Family movie night is basically the United Nations of domestic disputes. Trying to find a film that satisfies a teenager, a pre-teen, a nine-year-old, and two exhausted parents is a task that usually ends with someone crying and someone else doom-scrolling on their phone. But there is a specific rule that usually holds true in every household: if you are scared of cartoons, you do not get to watch R-rated sci-fi horror classics. One dad on Reddit enforced this rule, and now his wife is accusing him of being a mean exclusionist.
Our narrator is a 40-year-old father of three. He has a 13-year-old son, a 12-year-old daughter, and a 9-year-old daughter. The youngest is, to put it gently, a bit sensitive. The dad explains that she “doesn’t handle horror very well” and notes that even Scooby-Doo is sometimes too scary for her. For those keeping score, that is a show about a talking dog and guys in rubber masks. It is not exactly The Exorcist.
So, when the older kids and the wife wanted to watch Alien — a movie famously featuring a creature that bursts out of a human chest — the parents made the executive decision to wait until the 9-year-old was in bed. This is responsible parenting. This is protecting your child from a lifetime of therapy. Bedtime was set for 9:30 PM, the kid was tucked in, and the coast was clear. Or so they thought.
Just as the movie started, the youngest wandered downstairs. She had heard her sister mention a movie and, possessed by the fear of missing out (FOMO), she demanded to join. The dad said no. He explained it was too scary. But like any nine-year-old who has been told she can’t do something, she insisted she could handle it.
The dad didn’t negotiate with terrorists. He physically picked her up and carried her back to bed while she screamed “no daddy I wanna watch the movie!” He tucked her in and delivered the cold, hard truth: “You’re too little for scary movies.” When she tried to get out again, he raised his voice and laid down the law. It wasn’t a “family movie night”; it was a “people who don’t get nightmares from cartoons” movie night.
They watched the movie while the daughter threw a tantrum upstairs, which honestly sounds like the soundtrack to most parenting decisions. But the next day, the wife turned on him. She told him he handled it wrong. She argued that they should have watched a “kid-appropriate” movie first so the youngest didn’t feel excluded, and then watched Alien after she went to sleep.
I have to ask — when? The kid’s bedtime is already 9:30 PM. If they watched a movie before that, the parents wouldn’t be starting Alien until nearly midnight. The wife is prioritizing the 9-year-old’s feelings over the basic logistics of time and sleep. The kid wasn’t excluded because they hate her; she was excluded because it was past her bedtime and the movie features acid-blooded monsters.
The dad stood his ground, noting that the daughter knew it was past her bedtime. He is right. If you let a kid who is scared of Scooby-Doo watch Alien just to be “inclusive,” you are going to be the one changing wet sheets at 3 AM when the nightmares start.
So, is he the ahole? Absolutely not. N-T-A. Boundaries are healthy. Bedtimes exist for a reason. And protecting your child from content they absolutely cannot handle isn’t “mean,” it is your job. The wife wants to be the “nice guy,” but sometimes being a parent means being the bad guy who keeps the Xenomorphs away from the nine-year-old.
NTA. Bedtime is bedtime. You want her screaming every night at 9:30.