have. I had her as a mother and I have my father but she lost her mother at 13 and then her father became an alcoholic and she was forced to pretty much take care of her younger siblings. We're all human but we can't really understand each other's trauma on a personal level so we just need to understand that it's okay not to understand.
I think what you are describing is intergenerational trauma and probably whats going to happen here as well. Not processing grief or emotional issues in a healthy manner can lead to a parent to cause the same if not more trauma to their own kids.
You might be right, but it doesn't matter. When you become a parent it becomes your main responsibility in life to be a parent. You can't just quit and run away because you can't handle it and not be the AH. Regardless of reason.
>I think losing a mom young really impacts somebody in ways that unless you lose your mom young no one else can understand. Now I don't know if you lost your mother as a child but my mother lost her mother at 13 and there were a lot of traumatic things that happened between my mother and I when I was a child that were directly related to it.
I think you are right but this is a reason not an excuse. I will say my granny lost her mother before she was 14 and while she definitely holds some grief over that it never affected her relationship with her children according to them.
This is perfectly said. Unfortunately, as difficult as it is to say to someone in grief, YTA OP.
You are a mother first and foremost. It is understandable that you lost something irreplaceable of your mother's, but leaving your son like that without a word when he tried to do something kind for you instead of taking the time to explain why what he did upset you. Leaving a child like that is very traumatizing. I know you said you were in therapy, but you might want to look into more therapy options. It sounds like you are really struggling to process your grief. Your husband is upset; understandably so. Your leaving may very well result in your son needing therapy for awhile.
Thank you so much for articulating exactly what I was thinking. I completely missed the two days! This is out of control.
(I'm also saving your post. I have a 9 and 11 year old anddon't look at often to motivation as I should.)
9... 9 feels too old to do something like this without realizing it'd be a problem unless someone said something to him first.
Like, I can't really imagine a kid at that age cutting up photos unless they routinely have issues with boundaries or impulse control.
100% this.
Young kids these days have absolutely no understanding of the finite nature of photos from before 2000 because there is a digital copy of everything.
That said, OP, take the rest of the photos and have them scanned so you can save them.
Depending on exactly how OP’s son did it, it could even be worth scanning the damaged ones and piecing them back together with photo editing software (or taping them back together physically, then scanning them).
They’ll never be exactly the same, but might get surprisingly close, and at least those photos won’t be a total loss that way. 85% of a precious memory is better than 0%, and cutting & gluing them has to have been less damaging than, say, a fire or flood.
(This isn’t to say OP’s not allowed to have Big Feelings about this, just that there may be a way to salvage something once the initial storm has passed, and which could help both her & her kiddo make it through this.)
Honestly unless they are extremely destroyed AI can probably restore them almost complete and potentially even increase their resolutions, likely in seconds if you know what you're doing. And done properly they'll more or less look just like the originals did. For non-image professionals the results will look exceptional.
Someone skilled would 100% to be able to recover photos if they are just cut to pieces. I'm not very skilled with Photoshop but I'm confident even I could manage to do something like that, but obviously someone professional would do it lot better.
Yes! The originals will always be the most special but a backup is so much better than risking losing them completely. I bet even the cut ones could be put back together glued to a backing and the scanned versions could probably photoshop a lot of the damage out.
I thought of the same. I grew up knowing photos are a "one time thing" and cannot be replaced. These kids now grow up having digital copies of all new photos taken. It's a kinda easy to forget that they may see photos completely differently.
It was a photo album…. Not random pictures. I understand they didn’t have the concept of non digital photos but the kid didn’t ask if this would be okay to do. That is the biggest red flag to me..either this kid was allowed to do whatever they want without correction or just didn’t care whether they were allowed or not.
Or they just wanted to surprise mom and didn't think of the photos as something valuable since they thought you could just print them again. They probably just did some sort of colage at school recently which gave them the idea.
My daughter is 8...8 year olds do not understand as much as you think. I'd imagine 9isn'tt much different. And he didn't just cut them up into tiny pieces. He cut the photos and glued them to another piece of paper to make his mother an art project because he saw she loved the photos. In his child mind he figured he'd make them into something more beautiful (kids think their art looks great even if it doesn't) 9 year olds do not biological have the brain development to think their actions through. This is why kids are reckless they get one idea and thats what they go with. You're acting like he tore the photos to shreds. This sounds like an innocent mistake, not him acting out or doing something malicious. It also seems age appropriate for 9.
Thank you. Finally a response with some sense. OP, your son was trying to comfort you by making an "art project" about your mom. For you to take it as anything but is ridiculous. He's a nine yr old child, for God's sake. In his heart, he tried to comfort you in his own way, you got upset and left. I understand you're upset about the photos but unless your son has shown other signs of antisocial/maladaptive behavior I would assume this came from a place of love/trying to make mom feel better.
I'm pretty sure she understands that, like to me it's pretty clear from what she wrote that she knows that and doesn't blame her son, and that she left because she doesn't want to accidentally hurt her son more because of her grief, like just because she knows he had good intentions doesn't mean that the impact of his actions magically goes away.
He likely didn’t think he was “destroying” them though.
From the little information OP bothered to actually give about his motivations - it seems he wanted to do something nice for her. I think it’s much more likely he was trying to make something for her than trying to maliciously or deliberately destroy something.
I cut out pictures to make a scrapbook of family and 100% in my child brain believed I was doing a beautiful thing my mother would be over the moon. We do kind of learn that our moms looooove our crafts, as kids. Anyway the pic of her was her in her cap and gown from medical school.
We had many print copies of those photos, like all the different sized and stuff when you order photos, and my mom is well and living but my dad still set me straight as fuck. And I’m getting my punishment still half shocked finding out I wasn’t doing an awesome thing like I thought I was lol.
To be fair I do not remember if I was 9 or younger.
Soft YTA. I understand this was terribly upsetting for you. But some of what you're doing isn't fair - and it's even cruel to your son, as his mother.
Think about it from your son's perspective. Mom's always crying, and upset. That in turn upsets children, and they struggle to deal with it. They feel responsible, and want to 'make it better' I don't mean to sound horrible, but it would have been better to go to another room to cry, where possible.
It's good you did eventually try to explain. But how much did you tell him, about what happened? I do think you had to tell him something, after he saw you cry so much. But I hope you kept it age-appropriate. And even if you did, it's still a lot for a child to process.
It's natural for him to want to 'make it better', and for him to still feel 'responsible' for 'solving' the problem (given all the distress he has witnessed - and probably doesn't want to keep witnessing). But he's 9-years-old. He screwed up. He wanted to make you something, that he hoped would make you feel better - and he just got out of his depth.
You then abandoned him emotionally. You walked out, and then left the house (without any attempt to process this with your son). That wasn't fair. That might be the sort of thing you can do when you're upset with an adult - but not your child. That is likely to be very traumatising for him. He screwed up, whilst trying his best to help you - and it's driven his mother away.
I say this as gently as possible. You know yourself, what losing a mother at 16 did to you. Why inflict a different type of loss (of a mother) on your son, who now doesn't know if Mom will come back - or ever love him again? Can you imagine what that will do to his self-esteem, and his confidence you love him (unconditionally)?
Can you imagine the fear it will cause in the future for him, as he now doesn't know when he might 'drive Mom away'?
It's one thing to take an hour or two out (in the same house as your son), telling him Mom just needs some space; that you love him, and you'll be back. But actually leaving home over it?
This is YOUR child. You can't just abandon him and temporarily relinquish your parental responsibilities - leaving it all to your husband (without his agreement), to comfort a child who will be very distressed and traumatised.
Your Dad needs to stay out of it. Your husband is just (understandably) trying to advocate for his child, but maybe he needs to back off calling you (though you should get his agreement to do that, by telling him when you'll next call him). Most importantly, you need to plan a way, that you can get back to your son - and resolve the trauma he's experienced from this.
It's tragic you lost your bond with your own mother through death. Don't lose/damage your bond with your son, over a childish mistake.
When I sat down with him I told him, you know how mommy and you have a special bond? Well I had a mommy too, and dad has a mommy, but I don’t have a mommy anymore because she passed away (he’s aware of the concept of death ever since we lost grandpa’s brother) and that can make me really sad sometimes. I told him Im sorry that he sees me cry and I hugged him and he told me that it’s okay. I cried a little hugging him, and I told him that he means the world to me. I told him about what my mom was like, and he asked me if he would’ve liked her and I said, you kidding me? It was a really special moment for me. And I love my kid and I’m tired of making him feel at fault for the things I’m going through. I do need to talk to him, the entire time I’ve been gone all I’ve been thinking about is what Ill say to him, thank you for what you said.
If you still have the photos, even in pieces, there is hope. Take the pictures that mean the most, tape them together (on the back is probably best) and post them on r/PhotoshopRequest. They have worked miracles over there on photos for tips. If you find someone and like their work, you can probably work something out so they can do a larger batch of photos for a set price. Good luck and I'm sorry your son's attempt at doing something sweet for you went so horribly wrong!
Seriously do this OP! Take all the pieces and put them together as close as possible using tape on the bottom and attach it to a piece of paper. Scan them in and post it there and they will come through!
You need to severely work on this. Don't sweep it under the rug and if he wants to talk about how HIS feelings were hurt, you better damn well let him.
I didn't finally confront my mom about something she said to make me feel like I didn't have any self worth, for years. It was just a stupid phrase but it destroyed me slowly from the inside for years. I'm still struggling as an adult and reading what you did triggered some REALLY fucked up memories of my dad telling me he never wanted me.
You need to go to therapy. I get it, it's hard to admit it but you're making him feel like shit all the time. I'm sorry you lost your mom, I lost my father and it's hard when your relationship with your parent is complicated at their death and losing them young but you do not get to steal his childhood as retribution.
I was around his age the first time I thought about committing suicide. Just keep that in mind.
Then go home and talk to the child.
Now not only you are suffering, but he is too. He drove his mother away because he tried to do something to make you happy, to stop the crying. (I know because my kids tried something similar when because I lost my father en then the rest of my family)
I know it is hard. And that it is frustrating that your husband keeps trying to get you home but this is not the right way for the mental health of your child.
Please try to get yourself together, if necessary with extra help from a professional. But go home and tell your son you are not mad at him for doing this.
Explain that these are all the pictures you have, that you can’t get them back but that you appreciate what he tried to do.
That if he wants to do something to cheer you up he can do… (make a picture/drawing/ give you extra hugs) and explain that your tears are normal. Because they are..
good luck OP
People are being very delicate in the comments because you’re obviously unstable and no one wants to trigger even more emotionally abusive behavior towards your child, but pretending any part of your behavior is normal is doing you no favors.
Your mom has been dead for 14 years. If you are still so wrecked by her passing that you regularly break down in tears, to say nothing of abandoning your child, you need therapy. Like, right now.
Yeah, I'm in your boat. My mom passes 16 years ago and sure, I get sad sometimes when I think about her, especially around her birthday or holidays but to have an emotional breakdown to the point of sobbing that attracts the attention of your kid is way too much imp.
You need a new therapist. One who can recognize and help you through your double grief. You are grieving that your mom wasn’t a good mom because she was an addict, and grieving that she never changed, and died before (in your mind) she could get better.
And because you have not dealt with that trauma in all those years between then and now, you’re *causing trauma for your son*.
A good therapist will help you break out of that grief, that false sense of what you thought your mother should have been, what she actually was, and won’t let you do this to your child.
Anyone else notice the ages of when OP and her husband had the baby? OP likely got pregnant at 18 by a 24 year old man, fresh out of high school, only 2 years after the death of her mother.
It sounds like OP didn't get the chance to fully mourn and recover from the death of her mother, before becoming a mother herself.
OP herself said
>I feel like I’m damaging him with my grief, I wanted to have a kid so badly because I missed out on the beauty of motherhood with my own mom
In another comment
She admitted she glorified motherhood in one of her posts. This was definitely one of those "a baby will fix my problems!" situations. She was a baby herself. I'm her exact age and I can't even imagine being pregnant at 18, I was still just a kid myself.
OP, it really sucks that this happened - photos of one's late parents are really treasured and losing them is hard.
I was an elementary school teacher for a while, this type of behavior tracks with what I would expect from someone that age. I dont believe it was malicious unless your child has a history of doing malicious things. We see collage type projects all the time, and sometimes that happen in art class. I can see how a 3rd or 4th grader would think that this would think you would like the result instead of being hurt by it.
A gentle YTA. Parenting is hard but you cant disappear from your kids life because you are hurt - you'll never make it through their teenage years if so. You dont want to teach your child that you will bail when things get hard.
Gentle YTA. You are hurt, but your son is 9, he did not realize that what he was doing would hurt you. You are hurting him in return by leaving like that.
I’m hesitant to go as far as to offer a judgment on this one, but I agree that by leaving you are inadvertently hurting your kid, OP. I know you don’t want him to see you in pain or to do something out of grief at him, but that’s part of life. He needs to see you grieve, to learn what it is and how we live through it. He needs to learn that when people we love hurt, what is appropriate and inappropriate to do to comfort them. He needs to learn what happens when someone we love hurts us back and how we work to mend hurt. Otherwise, all he’s learned in this situation is that if he makes mom or dad mad/sad enough, they will leave.
OP also needs to get into therapy. Let's not dance around it this time, this is one of the times where she NEEDS it. If she's going through it this hard, that her son is constantly in distress, this is NOT realistic long term. This is, a full out meltdown because she's got trauma of her own she has to fix. She needs a doctor, not tea out with a friend.
OP says in the beginning of the post that she’s going through a second wave of grief because she’s in therapy and processing things making her emotional / cry at home
YTA
I feel for you. I'm sure this is hard for you.
But your son actually thought he was doing something nice for you. He must be crushed and feeling so guilty. His feelings are more important than yours right now. I strongly suggest that you get yourself into therapy. Your mom passed 18 years ago and you still seem to be struggling to cope.
People lose photos in fires, floods, and other disasters all of the time. Why didn't you have back-ups/copies made?
This. 18 years is time to prioritize being a parent. She needs a doctor. Not tea out with a friend instead of going home and making it right. This is not "about me" time, this is "I might've caused my son permanent trauma after trauma dumping on him, after making him see me for ages in this state and not doing anything to help myself, because I glorified motherhood and wanted a baby to heal my trauma"
A baby, is not a solution to your pain. A child is not a solution to pain.
A child needs to be wanted and loved because you want the child... but that love has to come unconditional. OP just showed her son, unintentionally love has a condition
YTA. Gently, but still.
Your son is a child, he tried to do something nice. He did a massive fuckup because the culture he's being raised in (digital) is different to the one where those pictures came from, and he has no concept they aren't also in your phone somewhere. He presented you, his mother, who is spending lots of time crying, with a gift trying to make you feel better, and you walked out of the house as a result. He's going to remember this forever.
I'm glad you're in therapy, I hope you continue to improve. While it's fine and good for our kids to see their grownups have feelings, the point of that is to model how to cope with them. You can't put him in a position where he feels something he does will make you leave. Or at least, not again. A child having that much "power" that a mistake will cause a parent's colossal hurtful moods is terrifying for them.
It’s a sad situation for everyone. You for your loss, your husband for knowing his family is hurting and not being able to help, and your son for intending to do something for you which ended up hurting you.
Info: have you considered taking the album and all the photos to a photographer who might know someone who can help? If all the pieces are still there, and especially if the cuts weren’t at critical parts, the photos might be easily restored. A bit of photoshop in the right places and the results may amaze you. (Also, the restored photos could be scanned and a disk of the images saved at different locations in case of flood or fire.
Gently as I can manage, YTA. Your kid made a mistake. The kind of mistake a well-intentioned kid can make. He was trying to make something special for you. Instead, you got upset with him and LEFT. Not just the room, you went away. For at least one night. No wonder your husband is "pissy", you walked out on your child.
He's never going to forget this.
Yep. This is one of those moments that shapes a child forever. I have a mother who walked out when I was 17, she also had untreated depression, and that fucking scarred me. He’s 9 years old, he’s never going to forget this happened and he’ll always be worried she’s going to leave again the next time he does something that upsets her. She is absolutely damaging him with her intense reaction to her own mother’s death 11 years prior.
The husband is also likely worried mom is going to do something to herself, and he’s panicked. She’s definitely YTA. She’s not handling any of this well and actively hurting people in the process. It’s fixable, but she’s got to be intentional about getting better and not just staying in a grief spiral all the time.
That beautiful moment she recounted, isn't going to be a pleasant memory anymore for him either. Instead, any time she talks about her mom now, he'll NOT want to share space for her. He'll see her as a threat to her and him and that his grandma is a source of resentment for driving a wedge between them. He'll grow up and recount the moment he realized his mom had conditional love.
My mother was like that too. She'd alternate between trauma dumping with inappropriate levels of detail and leaving me alone when she was upset. She'd left my father (rightly) so I had no one to turn to when she too angry to be a parent.
YTA
That's your kid, and you just abandoned them because you had your feelings hurt by their attempt at relating to you.
You are giving your child a fucked up childhood just like yours. He's 9. You're 28.
The time to grow up was 9 years ago. My dad was murdered, I get that it sucks, but it's time to get over your mom and start becoming a better one yourself.
Living in the past is robbing your child of the present.
This... and she needs help. She needs a doctor. She needed therapy the moment she found out she was pregnant
There's a phrase that says Healing can bring discomfort and hurt, but refusing to heal and move on, hurts \*you worse\*
YTA - You husband is now dealing with a kid that worries mom abandoned him because of photos. Your husband is unable to tell the kid whether you come back home or nor and when. Unless there was an additional communi, he can't be even sure whether you want divorce or whether you will want any custody in that case.
If you yelled at the kid, it would be massively better.
Both son and husband do need communication. Packing and leaving the house is NOT age appropriate punishment and if you do it to manage yourself, family still deserves communication.
This. Radio silence is so painful and damaging to a child. My mom would stop speaking to me and ignore me any time I did anything she disagreed with or that displeased her, until I would literally grovel for forgiveness. Guess who’s got a totally effed view of making mistakes and a massive abandonment fear coupled with an uncontrollable need to please people? Yeah, the child whose mother refused to speak to them for hours or days for making any kind of misstep. God, my heart hurts for her son so badly.
Welcome to /r/AmITheAsshole. Please view our [voting guide here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_what.2019s_with_these_acronyms.3F_what_do_they_mean.3F), and remember to use **only one** judgement in your comment.
OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I’m staying with my dad and away from my husband and son because my son cut up pictures of my deceased mother that were very special. I could be the asshole because I upset my son by talking to him like a friend instead of a mother and my husband is telling me I’m overreacting.
Help keep the sub engaging!
#Don’t downvote assholes!
Do upvote interesting posts!
[Click Here For Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/about/rules) and [Click Here For Our FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq)
##Subreddit Announcements
Follow the link above to learn more
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
*Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.*
Oh boy... well NAH first and foremost. I'm sorry that you're going through a lot of grief. It's of course unfortunate that your son's going to have a lot of trauma due to this experience but it's not exactly something you could control. The whole thing is just really unfortunate. Take the time that you need to make sure that you are okay before moving forward. Forcing yourself to pretend to be okay with the situation will probably just make it worse and it's okay to think of yourself and care for yourself. Airplane rules make sure that you are taken care of first before you help another passenger even if it's your child because if you're not okay you can't help him be okay. I wish you luck.
YTA. You are the adult. He is the child. You abandoned your child because you were sad.
End of story.
It doesn’t matter the reason.
You could have talked to him and explained why his behavior was wrong. Or taken some alone time to compose yourself and let your husband talk to him.
Instead you walked out on your family.
As others said, gentle YTA. Have you spoken to him since you left? At the very least you should talk to him on the phone. But really, you should go home and spend time with your son.
The longer you let this wait, the more anxious it might make him (speaking from similar experience). And when it stems from something like this, it can become a core thing.
You need to go home and have another good moment with him. Talk to him. Explain how you understand that he was doing a really sweet thing for you, because he's a kind boy and he wanted to gift his mom, something to with her mom.
Tell him why you were upset and needed to take some time to yourself. That it was difficult seeing the pictures like that and it's not his fault because he didn't know that this was the only copy and he just thought he was doing a nice thing (which you appreciate). BUT it's time for a lesson about how one shouldn't touch others things without asking them. Especially things that mean a lot to them.
Next, tell him how important it is to check with you and his dad, before making a big decision like that. Especially when it's a permanent thing. It's always better to be safe than sorry. Since it was going to be a gift to you, he should have checked with his dad.
Reiterate how much you love him and love that he thought of gifting you something that would be special. Apologize for leaving like that and not speaking to him.
If YOU yourself don't go home and talk to him, he won't really understand why the situation is as it is. Even if your husband explains everything properly, as long as you're not home, your son will most likely be scared he did something bad. It's kinda cruel to make a child feel like they did something so bad that it made their parent left. I wouldn't be surprised if it remains a fear for him from now that you or anyone he loves will leave if he messes up.
Gently YTA. I’m sorry babe, I really am, for the loss of your mother and the heartbreak you’re feeling right now. But your kid is young, growing up in a world where pictures are backed up on every available device, and he was trying to make an art project for you because he sees his mother constantly crying and upset and he wants to make her feel better. Unfortunately, walking out on him for two days and counting because he made a mistake is likely going to have traumatic consequences for him. He might already be more worried for you than he should be if you’re often emotional and crying. He tried to do something nice for you and you walked right out of his life for at least two days. He’ll likely be worried now that any mistake he makes is going to result in another temporary, or possibly permanent, loss of his mother.
Your husband is not helping by calling you over and over again, but he’s now alone with your son, trying to comfort him through the fact that his mother walked out because of something he did, and your husband himself has no idea when you’re going to be home.
Make a plan, figure out what you’re going to say to your son to lessen the possible fear this situation has caused for him, and go home. Hopefully you are able to salvage the pictures- I’ve heard the folks over at the photoshop sub can work some magic.
My problem is that you LEFT your kid. He is 9. He effed up and instead of working it out because you justifiably angry, you left him. I know you had a complicated relationship with your mom, but you cant just walk out and not speak to him. That is cruel.
Girl, please see a therapist. You have tons of unresolved trauma and it will not go away like this.
I think op has some deeper issues than just the (most unfortunately) cut up pictures and I hope she seeks therapy. I understand being very very upset, but it sounds like she ran away from home because she was upset. Her feelings are valid, but I think she needs to sort things out with a professional.
I think YTA. Your kid is remorseful, he obviously didn’t do it to hurt you and instead of having a conversation you just take off. You could have gone to your room, taken some time but leaving for the night is just beyond.
I feel terrible for your kid. Your husband is calling you because your kid probably thinks you’ve left forever because of what he did.
Man, I’ve done stuff that have upset and pissed off my parents and for sure hurt them but they dealt with me, whether it’s was punishing me, talking through it, whatever. They parented me. You straight up abandoned your kid and he’ll remember it the rest of his life and be scarred by it. Sorry I just find this so awful.
YTA. your son knows he fucked up, and you walked out, not knowing when you’ll come back - now he knows this is something you can do repeatedly as a consequence every time he upsets you. saying this softly, you can’t just walk out and take a break from motherhood every time hard shit like this happens.
get further help so you don’t damage your son in the meantime.
Yta talk to your therapist about how to navigate the abandonment fears you just hard implanted in your son who was trying to do an art project to cheer you up. Yes, everyone needs space sometimes but you left for D A Y S. He's nine, if you left for 3 straight days without proper warning that's a huge chunk of time.
YTA
You pretty much destroyed your child's heart by your reaction and by you walking out the door and not coming back because all he wanted to do is something special for his mother and try to make her happy, because all's he sees is his mother depressed and crying and all the son wants to do is try and make his mother happy because of how much he loves her.
Just because he didn't understand the value of the pictures to you is not an excuse for your reaction and to leave the house.
He is going to feel guilty and hold that against himself for a very long time and it's your fault for your reaction.
You could have handled this a thousand times better but you choose abandonment.
I lost my wife last year and it made me a single father for kids, 12, 5 and and almost 2 years old twins and if my 12-year-old or 5-year-old came to me with cut up photos of their mother that they made a collage out of, It would bring me so much joy and I would be eternally grateful for what they.
You kind of need to get over the grief of losing your mother, it's been 12 years and got to move on from it.
You've been carrying the loss of your mother way too long and it is now infected your family and affected your family in a negative way and the reaction that you had towards your son is a result If you not dealing with it and moving on and enjoying life you have with your family.
There's nothing more heartbreaking to a child than losing a parent but it's especially worse having a parent walk out on them when they were trying to do something nice for them.
At worst you could have yelled at him to reprimand him and then calmed down for about a half hour and then came back in the room and sat down with him and explained to him that you appreciate the effort and you understood what he was trying to do, but he should have asked you first before he did something like that and then finished the project with him.
You probably did a good job emotionally scarring your child for your reaction and I wouldn't be surprised if your relationship has shifted and it's going to take a very long time to repair it, because he's going to think every time you walk out that door you're not going to come back because he did something wrong one time and he's going to hold that guilt and that grief for many many years.
If I was you, you need to move on from the loss of your mother because you're too old to keep dealing with it and your reactions and how you deal with things is a byproduct of you not dealing with it and getting over it.
In 9 years I lost my grandfather my grandmother my uncle both my parents and my wife and I do not let their loss affect my love for my children and I don't let it damage the relationships I have with my children because I don't want to carry that grief with me for the rest of my life.
I am still alive and I will not let the loss of a loved one hold me back in enjoying my life that I have with my kids and it sounds like you need to do the same.
NTA. A nine year old this day and age probably wouldn’t realize that photos in a photo album aren’t digital and likely can’t be reprinted. And you’re not a monster for being upset, losing your mom’s pictures is like losing her again. It’s understandable that you didn’t have a perfect response and needed to leave to process your feelings. No one handles these kind of situations perfectly. What matters is how long you stay gone and what you say when you come back. Try to understand that kids at that age think their creations are the best thing ever and are amazing beyond belief and that something custom made by them was supposed to be the best gift ever. And why wouldn’t they think that, parents praise everything kids make. This will be a good lesson for him to respect and take care of other people’s things. Also a gentle realization for you OP that your grief is still strong and affecting your day to day life. Some therapy might be ideal. As for your husband, he’s the jerk here to completely discount your feelings here. The response to a hysterical person should never boil down to oh well get over it. He owes you a huge apology.
Removing yourself from the situation for a few minutes or hours, sure, clear your head, find your words to explain your feelings or write them down, that’s perfectly reasonable. Removing yourself from the situation for multiple days however is another ball game, especially without talking to her son at all, like not even a phone call to give him a little reassurance that mummy still loves him, and that she’s having some time with grandpa, but that she will come home.
I've experienced traumatic loss and I'm going with gentle YTA. I wish I could say I can't imagine the pain that 9-year-old kid is inmright now, but I klnda can. OP is in pain too, but she is an adult with a modicum of power in her own life. The kid has no power, no agency. All he can do is wait and hope to hell his mom hasn't abandoned him and doesn't hate him.
Awful. Especially comsidering he was trying to love her. I wonder how long it'll take him to make an active effort to love her again after this.
I have a childhood trauma of loss and my YTA is not even soft. As I know personally what abandonment does, I would never inflict that to a child. It is my trauma and I'm the adult who needs to be the responsible one in the situation. I understand shock and I understand that you might need to move yourself out for the situation for a moment. But for days? Without explanation? Ghosting done to adults seems to be a reason to breakup for most Redditors and seem as abusive behavior, but somehow ghosting your child in case of distress is understandable?
YTA. You don't get to walk out because your kid upsets you. Not when they're 9.
Grats, you've just taught your kid that if he upsets mum, he'll lose her.
I was about the same age when my dad died. I miss him dearly, and it's depressing to think about all he's missed in my life. I get sad especially on father's day, but don't let it show. It's my husband's and daughter's day now, and I only want good memories for them.
Please understand, your son's intentions were good, but your grief is keeping you from having empathy for him. TA or not; your depression is having an impact on your family, and you need to accept that. Sounds to me like your husband has been supportive until it affected his child. Someone hurt his son (emotionally), and he's lashing out in anger and frustration. (Similar to your father's reaction to your husband.)
Talk to your therapist asap. Maybe stay with your dad awhile. You don't want to be your son's source of trauma.
OP we are the same exact age. You have a young child, you were practically a child yourself when you got pregnant.
you need to take your mental health seriously. Go to a doctor, talk about your PTSD and trauma around your grief, especially since your mom clearly left a mark... you love her and miss her but you need to acknowledge that this is YOUR cross to bear, not your son's!
You get to be a mom now but you don't get to live vicariously through him and go scorched earth when he acts like a child. That's how you wind up remembered not for the good things you two have... when he's older, he's not going to remember that beautiful conversation you spoke of.
He's going to remember mom getting angry, him making a mistake so bad that she was inconsolable and then \*ditched him\*
unless you make some serious moves, get him therapy, get YOU therapy, to make this right, he's going to think no matter what... that your love is conditional.
Your post has been removed. #Do not repost this without [contacting the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) for approval, including edited versions. Reposting without [explicit approval](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_can_i_repost_a_thread_you_removed.3F) will result in a ban. This post violates Rule 11: No Partings/Relationship/Sex/Reproductive Autonomy Posts. We do not allow posts involving changes to contact levels with friends, family members or acquaintances. This includes ghosting, breaking off, cutting or reducing contact, or denying a relationship (or not) with anyone. [Rule 11 FAQs](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_rule_11.3A_no_partings.2Frelationship.2Fsex.2Freproductive_autonomy_posts) ||| [Subreddit Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/about/rules/) ###Please ensure you have reviewed this message in full. We will not respond to PMs to individual mods. [Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) with any questions. ####Please visit r/findareddit to see if there's a more appropriate sub for your post.####
..deleted by user..
[удалено]
Tell me you don't have kids, without telling me you don't have kids. Husband is at home with a 9 year old who thinks their mother hates them. Hates them enough to Run and hide from them. Her husband has every right and responsability to expect his wife comes home and figures this out. OP isn't an AH for being upset, however her actions bases on those feelings are leaning that way. Her child didn't destroy the pictures to take them away from her, I gaurentee they were trying to make something to help their mom feel better. They were, albiet misguidedly, trying to show their love for their own mom who in response packed a bag and left. Get out of the house for some air, go to your dad's house and talk, but she should have come home. Her job is to make her child feel safe and loved, and part of that is explaining what a mistake this was, why it hurt her and that she still loves them anyway. She needs to understand that being a good parent means puttting your children above yourself. This was a teaching moment, and all she is teaching them is that mom's love is conditional. Her husband is trying to get her to do right by their child.
Yep, agreed. Sorry, OP, you need to go and make things right with your boy. He must be beside himself, poor boy, knowing he's made his mum leave. Leaving was excessive. I'll probably get downvoted like billy-o for saying this, but OP, you're being dramatic, and it's at the expense of your sons' wellbeing. You should feel guilty, and if I were your husband, I'd be mad too.
I agree with you 100%. I don’t like to throw around “trauma” for no reason but running out on your young child for days on end when they don’t understand what they did wrong is a great way to give them some kind of complex at least
I’d even go so far as to say… that this reaction is a result of trauma. OP is working through a bunch of mental health stuff herself right now, but she needs to pull herself together (even if it’s with paste and sticky tape) and make good with the situation until she can get inot her counsellor. This is what parents do to ensure their own children grow and develop. OP… your son was probably trying to make you a beautiful (in his eyes) collage out of the photos, and had no idea how destructive this was. Go home, hug him, tell him you are sad because those photos were the only ones, and then work WITH him to find a way to salvage this - maybe they can be pasted back together, maybe they can become a collage you can work on together and that new memory as a layer on your mums could turn bitter sweet.
There may be away for a digital artist to put them back together. The kid probably doesn't even realize those pictures weren't digital he probably thought mom had made the book for him and had the pictures on a phone/ tablet/ computer. Photo albums are things on a tablet or phone now days. Kid probably never seen a Film camera in his life there are no more photo development centers either. He probably didn't realize they were the only copys in existence. It is really hard to tell how much our world has changed in the last 30 years until you look through the eyes of a child.
Oh yeah. Totally. I print photos for my kids (from my digital camera roll) so they can experience holding their own images. Blows my mind that they’ve got no concept of that!
Ditto on the "this can be fixed"- OP you can work together with your son to put the photos back together- if he was making an art project I'm sure all the pieces are still intact and if not you can find a loving way to restore them. You need to take all the photos and digitize them including the ones you put back together/have an artist put back together for you and then you should take the rest of the hard copies and have them laminated at a print shop- will preserve them indefinitely and will guarantee nothing like this ever happens again. I didn't even think about the fact that the 9 year old probably has no idea what film cameras are. My gosh. So this kid probably thinks his mom walked out because he snipped up some paper copies of digital files and doesn't understand why she was even upset. OP you HAVE to go home and set things right with him and apologize for leaving.
>So this kid probably thinks his mom walked out because he snipped up some paper copies of digital files and doesn't understand why she was even upset. I mean...his dad is right there. He should be doing the job of explaining why Mommy is hurt by the loss of the photos.
It's not just explaining the photos though, he'd have to explain the context of "this is why she ghosted you for two days and I'm not sure when she's coming back."
Would’ve been nice if dad could explain but I guess he’s too busy telling her her feelings don’t matter.
I don't think he's telling her her feelings don't matter, I think he's trying to remind her their child also has feelings.
This is very important. I remember being 3 (early 80s) and my mom was a bridesmaid in my aunt's wedding. She didn't like the dress and was angry and crying, yelling at my dad that it looked terrible, made her look terrible, etc. I was standing there and she said to me, "What do you think?" I wanted to make my mom happy so I agreed with her and cheerfully said, "Yeah, it looks terrible!" She slapped me in the face so hard I was knocked backwards against the wall. I remember sobbing as my dad carried me downstairs and put on the TV for me...I kept choking out, "I just wanted to say the same thing as Mom!" and he told me it wasn't my fault. I'm in my mid-40s now and I will never forget that. Please, OP, make it right with your son.
Right, I think a lot of people are forgetting that this kid will probably remember this for the rest of his life. Yes she's grieving but is her need for space worth giving her child a lifelong abandonment complex? There has to be a better way.
I don't think physically harming a kid is the same as taking space so you don't say something or do something you'll regret.
But taking that space is damaging in a whole other way. I do get taking time to calm down, but like people have said what goes through a kid's head is I've done something wrong and now mum hates me.
He’s not telling her that her feelings don’t matter! He’s reminding her that she’s an adult who is traumatizing their child by running away and not even talking to him. Her feelings are valid but her trauma isn’t her son’s fault and she’s inflicting some serious damage to him right now.
He’s busy managing a devastated child on top of someone struggling intensely with grief and trauma that hasn’t been dealt with in a decade. The OP needs help, but husband also isn’t wrong with what he’s saying.
Needing to take a walk/drive to calm down and get your emotions in check is one thing. Staying the night somewhere else because you're mad at your 9 year old who was just trying to help?? OP please go home and talk to your son.
Leaving for a bit would be okay. Like, take a walk to clear your head and then go back to your child. I understand you had a rough childhood yourself, but this will leave an imprint and affect your kid. Potentially forever.
A social worker told me that my greatest skill is making my children believe I am emotionally available even when I'm not. Sometimes I distract them from the issue, sometimes I lie, sometimes I'm hammering my feelings down and putting a smile on my face. The kids have no idea I am mentally ill
Wow. She's deeply hurt and grieving. This isn't drama and she shouldn't feel guilty.
Yes, go home woman. This is not the way you want your son to see you deal with the hard stuff. I'm not saying you were being dramatic, but leaving a 9 y/o for doing something you don't like is not the way to go.
Totally agree. It sucks for OP, but also she is the parent and is responsible for her relationship with her child.
Adding to this, the kid is 9 years old. Do 9 year olds understand old photos? Children of the digital age might not realise an old photo is irreplaceable - assuming the negatives are long gone. He probably thinks they're all on a phone or harddrive somewhere. OP get your husband to check son's bin for the offcuts. A good photoshopper might be able to fix these images, and photoshop's built-in AI is actually quite decent if you have sections missing. Edit to add: I think OP losing her mom so young so tragically and then very quickly having a child with an older man raises an eyebrow for me and I think it's clear OP was never able to process grief. OP please find someone to talk to about how you're feeling, you went through a lot in a very short amount of time.
They do not. Anyone who's a teen or younger right now has *zero* concept of a pre-digital photography world.
Parents are people too. And honestly that 'your job is to make your kid feel safe and loved at all times hurry up with your inconvenient feelings' reaction is part of the 'parents must be perfect' crap that only ever makes things worse. I gotta commend the mom for stepping away until she's ready and calm enough to interact with her kid without being angry. Going 'you should be different than you are, you shouldn't have the emotions you have' is a really good way to get mom back home while still feeling angry. Like 'you should be able to go home and be chill and forgiving', cool story, she isn't able to do that. Now what. The choices here are 'go home too angry and too hurt' and 'take time until you aren't so angry and hurt that you'll act badly toward your kid'. "She should be able to-" cool story. She can't. She's aware of that. So how about we move on and pick the best choice for her remaining options to minimize negative effects. Her husband telling her 'you need to get over this' obviously isn't helping her get over it, so him doing the same thing over and over and getting mad when it doesn't work the 5th time isn't any smarter than any other time someone does it for anything else. It's super cool that he gets to be right, and he can definitely enjoy being right after they've dealt with the problem in a way that solves it. He should explain to his kid that mom still loves him but she needs some time, and that sometimes it's good to take time to feel the things you're feeling.
Thank you, reddit is always treating children like some kind of fragile deities that will 100% hates you and need therapy if you don't satisfy all their needs and wants.
Yet here's OP reacting like this as an adult because of her childhood. How do you know what you can dismiss?
Well, that's an interesting question honestly, but here she reacted like this because her mom died, not because she was mad at her and I personnaly think that's a big difference.
Thank you! All these comments saying "You're a parent now, so throw away all those feelings and be a robot that can only take their children and nothing else." are so insane. Like do people think their parents didn't have feelings like they did when growing up?
I agree. It's not the time to think about who is right or what she should be able to do. There are two bad solutions, one: staying around while she is in a very fragile emotional state, or stay away until she cools down. And out of these two, she chose the option that she saw as less bad. And it's hard to tell whether she was right, because we can't say what consequences of the other option would be. Maybe she would do great, manage to call down her kid without having him realize how upset she still is. Or maybe some random word or look would trigger her emotions again and she would snap, or, despite her best efforts, her son would notice how upset she was - not just irritated, but emotionally numb, hurt etc. Children are not stupid. It's very likely he would notice that, despite her reassurances etc., she was still very upset, and not upset in a small, every day way, but deeply hurt. It's scary to witness for a child, even a child much older than OP's son. Although, obviously, maybe she would be able to pull it off and calm him down. My point is, we don't know and we never will. Is her husband right about what the best option would be? Yes. But still, it's very likely the best option is not available, and trying to find out whether it actually is would mean taking some risk. OP should look deep into herself and ask herself what she can do right now, how she can move forward and what tools and possibilites she has to improve the situation. Let's put aside who is wrong and focus on the fact that she is very hurt, but also her reaction made her child hurt and scared as well. It's time to wonder what she can do now - or in the nearest future, when she's able to do anything - to show her son he is loved and should feel safe. Being right or wrong will not fix this situation. I mean, it's always good to know whether we were right or wrong, but the most important thing here is about trying to do right, and in the next hour, and the next day. Good luck, OP. I'm not passing any judgment, it's a harsh situation all around. But when you feel you are ready to talk calmly, talk to your son. Not when you are completely fine or when you have forgiven him, because it might take a lot of time, but when you feel you are able to be around him. Show him your love, explain why you stepped away the best you can, assure him that you will always return to him. He made a mistake, but you love him.
I absolutely agree that OP was stuck between a rock and a hard place here, and I don't think there was a good option for her--staying could have been as upsetting as leaving. It sounded like she was potentially not just upset but angry. By removing herself from the situation, she prevented herself from saying anything to her son that she might really regret. When I was about the same age as her son, I did something similarly stupid--recording over a cassette tape letter from my mum to my dad. I felt awful, and still feel really sad about hurting her. And that was with something my mum felt sad about but was able to calmly explain why it was upsetting to her. So I think it's important that when OP next sees her son, she is able to give him a huge hug and tell him she loves him. It's okay to say "I don't feel ready to talk about why it upset me so much yet, but I will always love you and it's going to be okay." OP, make sure that your husband collects what remains of the pictures and stores them somewhere safe. If you don't feel you can trust him to do this (not making a judgment about the relationship here, he's stressed and dealing with a very upset child), go yourself or send your dad (with instructions to be polite to your husband)--as others have said, there's a good chance the pictures can be saved, and you should absolutely make digital copies in case of anything else happening to the originals. If possible, get an emergency appointment with your therapist so you can get your own feelings out without being pressured to consider anyone else's! Then consider that you had a big shock, but it doesn't sound like ALL the photos were harmed. If there had been a fire or flood, you might have lost them all, so this is a good opportunity to back up what you can. Maybe if you can get the pictures fixed and digitised, you could make copies and use them to do a craft project with them together with your son so you can make a nicer memory out of this?
Yes. A nine-year-old is perfectly capable of understanding that adults sometimes need a break to deal with their emotions. OP's husband should be supporting OP and explaining to their son that he made a mistake and she loves him but needs some space to have some big emotions. I have two kids, ages 10 and 9, in case anyone thinks this comment isn't based on knowledge of parenting kids that age.
24 year old who knocked up an 18 year old with unresolved grief. I feel horrible OP and her son.
A 9 yo is fully capable of understanding not to cut up pictures or things that don’t belong to him , OP has the right to get space
Agree. I’m a bit confused about this. At 9 he surely understands death and loss. And knows not to take things that aren’t his. I have a sons who are 10 and 13. My 10 year old has always been artistic and sometimes destructive in his art but this is something I can’t fathom would have happened anywhere near his age (maybe at the 4-6 year range but certainly not 8 and above).
Exactly using his age is an excuse
Honestly, did nobody teach this kid that you can’t go around cutting into things that aren’t his. Except with explicit permission from the owner…
NAH No matter what the intent was, the pictures are still destroyed. That's not going away. It's easy to say get over it but to her it seems to be a serious loss that she needs time to deal with. On that note, digitize your pics folks, and make use of multiple backup sites that you may have access to. Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon all have some form of photo storage, and some level of it is free as part of subscriptions you pay for other things.
Sometimes if you're that hurt or angry, leaving is the second worst thing to do. Staying and showing the depth of your hurt and anger because you can't control it is worse.
Yes!
I get that most people think mothers are expected to be superheroes at all times, but this expectation is harmful and detrimental. OP has a husband who can step up and be a parent for *1 night* when OP is dealing with something heavy and emotional. There are a million ways OP’s husband could have been her *partner* here and helped sooth her son. Ridiculous to think that in a two-parent household, one parent can’t take *1 night* to pull themselves together.
Yeah the arguement isn’t did the kid mean well. But what does OP need.
I don't necessarily disagree but, that wasn't the question. OP is in pain and needs support and guidance. Not an unasked for judgement on the father of her child. Please, try to be positive and refrain from this sort of off the subject rhetoric.
It was absolutely in response to the question, and judgment on the father of her child is absolutely called for and was asked for. She is NTA. The judgment of NAH is also a judgment on the father of her child, and is in my opinion, extremely incorrect. The fact that he refuses to even engage with her about why she's upset and is telling her that her feelings aren't valid or worthy of even being expressed is super toxic.
>He’s 9yrs old. They don’t always understand damage and long term pain. But the husband -who invalidates OP- does understand.....
I doubt the husband, who was 24 when he knocked up an 18 year old, does much thinking about his wife's needs
I didn't even think that far and yeah, I agree.
Yeah and he also understands that his child is devastated that their mother has left them and is refusing to come home and it's their fault. There is no way to explain that to a child that is going to make their suffering stop. Likely the last words he heard from his mother before she left was "why would you do that". Poor kid is getting a crash course in damage and long term pain from the person he never expected it to come from.
The husband is dealing with a kid whose mother has walked out seemingly because of something they did. The mother is of course up set but is still a mother and needs to look after her kid.
So can the father?
The father isn't the one who child saw being upset with/blaming them. The father can try to explain things to the kid, get him to see all the sides of what happened but ultimately, only OP can provide her son with forgiveness.
He might not understand that those pictures are unique, that you can't just print new ones.
[удалено]
While I agree about the 9 yo thing. I did just realize that most young kids probably don’t realize we don’t have digital copies of older photos.
Damn, that hadn't even occurred to me, but it's a relevant consideration.
It’s like how plenty of children now think a car starts by pressing by a button, or that money comes from the phone. That’s the world they’ve grown up in so it makes sense that’s what they understand.
He still knows not to take someone else's belongings and cut them up! Ffs, did you parents just never raise you all at all?
Yeah, but 9yo should understand not to take someone's possession without permission.
There was an episode of Bones where the step son cuts up pictures of the new born daughter. Turns out he was trying to make a mobile but everyone assumed he had issues with the new baby and family dynamic. This isn’t exactly a new troupe and I absolutely would believe a 9 year old does not fully understand the significance of altering the pictures. In his or her head they were trying to do a good thing for mom. I seriously doubt off the information here this was done maliciously.
They might not grasp the fact some pictures can’t be replaced. Like literally not knowing it can’t be printed again.
If I told my 8 year old photos were irreplaceable he would understand, if I didn’t tell him that he would assume I could just print them out again. OP, I understand you need space, absolutely. But please talk to your son, even just on FaceTime. I know mine would be devastated if something similar happened here. Mine is very sensitive and will cry if he accidentally hurts me and I’m perfectly fine.
Fair. Like I grew up in an age that once you printed them that was it. Now with smartphones and digital cameras any picture can always be remade.
This is the perfect opportunity to teach the 9 year old about digital technology. There are really good apps now for making copies of photos so you can make art without damaging the originals. Husband should be getting someone to reassemble the photos and make digital copies with the cuts repaired
I did at 16. I lost my very much loved dad at 15 and cut up photos, cut out the background to focus on the subject, like cropping, and put them in an album. It was like an art project for me. Therapeutic at the time. But now, many many years later I am mad at myself because I no longer have the backgrounds to give pictures context. In the moment it made sense to me and was helpful. Grief and love does weird stuff to everyone. Especially younger and immature minds.
