A mother is frustrated that her daughter’s phone is always on Do Not Disturb, making her unreachable. After her daughter repeatedly ignores her calls and texts, the mother threatens to take her phone away unless she removes the feature, leading to a heated argument between them.
Source: Reddit
My daughter (16F) has her phone on Do Not Disturb all the time. At first, it wasn’t an issue since she would still answer my texts and calls whenever she is out at practice. For the past few weeks, she has stopped answering my texts and calls and she wouldn’t receive them since I’d ask her why she wasn’t answering and she’d claim she didn’t get them. I am not stupid. Her phone is on do not disturb and none of my texts and calls are going through. I’d ask my other daughters to see if they can reach out to her whenever she is out just to ask her what time she might be home. No answers. My oldest (22F) would try to call, text, FaceTime, you name it in order to ask her when she might be home.
Over the weekend, my daughter had to attend an event at school and when I came to go pick her up, she went MIA and wasn’t answering any of my texts and calls since again, the do not disturb feature was on. I started to get frustrated over it so when my daughter finally entered the car, I told her that she needs to start answering my calls and texts and she had no reason to ignore me when she knew I was going to pick her up. My daughter gave me the excuse of “oh I didn’t see it” again. My frustration turned into anger so I start yelling at her and said, “NONE OF US ARE ABLE TO EASILY GET AHOLD OF YOU! SOMETHING THAT NORMALLY TAKES TWO MINUTES TAKES TWENTY OR MORE SINCE WE CAN’T SEEM TO GET YOU TO ANSWER THE PHONE! YOUR FATHER AND I HAVE BEEN WORRIED SICK WHENEVER YOU DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE!” I then told her she has two choices: either she removes the do not disturb or her phone gets taken away for a week.
My daughter rolls her eyes and said it isn’t fair for her to not be allowed to have the do not disturb feature. I said she needs to start answering her phone or at the very least, call us back right away. I said that if she doesn’t comply, her phone will be taken away. She begged me not to take her phone so I said she needs to remove the do not disturb feature. She refused once again.
When we got home, I told her if she doesn’t want her phone taken away, she needs to remove the do not disturb feature. After some back and forth, my daughter removes the feature right in front of me before running to her room in tears.
Now, before anyone thinks otherwise, I did allow her to have the phone on do not disturb as long as she answers our calls and texts. We’d have to call her more than once to get a hold of her but she is completely unreachable. I think I was too harsh but I was at my wits end.
Am I the AH?
Here are a few comments on the story where it was originally posted:
