In this story, a mother of three is struggling with her oldest daughter’s habit of constantly slamming her bedroom door. Despite multiple attempts to address the issue politely and firmly, the daughter continues to ignore the family’s requests. Finally, after being woken up yet again by the slamming, the mother snaps and takes the door off its hinges, replacing it with a curtain.
Source: Reddit
I (40f) have 3 kids. Maggie (14f), Levi (12m) and Charlie (10m). (**NOT THIER REAL NAMES)**Levi and Charlie share a bedroom and Maggie has her own room as the oldest and also only girl.
Maggie is a great kid. She does her homework, helps with chores without too much complaint, and doesn’t bug her little brothers (too) much. The issue is that she will not stop slamming her bedroom door. When she gets up to use the bathroom at night she slams her bedroom door on her way out and back in. When she gets up in the morning or goes to bed at night she slams it. Pretty much any time she enters or exits her room the door gets slammed. And it’s only her door, none of the other doors in the house. It shakes the walls and frequently wakes up everyone else in the house. Her brother’s room shares a wall with hers and our bedroom is directly above theirs.
We’ve talked to her about it and asked her very politely to please be more mindful about it because it is disturbing the rest of us but it’s in one ear and out the other. We tried being more forceful about it saying that if she continues to slam her door there will start to be consequences. Still nothing changes. It all came to a head the other night when she got up to use the bathroom and all 4 of us were woken up by the slamming. I have to be up at 5am for work and I’ve had enough of the broken sleep and came downstairs and knocked on her door. She opened it and said WHAT?! with such attitude it took a lot of self control not to start yelling.
I told her as calmly as I could that if she slammed that door one more time she was going to come home and find it gone. She proceeded to yell at me to leave her alone and then slammed it 5 times as hard as she could. Well the next day (Friday) she went to school and my husband and I both had the day off so we took the door off the frame and installed a curtain rod with a nice heavy curtain over the door instead. She came home and freaked the F out. She said we’re being emotionally abusive and taking away her right to privacy. She sulked all weekend and won’t talk to us now. My mother says I’m the AH because I overreacted but she doesn’t have to deal with the house shaking.
I want to add that we completely respect each other’s privacy in our house which is why we hung up a heavy curtain and made sure that we couldn’t see through it or around it. We even put little Velcro pieces on the walls and curtain sides so it stays in place. She still has her physical privacy which she is absolutely entitled to, but can’t slam a piece of fabric. We also have never and still don’t just go into her room unannounced and still knock on the wall to ask permission to enter. We’ve told her we’ll happily put her door back on once she agrees to respect the no slamming rule.
So Am I A Jerk ?
Edit to add:
- The curtain is an industrial type that blocks sound and light
- The curtain is only meant to be a temporary measure. As soon as she agrees to stop slamming and be respectful of the shared space we will put it right back on.
- The door isn’t broken or malfunctioning in any way and there is no draft causing it to swing shut.
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