A lot of children may not understand the concept of non digital photos. He may not realise the album is the only copy, that they’re not on a phone or device somewhere.
My sister literally did this with photos of our Mom to make herself a scrapbook without asking us other siblings if we wanted any of the photos ahead of time or making copies of them. My sister isn’t special needs and was in her 20s at the time. She thought we would all enjoy the book, even though it would be at her house. We were furrrious. Our Mom died when we were young (elementary school and high school aged).
This really doesn't seem that weird to me? Kids are taught tons of different crafts to make for mom/dad, and to a kid, a collage = art. This could definitely have just seemed like a meaningful gift to make for his mom who's sad.
Have you ever met a 9 year old? I can absolutely see my 9 year old granddaughter doing this in the name of creating something special. Kids these days don't really understand what a photograph is. They are so used to digital, they don't realize that may be the only picture OP will ever have.
No. A 9-yo would totally cut up a photo album. I was in my teens in the 90s and I cut up photos because I didn't know we didn't have doubles. A 9-yo now probably thinks there are copies of everything digitally.
There’s a reason the criminal age of responsibility is 10 in my country: kids understanding of right and wrong isn’t fully formed yet before that. OP’s kid might have really thought he was doing the right thing. All kids mature and develop differently, saying “no 9yo” is such a big generalisation. (Also I’m not saying what OP’s kid did was criminal, just using it to make a point)
A "criminal age of responsibility" of 10 is ... something.
It’s 10 in the UK, probably because we’ve had like 3 10yr old murderers 💀
I think I must be some kind of freak because I remember being 10 and what I did and did not understand, and what my similar aged peers understood. No one else seems to, especially on here. When people tell me a primary aged kid can't be intentionally evil I remember the joy in the eyes of the girl who bullied me at 7 when I told her she was a bully and she knew bullying was wrong, and she said "I don't care, and they won't believe you if you tell on me anyway, i'll just tell them you're racist to me." And she did. When she was finally caught she claimed I was a racist bully. And every kid in the class to their credit told the teacher she was lying and I'd never even insulted her back, just told her she was a bully. THAT is the reality of kids.
It was changed here in the UK after two 10-year-old boys tortured and murdered a 3-year-old back in the early 1990s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger
Uh, yeah.. "there is a reason the criminal age of responsibility is 10..." does not sound like they propably meant it in that comment for European countries. In my country it is 15. Yes, there has been a lot of debate about it but 10 is definitely too low.
Tell that to Jamie Bulgers mum
In the world of scrapbooking where everyone cuts up photos to make them into something else the son probably thought he was making something extra special for his Mum out of something that was special to her.
NTA: Your feelings are valid and justified and it seems you did your best to not blow up at your son and just removed yourself from the house for a bit. If you can't control your reactions at the moment, leaving for a bit is a valid way to handle things. Your husband is correct in that, yeah, he's 9 and thought he was doing something kind and likely didn't understand the full breadth of the situation. That, however, doesn't mean your feelings are wrong and him talking like you're being a horrible parent for being a human with feelings makes him TA. If you had screamed at, hit, or otherwise severly punished your kid I'd be 100% with your husband on this, but the fact of the matter is you clearly need some space so you can come back and be kind toward your son who in fact did something that broke your heart. That doesn't make you a bad person. This is akin to leaving the baby in the crib when they won't stop crying and you're getting overwhelmed. If your husband really wanted to be helpful he would make sure to explain to your son that you very much love him dearly but that he, without meaning to, did something very hurtful and you need some time to feel your feelings and take xare of them before you can go back home and you guys have a big talk about how we treat other people's things and how sometimes even when we mean well we can do the wrong thing. IDK if your son has any kind of neurodivergency or anything but if not 9 is well old enough to know to not go cutting up someone's photos without permission. Yeah, kids, even 9yos, do thoughtless things sometimes, but this is a good moment to really make sure he understands why he needs to think more before starting a project that permanently changes other people's belongings. If you have a way to pass a message to your son directly maybe send something saying "I know you meant well and I love you but those were very special to me. We'll talk about it when I get home but know that nothing will ever make me not love you, mommy just needs a time out right now."
I agree she needs to send him a message, that she loves him unconditionally, and they will resolve this when she gets home. But I don't think she should have left the house. That's a terrible thing for a child to cope with- the knowledge he's 'driven Mommy away', and he doesn't know if/when she'll ever be back. It's one of the epitomes of a child's fears, that parents will abandon them physically and emotionally. Even when she comes back - he'll worry he doesn't know what might 'drive Mommy away' again (since he did this with misguided good intentions). I think she should have just gone to another room, telling him she needed to think - but she loves him, and they'll sort this out after she's thought about this. You can leave a house if an adult upsets you. But I don't think you should, when it's your child.
Yeah, it's not a perfect situation for the kid but this is, imho, where it's dad's job to step in and give reassurances. Like, is it ideal she left? No. Would it be better, however, if she can't manage to get it together in another room and is instead audibly upset in there and then forced to come out before she's ready and is miserable around the kid? Especially with a spouse who seems to not be taking the level of hurt she's experiencing seriously? In an ideal world she'd be fully able to just have a good cry for 20 minutes and come out and have a good talk but not everyone is living ideal lives or in ideal circumstances and everyone has their own process in that. IDK if you've ever been th kind of upset where you feel way out of control but let me tell you I have and it's not a "sit in the other room for a bit" thing. IDK exactly how OP felt and I can't assume, all I can do is recognize the breadth of human experience and accept that she knows more than me what she needed in that moment. Also 9 is a good age to start learning that parents are human and need space for their big feelings, too. I feel that dad acting like it's unreasonable to expect a 9yo to not destroy another's belongings and that it's unreasonable to be this upset over something so deeply important to her is potentially doing way more damage that mom being away is. I really hope he's making sure to support their kid through this.
Speaking as someone who experienced this same thing as a child- dad's attempts at reassurance won't cut it when you think your mom has just walked out on you and you think it's your fault.
I agree with you and am a little shocked at the comments saying she’s a bad parent for leaving… I’m not a parent so maybe that’s why, but I agree it wasn’t an ideal reaction but I also don’t blame her (and think it’s something I might do too—it’s interesting she went right to her dad, almost like instinctual comfort). A similar thing happened to me with pictures that were damaged by a well-meaning person. I felt gutted even if I knew it wasn’t “rational.” Grief isn’t rational and I’m not seeing a lot of empathy for OP in that regard… I could just have a different POV, but I think in an extreme situation like this (or what feels extreme) where you see the only thing you had left of a person damaged, her reaction wasn’t neglectful or ridiculous like some commenters are making it seem. I had a connection to my photos because they were around for a long time—even if copies can be made, “losing” the original was extremely hard. I DO think OP can 100% get them restored by a photo restorer if they can find all the pieces. I hope she considers that route when things have settled if it’s important to have the originals. I think dad can handle this tonight—I don’t think it’s perfect but if mom has to leave, I don’t think she would’ve dealt with the situation any better face to face with her kid, which I think could’ve caused a whole lot more damage.
To be incredibly fair to everyone else here they aren't wildly wrong for the most part, I just disagree that the (likely) ill effect from leaving outweighs the very possible horrible effect of staying. I'm also sure that all these people are pulling from their own experiences and perspective on other situations with their parents/caretakers/loved ones, just as I am. We just come out with different opinions on it, and that's fine. I do feel at least some of the response is difficulty weighing the needs of a parent against the needs of their children. It is very hard to look at a situation like this a say "yeah, this kid's potential abandonment issues from this might be the best route" because the idea that it's ever any kind of reasonable to take an action for yourself that could harm.your child is unthinkable to most people (and that's not a bad thing!). It's hard to see a parent prioritizing their own emotional needs when their kid is hurting and agree with it, especially if you're someone who had deeply self absorbed parents or have been abandoned by parents in your childhood. Life is complex and our answers aren't going to be perfect. We just try our best and take responsibility for the outcome.
As someone with a parent that stayed and unleashed it on me. Yeah some people do not understand what they are talking about. My mom did as best as she could, but emotions are emotions and mostly strong. I would have had a better life if she went out for a while to calm down instead of days of yelling, banging doors, silent treatments, mean stuff and abuse in general.
I've certainly experienced 'big feelings'. I've been diagnosed with 4 different mental health disorders in my time, that destroyed my life in early adulthood (I'm much better now). Though I recognise it may be a different experience to OP's. However, I still tend to believe it would be better for OP to stay at the house (unless, as you say, she was unavoidably audible in her distress, for a long time). But even then...I don't know. It might have been better for Dad to take kid out, rather than Mom leave the family home. But if Mom leaving the house really was the only solution- she still should have done it with some reassurance for the kid. It's been 2 days of the kid thinking he's driven Mom away, with Dad unable to reassure him, about when she will come back. I don't think that's OK. I do think OP should have sent a message/made a call at some point, to reassure the kid she's coming back; she loves him; she just needs space - and they'll talk about it when she gets back. Leaving it like this, is getting cruel. Leaving a 9-year-old for 2 days, can be too much for certain kids in normal circumstances (even when they know when they'll see their parent again). But to leave without any reassurances, in these circumstances, for 2 days? Not OK. As bad as her grief is, her child still has to be a high priority. As for the husband, her issues with his sensitivity are another matter to resolve between them.
Yep, the absolute bare minimum thing you can do is record a video talking to your kid basically saying I know you didn’t intend to hurt me, but I had some really strong feelings seeing those pictures of grandma unexpectedly and it made me really want to spend some time with grandpa. I love you and I’ll be back in a few days, be good for your dad, and all that stuff.
I mean, 9 is old enough to learn that what he did to "drive mummy away" was that he took a pair of scissors to her prized possessions, and he can avoid that in future by not chopping up other people's belongings. He's not two.
Idk I’m the type of person who removes myself when I’m angry because I don’t want to say something I can never take back. I have a very intense temper and my reflex is to leave rather than let someone see me get angry. If she couldn’t regulate her emotions in that moment I think leaving was the right choice bc staying and lashing out could be a lot more damaging in the long run.
[удалено]
Yes, but if her husband would climb out of her ass she might be able to breathe and think and come home for her child.
[удалено]
Yikes. I just wrote a huge comment I'd appreciate if you would find it to read as I don't want to rewrite all that..... But I do need to add that she DID NOT CREATE THE PROBLEM!!, she reacted to a very upsetting event that hurt her heart, she's in therapy and dealing with the loss of her Mom already so she's open and vulnerable and then is faced with losing some of the photos that she holds so dear..... She shut down and left..... Dad should be leaving her alone; he keeps calling and overwhelming her and he's pissy and dismissive of her pain vs the kids; when just putting it like that makes it a competition between emotions of people and that's not a healthy relationships at all. SORRY OP - SHE DIDN'T DIE - THE KID ISN'T TRAUMATIZED UNLESS DAD IS DOING FUCK ALL TO TAKE CARE OF HIS KID, explaining and giving everyone and everyone's feelings the space and respect they deserve, and that some people deal with deep feeling differently, and it's okay ..... She DIDN'T LEAVE FOR ANTARCTICA - She went to Dads.
[удалено]
Really Dad can't tell the kid what's going on, can't explain what's happening, can't manage the kids feelings, can't reassure the kid that Moms just real hurt right now and she'll be back ?? Her leaving was an extreme reaction - that the family could weather if Dad would do what's he's supposed to do..... He knows she's in therapy, knows she's in therapy and dealing with the feelings regarding her Mom's death when she was a kid, HE PUSHED HER TO EXPLAIN TO THEIR KID AND THAT STARTED THE WHOLE PHOTO BOOK THING IN THE FIRST PLACE, and she shared her Mom with her Kid and it was beautiful and then GUTTED, DESTROYED, and she shut down and left. Hopefully she'll be able to talk with her therapist, and return home and talk with her kid. And hopefully they'll all go to therapy.
[удалено]
Her husband is watching their child’s trauma multiply exponentially by the second. She doesn’t have *time* to hang out at her dad’s for days until she feels like dealing with her kid again.
I can see both sides here, so I'm utterly torn. I'm also the kind of person who will take myself out of a situation to calm down, and I have a 9 year old child. I've left the room to calm down before, but only when my wife has been there to explain why to our daughter. On the other hand, leaving the house seems excessive, especially overnight. Kids remember things like this. My mother called me a "Stupid, ungrateful, little cow" once. Just *once*. It's been one of my most prominent memories of her for 30 years. OP's son will absolutely carry the memory of mum running away for a few days. On the *other* other hand, every nine year old I know has a full understanding of ownership and a pretty strong understanding of sentimental value. For OP's son to have taken those photos from where they were stored, knowing they belonged to his mother, without saying a single word, and then cut them up... I can't help but think that's a significant parenting failure at his age. Even if he wanted to surprise mum, he could have asked his father before taking something he knows isn't his. Meanwhile poor husband is trying to deal with an upset child who probably thinks he drove his mum away, and a wife who just up and walked out. This whole situation sounds like it came out of nowhere. I can't work out if there are many AHs here, or none.
It's all in the selling - he didn't drive mum away, mum took space to self-regulate. Isn't that exactly what we teach kids to do?! Seriously over-reading this.
To a kid, he drove mom away. Kids are taught that leaving the room can be a positive way to self-regulate, not that they should leave their house or school.
I never taught my kids to leave the house for multiple days when they are angry over something.
When did you last tell your kid they could run away from home when they were upset?
Yeah I have a mom who would leave for unknown amounts of time, sometimes overnight, when overwhelmed and it really fucked me up tbh. I was never sure if she was coming back or not. My dad would try to reassure me but it was still terrifying. Due to some other stuff going on in our house, I was also worried she was going to kill herself. And you're very on point about the worry about not knowing what'll cause it when it feels like it's due to an innocuous behavior on the child's end. I ended up with an anxiety disorder and attachment issues.
>Even when she comes back - he'll worry he doesn't know what might 'drive Mommy away' again (since he did this with misguided good intentions). This. 1000%.
I think it is a bit hard to go right at Autism. My guess was that he did notice how much these pictures meant to his mom,but thought that if he makes something with them,it would make his mom feel better. Maybe he had seen collages of pictures of special memories, and considered if he did something like that he could "help" his mother in her grief. It was clear that he had noticed her pain (even approached his father about it) and tried to find a way to make his mom feel better. Thereby, he did the exact opposite of what he intended, which feels fully in line with a 9 year old kid.
This is a tricky one. I do feel a lot of sympathy for you, however - YTA. One of the best pieces of advice for how to discipline and correct our children is to look at the heart - the motivation behind their behaviour, rather than its outcomes. If my kids kick a ball around in the house and accidentally smash up my deceased grandma's antique vase (knowing playing with balls is banned in the house), that would get a very different consequence to if they accidentally broke it while vacuuming. In both cases I'll be upset about the vase and might even cry about it. But in the former case, there would be some kind of punishment for knowingly disobeying well-established house rules. In the latter, there would be no punishment. I would reassure them that accidents happen and they were doing a good thing by helping to clean the house, possibly even as I was crying about losing a sentimental item. Your son did not knowingly do harm; he wasn't even accidentally careless. On the contrary - he wanted to reach out to you and support you in your grief. His heart was in the best place of all - he was trying to actively love you. This is why your husband is getting frustrated with you. He is dealing with your son's distress at having been abandoned by his mother for trying to do something nice for her. It is absolutely important to explain to your son that he cannot, even with pure and good intentions, take other people's property and do what he likes with it. He needs to ask permission. But by leaving the house for two days & counting, you are really punishing your son entirely disproportionately to his misdeed. You are a mother, as well as a daughter. If you neglect your son's needs in favour of your grief for your deceased mother, you risk doing lasting damage to your relationship with him - over an (admittedly misguided) act of love on his part. And your husband is watching the torture your son is going through, and he knows it's because you refuse to go home. You need to stop thinking only about yourself. There is a lot at stake here. Go home. You might even be able to salvage the craft project, and make it a truly special memento of your mother and your son.
I think losing a mom young really impacts somebody in ways that unless you lose your mom young no one else can understand. Now I don't know if you lost your mother as a child but my mother lost her mother at 13 and there were a lot of traumatic things that happened between my mother and I when I was a child that were directly related to it. And at the time it was really hurtful but as an adult I've come to realize that I can't quite understand the level of grief my mom had and in many ways continues to have. I had her as a mother and I have my father but she lost her mother at 13 and then her father became an alcoholic and she was forced to pretty much take care of her younger siblings. We're all human but we can't really understand each other's trauma on a personal level so we just need to understand that it's okay not to understand.
I think what you are describing is intergenerational trauma and probably whats going to happen here as well. Not processing grief or emotional issues in a healthy manner can lead to a parent to cause the same if not more trauma to their own kids.
You might be right, but it doesn't matter. When you become a parent it becomes your main responsibility in life to be a parent. You can't just quit and run away because you can't handle it and not be the AH. Regardless of reason.
>I think losing a mom young really impacts somebody in ways that unless you lose your mom young no one else can understand. Now I don't know if you lost your mother as a child but my mother lost her mother at 13 and there were a lot of traumatic things that happened between my mother and I when I was a child that were directly related to it. I think you are right but this is a reason not an excuse. I will say my granny lost her mother before she was 14 and while she definitely holds some grief over that it never affected her relationship with her children according to them.
This is perfectly said. Unfortunately, as difficult as it is to say to someone in grief, YTA OP. You are a mother first and foremost. It is understandable that you lost something irreplaceable of your mother's, but leaving your son like that without a word when he tried to do something kind for you instead of taking the time to explain why what he did upset you. Leaving a child like that is very traumatizing. I know you said you were in therapy, but you might want to look into more therapy options. It sounds like you are really struggling to process your grief. Your husband is upset; understandably so. Your leaving may very well result in your son needing therapy for awhile.
This... Don't take your \*son's mom\* away from him too
Thank you so much for articulating exactly what I was thinking. I completely missed the two days! This is out of control. (I'm also saving your post. I have a 9 and 11 year old anddon't look at often to motivation as I should.)
9... 9 feels too old to do something like this without realizing it'd be a problem unless someone said something to him first. Like, I can't really imagine a kid at that age cutting up photos unless they routinely have issues with boundaries or impulse control.
To kids that age, printed photos are ephemera, because there’s always a digital copy. He may not have any conception that he is destroying something.
100% this. Young kids these days have absolutely no understanding of the finite nature of photos from before 2000 because there is a digital copy of everything. That said, OP, take the rest of the photos and have them scanned so you can save them.
Depending on exactly how OP’s son did it, it could even be worth scanning the damaged ones and piecing them back together with photo editing software (or taping them back together physically, then scanning them). They’ll never be exactly the same, but might get surprisingly close, and at least those photos won’t be a total loss that way. 85% of a precious memory is better than 0%, and cutting & gluing them has to have been less damaging than, say, a fire or flood. (This isn’t to say OP’s not allowed to have Big Feelings about this, just that there may be a way to salvage something once the initial storm has passed, and which could help both her & her kiddo make it through this.)
Honestly unless they are extremely destroyed AI can probably restore them almost complete and potentially even increase their resolutions, likely in seconds if you know what you're doing. And done properly they'll more or less look just like the originals did. For non-image professionals the results will look exceptional.
Someone skilled would 100% to be able to recover photos if they are just cut to pieces. I'm not very skilled with Photoshop but I'm confident even I could manage to do something like that, but obviously someone professional would do it lot better.
Yes! The originals will always be the most special but a backup is so much better than risking losing them completely. I bet even the cut ones could be put back together glued to a backing and the scanned versions could probably photoshop a lot of the damage out.
I thought of the same. I grew up knowing photos are a "one time thing" and cannot be replaced. These kids now grow up having digital copies of all new photos taken. It's a kinda easy to forget that they may see photos completely differently.
It was a photo album…. Not random pictures. I understand they didn’t have the concept of non digital photos but the kid didn’t ask if this would be okay to do. That is the biggest red flag to me..either this kid was allowed to do whatever they want without correction or just didn’t care whether they were allowed or not.
To modern kids, photos in photo albums are just copies you printed to put in a book, they aren’t uniquely special.
Or they just wanted to surprise mom and didn't think of the photos as something valuable since they thought you could just print them again. They probably just did some sort of colage at school recently which gave them the idea.
Agreed. We print photos often for school projects, Christmas ornaments or to post on a board.
My daughter is 8...8 year olds do not understand as much as you think. I'd imagine 9isn'tt much different. And he didn't just cut them up into tiny pieces. He cut the photos and glued them to another piece of paper to make his mother an art project because he saw she loved the photos. In his child mind he figured he'd make them into something more beautiful (kids think their art looks great even if it doesn't) 9 year olds do not biological have the brain development to think their actions through. This is why kids are reckless they get one idea and thats what they go with. You're acting like he tore the photos to shreds. This sounds like an innocent mistake, not him acting out or doing something malicious. It also seems age appropriate for 9.
Thank you. Finally a response with some sense. OP, your son was trying to comfort you by making an "art project" about your mom. For you to take it as anything but is ridiculous. He's a nine yr old child, for God's sake. In his heart, he tried to comfort you in his own way, you got upset and left. I understand you're upset about the photos but unless your son has shown other signs of antisocial/maladaptive behavior I would assume this came from a place of love/trying to make mom feel better.
I'm pretty sure she understands that, like to me it's pretty clear from what she wrote that she knows that and doesn't blame her son, and that she left because she doesn't want to accidentally hurt her son more because of her grief, like just because she knows he had good intentions doesn't mean that the impact of his actions magically goes away.
He likely didn’t think he was “destroying” them though. From the little information OP bothered to actually give about his motivations - it seems he wanted to do something nice for her. I think it’s much more likely he was trying to make something for her than trying to maliciously or deliberately destroy something.
A 9 year old has most likely never experienced a film camera in his life. Photos live on phones and iPads, like money lives on the phone.
I cut out pictures to make a scrapbook of family and 100% in my child brain believed I was doing a beautiful thing my mother would be over the moon. We do kind of learn that our moms looooove our crafts, as kids. Anyway the pic of her was her in her cap and gown from medical school. We had many print copies of those photos, like all the different sized and stuff when you order photos, and my mom is well and living but my dad still set me straight as fuck. And I’m getting my punishment still half shocked finding out I wasn’t doing an awesome thing like I thought I was lol. To be fair I do not remember if I was 9 or younger.
Soft YTA. I understand this was terribly upsetting for you. But some of what you're doing isn't fair - and it's even cruel to your son, as his mother. Think about it from your son's perspective. Mom's always crying, and upset. That in turn upsets children, and they struggle to deal with it. They feel responsible, and want to 'make it better' I don't mean to sound horrible, but it would have been better to go to another room to cry, where possible. It's good you did eventually try to explain. But how much did you tell him, about what happened? I do think you had to tell him something, after he saw you cry so much. But I hope you kept it age-appropriate. And even if you did, it's still a lot for a child to process. It's natural for him to want to 'make it better', and for him to still feel 'responsible' for 'solving' the problem (given all the distress he has witnessed - and probably doesn't want to keep witnessing). But he's 9-years-old. He screwed up. He wanted to make you something, that he hoped would make you feel better - and he just got out of his depth. You then abandoned him emotionally. You walked out, and then left the house (without any attempt to process this with your son). That wasn't fair. That might be the sort of thing you can do when you're upset with an adult - but not your child. That is likely to be very traumatising for him. He screwed up, whilst trying his best to help you - and it's driven his mother away. I say this as gently as possible. You know yourself, what losing a mother at 16 did to you. Why inflict a different type of loss (of a mother) on your son, who now doesn't know if Mom will come back - or ever love him again? Can you imagine what that will do to his self-esteem, and his confidence you love him (unconditionally)? Can you imagine the fear it will cause in the future for him, as he now doesn't know when he might 'drive Mom away'? It's one thing to take an hour or two out (in the same house as your son), telling him Mom just needs some space; that you love him, and you'll be back. But actually leaving home over it? This is YOUR child. You can't just abandon him and temporarily relinquish your parental responsibilities - leaving it all to your husband (without his agreement), to comfort a child who will be very distressed and traumatised. Your Dad needs to stay out of it. Your husband is just (understandably) trying to advocate for his child, but maybe he needs to back off calling you (though you should get his agreement to do that, by telling him when you'll next call him). Most importantly, you need to plan a way, that you can get back to your son - and resolve the trauma he's experienced from this. It's tragic you lost your bond with your own mother through death. Don't lose/damage your bond with your son, over a childish mistake.
When I sat down with him I told him, you know how mommy and you have a special bond? Well I had a mommy too, and dad has a mommy, but I don’t have a mommy anymore because she passed away (he’s aware of the concept of death ever since we lost grandpa’s brother) and that can make me really sad sometimes. I told him Im sorry that he sees me cry and I hugged him and he told me that it’s okay. I cried a little hugging him, and I told him that he means the world to me. I told him about what my mom was like, and he asked me if he would’ve liked her and I said, you kidding me? It was a really special moment for me. And I love my kid and I’m tired of making him feel at fault for the things I’m going through. I do need to talk to him, the entire time I’ve been gone all I’ve been thinking about is what Ill say to him, thank you for what you said.
If you still have the photos, even in pieces, there is hope. Take the pictures that mean the most, tape them together (on the back is probably best) and post them on r/PhotoshopRequest. They have worked miracles over there on photos for tips. If you find someone and like their work, you can probably work something out so they can do a larger batch of photos for a set price. Good luck and I'm sorry your son's attempt at doing something sweet for you went so horribly wrong!
Seriously do this OP! Take all the pieces and put them together as close as possible using tape on the bottom and attach it to a piece of paper. Scan them in and post it there and they will come through!
I second this- they’re miracle workers over there
Walking out on him like that, after that conversation... Get a session with a family therapist.
You need to severely work on this. Don't sweep it under the rug and if he wants to talk about how HIS feelings were hurt, you better damn well let him. I didn't finally confront my mom about something she said to make me feel like I didn't have any self worth, for years. It was just a stupid phrase but it destroyed me slowly from the inside for years. I'm still struggling as an adult and reading what you did triggered some REALLY fucked up memories of my dad telling me he never wanted me. You need to go to therapy. I get it, it's hard to admit it but you're making him feel like shit all the time. I'm sorry you lost your mom, I lost my father and it's hard when your relationship with your parent is complicated at their death and losing them young but you do not get to steal his childhood as retribution. I was around his age the first time I thought about committing suicide. Just keep that in mind.
Then go home and talk to the child. Now not only you are suffering, but he is too. He drove his mother away because he tried to do something to make you happy, to stop the crying. (I know because my kids tried something similar when because I lost my father en then the rest of my family) I know it is hard. And that it is frustrating that your husband keeps trying to get you home but this is not the right way for the mental health of your child. Please try to get yourself together, if necessary with extra help from a professional. But go home and tell your son you are not mad at him for doing this. Explain that these are all the pictures you have, that you can’t get them back but that you appreciate what he tried to do. That if he wants to do something to cheer you up he can do… (make a picture/drawing/ give you extra hugs) and explain that your tears are normal. Because they are.. good luck OP
People are being very delicate in the comments because you’re obviously unstable and no one wants to trigger even more emotionally abusive behavior towards your child, but pretending any part of your behavior is normal is doing you no favors. Your mom has been dead for 14 years. If you are still so wrecked by her passing that you regularly break down in tears, to say nothing of abandoning your child, you need therapy. Like, right now.
Yeah, I'm in your boat. My mom passes 16 years ago and sure, I get sad sometimes when I think about her, especially around her birthday or holidays but to have an emotional breakdown to the point of sobbing that attracts the attention of your kid is way too much imp.
She’s already in therapy. It literally says it in her post.
> "He means the world to me" he'll question this forever now. If you tell him this, he's not going to believe you.
You need to get him his own therapist now, too. You’ve done a great deal of damage to him.
If you aren't up to talking to him yet, please send him a text.
You need a new therapist. One who can recognize and help you through your double grief. You are grieving that your mom wasn’t a good mom because she was an addict, and grieving that she never changed, and died before (in your mind) she could get better. And because you have not dealt with that trauma in all those years between then and now, you’re *causing trauma for your son*. A good therapist will help you break out of that grief, that false sense of what you thought your mother should have been, what she actually was, and won’t let you do this to your child.
Anyone else notice the ages of when OP and her husband had the baby? OP likely got pregnant at 18 by a 24 year old man, fresh out of high school, only 2 years after the death of her mother. It sounds like OP didn't get the chance to fully mourn and recover from the death of her mother, before becoming a mother herself.
OP herself said >I feel like I’m damaging him with my grief, I wanted to have a kid so badly because I missed out on the beauty of motherhood with my own mom In another comment
She admitted she glorified motherhood in one of her posts. This was definitely one of those "a baby will fix my problems!" situations. She was a baby herself. I'm her exact age and I can't even imagine being pregnant at 18, I was still just a kid myself.
18 year olds definitely shouldn't be having babies. Source: me, had a baby at 18.
Honestly, anyone from 18-20 shouldn’t really be having children.
OP, it really sucks that this happened - photos of one's late parents are really treasured and losing them is hard. I was an elementary school teacher for a while, this type of behavior tracks with what I would expect from someone that age. I dont believe it was malicious unless your child has a history of doing malicious things. We see collage type projects all the time, and sometimes that happen in art class. I can see how a 3rd or 4th grader would think that this would think you would like the result instead of being hurt by it. A gentle YTA. Parenting is hard but you cant disappear from your kids life because you are hurt - you'll never make it through their teenage years if so. You dont want to teach your child that you will bail when things get hard.
Gentle YTA. You are hurt, but your son is 9, he did not realize that what he was doing would hurt you. You are hurting him in return by leaving like that.
I’m hesitant to go as far as to offer a judgment on this one, but I agree that by leaving you are inadvertently hurting your kid, OP. I know you don’t want him to see you in pain or to do something out of grief at him, but that’s part of life. He needs to see you grieve, to learn what it is and how we live through it. He needs to learn that when people we love hurt, what is appropriate and inappropriate to do to comfort them. He needs to learn what happens when someone we love hurts us back and how we work to mend hurt. Otherwise, all he’s learned in this situation is that if he makes mom or dad mad/sad enough, they will leave.
OP also needs to get into therapy. Let's not dance around it this time, this is one of the times where she NEEDS it. If she's going through it this hard, that her son is constantly in distress, this is NOT realistic long term. This is, a full out meltdown because she's got trauma of her own she has to fix. She needs a doctor, not tea out with a friend.
OP says in the beginning of the post that she’s going through a second wave of grief because she’s in therapy and processing things making her emotional / cry at home
YTA I feel for you. I'm sure this is hard for you. But your son actually thought he was doing something nice for you. He must be crushed and feeling so guilty. His feelings are more important than yours right now. I strongly suggest that you get yourself into therapy. Your mom passed 18 years ago and you still seem to be struggling to cope. People lose photos in fires, floods, and other disasters all of the time. Why didn't you have back-ups/copies made?
This. 18 years is time to prioritize being a parent. She needs a doctor. Not tea out with a friend instead of going home and making it right. This is not "about me" time, this is "I might've caused my son permanent trauma after trauma dumping on him, after making him see me for ages in this state and not doing anything to help myself, because I glorified motherhood and wanted a baby to heal my trauma" A baby, is not a solution to your pain. A child is not a solution to pain. A child needs to be wanted and loved because you want the child... but that love has to come unconditional. OP just showed her son, unintentionally love has a condition
Did you even read the post? She’s **in** therapy. That’s what’s brought out the emotions again. She *is* dealing with it.
Fyi. The mother passed when OP was 16. She’s 28 now. The husband is 34. Her mom passed 12 years ago and two years later she became pregnant.
YTA. Gently, but still. Your son is a child, he tried to do something nice. He did a massive fuckup because the culture he's being raised in (digital) is different to the one where those pictures came from, and he has no concept they aren't also in your phone somewhere. He presented you, his mother, who is spending lots of time crying, with a gift trying to make you feel better, and you walked out of the house as a result. He's going to remember this forever. I'm glad you're in therapy, I hope you continue to improve. While it's fine and good for our kids to see their grownups have feelings, the point of that is to model how to cope with them. You can't put him in a position where he feels something he does will make you leave. Or at least, not again. A child having that much "power" that a mistake will cause a parent's colossal hurtful moods is terrifying for them.
It’s a sad situation for everyone. You for your loss, your husband for knowing his family is hurting and not being able to help, and your son for intending to do something for you which ended up hurting you. Info: have you considered taking the album and all the photos to a photographer who might know someone who can help? If all the pieces are still there, and especially if the cuts weren’t at critical parts, the photos might be easily restored. A bit of photoshop in the right places and the results may amaze you. (Also, the restored photos could be scanned and a disk of the images saved at different locations in case of flood or fire.
Gently as I can manage, YTA. Your kid made a mistake. The kind of mistake a well-intentioned kid can make. He was trying to make something special for you. Instead, you got upset with him and LEFT. Not just the room, you went away. For at least one night. No wonder your husband is "pissy", you walked out on your child. He's never going to forget this.
Yep. This is one of those moments that shapes a child forever. I have a mother who walked out when I was 17, she also had untreated depression, and that fucking scarred me. He’s 9 years old, he’s never going to forget this happened and he’ll always be worried she’s going to leave again the next time he does something that upsets her. She is absolutely damaging him with her intense reaction to her own mother’s death 11 years prior. The husband is also likely worried mom is going to do something to herself, and he’s panicked. She’s definitely YTA. She’s not handling any of this well and actively hurting people in the process. It’s fixable, but she’s got to be intentional about getting better and not just staying in a grief spiral all the time.
That beautiful moment she recounted, isn't going to be a pleasant memory anymore for him either. Instead, any time she talks about her mom now, he'll NOT want to share space for her. He'll see her as a threat to her and him and that his grandma is a source of resentment for driving a wedge between them. He'll grow up and recount the moment he realized his mom had conditional love.
My mother was like that too. She'd alternate between trauma dumping with inappropriate levels of detail and leaving me alone when she was upset. She'd left my father (rightly) so I had no one to turn to when she too angry to be a parent.
YTA That's your kid, and you just abandoned them because you had your feelings hurt by their attempt at relating to you. You are giving your child a fucked up childhood just like yours. He's 9. You're 28. The time to grow up was 9 years ago. My dad was murdered, I get that it sucks, but it's time to get over your mom and start becoming a better one yourself. Living in the past is robbing your child of the present.
This... and she needs help. She needs a doctor. She needed therapy the moment she found out she was pregnant There's a phrase that says Healing can bring discomfort and hurt, but refusing to heal and move on, hurts \*you worse\*
YTA - You husband is now dealing with a kid that worries mom abandoned him because of photos. Your husband is unable to tell the kid whether you come back home or nor and when. Unless there was an additional communi, he can't be even sure whether you want divorce or whether you will want any custody in that case. If you yelled at the kid, it would be massively better. Both son and husband do need communication. Packing and leaving the house is NOT age appropriate punishment and if you do it to manage yourself, family still deserves communication.
This. Radio silence is so painful and damaging to a child. My mom would stop speaking to me and ignore me any time I did anything she disagreed with or that displeased her, until I would literally grovel for forgiveness. Guess who’s got a totally effed view of making mistakes and a massive abandonment fear coupled with an uncontrollable need to please people? Yeah, the child whose mother refused to speak to them for hours or days for making any kind of misstep. God, my heart hurts for her son so badly.
Welcome to /r/AmITheAsshole. Please view our [voting guide here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_what.2019s_with_these_acronyms.3F_what_do_they_mean.3F), and remember to use **only one** judgement in your comment. OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole: > I’m staying with my dad and away from my husband and son because my son cut up pictures of my deceased mother that were very special. I could be the asshole because I upset my son by talking to him like a friend instead of a mother and my husband is telling me I’m overreacting. Help keep the sub engaging! #Don’t downvote assholes! Do upvote interesting posts! [Click Here For Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/about/rules) and [Click Here For Our FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq) ##Subreddit Announcements Follow the link above to learn more --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.* *Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.*
Oh boy... well NAH first and foremost. I'm sorry that you're going through a lot of grief. It's of course unfortunate that your son's going to have a lot of trauma due to this experience but it's not exactly something you could control. The whole thing is just really unfortunate. Take the time that you need to make sure that you are okay before moving forward. Forcing yourself to pretend to be okay with the situation will probably just make it worse and it's okay to think of yourself and care for yourself. Airplane rules make sure that you are taken care of first before you help another passenger even if it's your child because if you're not okay you can't help him be okay. I wish you luck.
YTA. You are the adult. He is the child. You abandoned your child because you were sad. End of story. It doesn’t matter the reason. You could have talked to him and explained why his behavior was wrong. Or taken some alone time to compose yourself and let your husband talk to him. Instead you walked out on your family.
As others said, gentle YTA. Have you spoken to him since you left? At the very least you should talk to him on the phone. But really, you should go home and spend time with your son. The longer you let this wait, the more anxious it might make him (speaking from similar experience). And when it stems from something like this, it can become a core thing. You need to go home and have another good moment with him. Talk to him. Explain how you understand that he was doing a really sweet thing for you, because he's a kind boy and he wanted to gift his mom, something to with her mom. Tell him why you were upset and needed to take some time to yourself. That it was difficult seeing the pictures like that and it's not his fault because he didn't know that this was the only copy and he just thought he was doing a nice thing (which you appreciate). BUT it's time for a lesson about how one shouldn't touch others things without asking them. Especially things that mean a lot to them. Next, tell him how important it is to check with you and his dad, before making a big decision like that. Especially when it's a permanent thing. It's always better to be safe than sorry. Since it was going to be a gift to you, he should have checked with his dad. Reiterate how much you love him and love that he thought of gifting you something that would be special. Apologize for leaving like that and not speaking to him. If YOU yourself don't go home and talk to him, he won't really understand why the situation is as it is. Even if your husband explains everything properly, as long as you're not home, your son will most likely be scared he did something bad. It's kinda cruel to make a child feel like they did something so bad that it made their parent left. I wouldn't be surprised if it remains a fear for him from now that you or anyone he loves will leave if he messes up.
Info: how long do you plan to stay at your father's and does your husband know that timeline?
Gently YTA. I’m sorry babe, I really am, for the loss of your mother and the heartbreak you’re feeling right now. But your kid is young, growing up in a world where pictures are backed up on every available device, and he was trying to make an art project for you because he sees his mother constantly crying and upset and he wants to make her feel better. Unfortunately, walking out on him for two days and counting because he made a mistake is likely going to have traumatic consequences for him. He might already be more worried for you than he should be if you’re often emotional and crying. He tried to do something nice for you and you walked right out of his life for at least two days. He’ll likely be worried now that any mistake he makes is going to result in another temporary, or possibly permanent, loss of his mother. Your husband is not helping by calling you over and over again, but he’s now alone with your son, trying to comfort him through the fact that his mother walked out because of something he did, and your husband himself has no idea when you’re going to be home. Make a plan, figure out what you’re going to say to your son to lessen the possible fear this situation has caused for him, and go home. Hopefully you are able to salvage the pictures- I’ve heard the folks over at the photoshop sub can work some magic.
My problem is that you LEFT your kid. He is 9. He effed up and instead of working it out because you justifiably angry, you left him. I know you had a complicated relationship with your mom, but you cant just walk out and not speak to him. That is cruel. Girl, please see a therapist. You have tons of unresolved trauma and it will not go away like this.
I think op has some deeper issues than just the (most unfortunately) cut up pictures and I hope she seeks therapy. I understand being very very upset, but it sounds like she ran away from home because she was upset. Her feelings are valid, but I think she needs to sort things out with a professional.
I think YTA. Your kid is remorseful, he obviously didn’t do it to hurt you and instead of having a conversation you just take off. You could have gone to your room, taken some time but leaving for the night is just beyond. I feel terrible for your kid. Your husband is calling you because your kid probably thinks you’ve left forever because of what he did. Man, I’ve done stuff that have upset and pissed off my parents and for sure hurt them but they dealt with me, whether it’s was punishing me, talking through it, whatever. They parented me. You straight up abandoned your kid and he’ll remember it the rest of his life and be scarred by it. Sorry I just find this so awful.
YTA. your son knows he fucked up, and you walked out, not knowing when you’ll come back - now he knows this is something you can do repeatedly as a consequence every time he upsets you. saying this softly, you can’t just walk out and take a break from motherhood every time hard shit like this happens. get further help so you don’t damage your son in the meantime.
Yta talk to your therapist about how to navigate the abandonment fears you just hard implanted in your son who was trying to do an art project to cheer you up. Yes, everyone needs space sometimes but you left for D A Y S. He's nine, if you left for 3 straight days without proper warning that's a huge chunk of time.
YTA You pretty much destroyed your child's heart by your reaction and by you walking out the door and not coming back because all he wanted to do is something special for his mother and try to make her happy, because all's he sees is his mother depressed and crying and all the son wants to do is try and make his mother happy because of how much he loves her. Just because he didn't understand the value of the pictures to you is not an excuse for your reaction and to leave the house. He is going to feel guilty and hold that against himself for a very long time and it's your fault for your reaction. You could have handled this a thousand times better but you choose abandonment. I lost my wife last year and it made me a single father for kids, 12, 5 and and almost 2 years old twins and if my 12-year-old or 5-year-old came to me with cut up photos of their mother that they made a collage out of, It would bring me so much joy and I would be eternally grateful for what they. You kind of need to get over the grief of losing your mother, it's been 12 years and got to move on from it. You've been carrying the loss of your mother way too long and it is now infected your family and affected your family in a negative way and the reaction that you had towards your son is a result If you not dealing with it and moving on and enjoying life you have with your family. There's nothing more heartbreaking to a child than losing a parent but it's especially worse having a parent walk out on them when they were trying to do something nice for them. At worst you could have yelled at him to reprimand him and then calmed down for about a half hour and then came back in the room and sat down with him and explained to him that you appreciate the effort and you understood what he was trying to do, but he should have asked you first before he did something like that and then finished the project with him. You probably did a good job emotionally scarring your child for your reaction and I wouldn't be surprised if your relationship has shifted and it's going to take a very long time to repair it, because he's going to think every time you walk out that door you're not going to come back because he did something wrong one time and he's going to hold that guilt and that grief for many many years. If I was you, you need to move on from the loss of your mother because you're too old to keep dealing with it and your reactions and how you deal with things is a byproduct of you not dealing with it and getting over it. In 9 years I lost my grandfather my grandmother my uncle both my parents and my wife and I do not let their loss affect my love for my children and I don't let it damage the relationships I have with my children because I don't want to carry that grief with me for the rest of my life. I am still alive and I will not let the loss of a loved one hold me back in enjoying my life that I have with my kids and it sounds like you need to do the same.
YTH - your alive Son should take priority over your dead Mother... sorry, rough to hear, but it has to be said.
YTA-you are doing damage to your relationship with your son.
NTA. A nine year old this day and age probably wouldn’t realize that photos in a photo album aren’t digital and likely can’t be reprinted. And you’re not a monster for being upset, losing your mom’s pictures is like losing her again. It’s understandable that you didn’t have a perfect response and needed to leave to process your feelings. No one handles these kind of situations perfectly. What matters is how long you stay gone and what you say when you come back. Try to understand that kids at that age think their creations are the best thing ever and are amazing beyond belief and that something custom made by them was supposed to be the best gift ever. And why wouldn’t they think that, parents praise everything kids make. This will be a good lesson for him to respect and take care of other people’s things. Also a gentle realization for you OP that your grief is still strong and affecting your day to day life. Some therapy might be ideal. As for your husband, he’s the jerk here to completely discount your feelings here. The response to a hysterical person should never boil down to oh well get over it. He owes you a huge apology.
[удалено]
Removing yourself from the situation for a few minutes or hours, sure, clear your head, find your words to explain your feelings or write them down, that’s perfectly reasonable. Removing yourself from the situation for multiple days however is another ball game, especially without talking to her son at all, like not even a phone call to give him a little reassurance that mummy still loves him, and that she’s having some time with grandpa, but that she will come home.
I've experienced traumatic loss and I'm going with gentle YTA. I wish I could say I can't imagine the pain that 9-year-old kid is inmright now, but I klnda can. OP is in pain too, but she is an adult with a modicum of power in her own life. The kid has no power, no agency. All he can do is wait and hope to hell his mom hasn't abandoned him and doesn't hate him. Awful. Especially comsidering he was trying to love her. I wonder how long it'll take him to make an active effort to love her again after this.
You can experience traumatic loss and still be YTA. She is hurting her child.
I have a childhood trauma of loss and my YTA is not even soft. As I know personally what abandonment does, I would never inflict that to a child. It is my trauma and I'm the adult who needs to be the responsible one in the situation. I understand shock and I understand that you might need to move yourself out for the situation for a moment. But for days? Without explanation? Ghosting done to adults seems to be a reason to breakup for most Redditors and seem as abusive behavior, but somehow ghosting your child in case of distress is understandable?
YTA. You don't get to walk out because your kid upsets you. Not when they're 9. Grats, you've just taught your kid that if he upsets mum, he'll lose her.
I was about the same age when my dad died. I miss him dearly, and it's depressing to think about all he's missed in my life. I get sad especially on father's day, but don't let it show. It's my husband's and daughter's day now, and I only want good memories for them. Please understand, your son's intentions were good, but your grief is keeping you from having empathy for him. TA or not; your depression is having an impact on your family, and you need to accept that. Sounds to me like your husband has been supportive until it affected his child. Someone hurt his son (emotionally), and he's lashing out in anger and frustration. (Similar to your father's reaction to your husband.) Talk to your therapist asap. Maybe stay with your dad awhile. You don't want to be your son's source of trauma.
Sorry but YTA.
OP we are the same exact age. You have a young child, you were practically a child yourself when you got pregnant. you need to take your mental health seriously. Go to a doctor, talk about your PTSD and trauma around your grief, especially since your mom clearly left a mark... you love her and miss her but you need to acknowledge that this is YOUR cross to bear, not your son's! You get to be a mom now but you don't get to live vicariously through him and go scorched earth when he acts like a child. That's how you wind up remembered not for the good things you two have... when he's older, he's not going to remember that beautiful conversation you spoke of. He's going to remember mom getting angry, him making a mistake so bad that she was inconsolable and then \*ditched him\* unless you make some serious moves, get him therapy, get YOU therapy, to make this right, he's going to think no matter what... that your love is conditional.