Mother sparks debate by asking couple to cut down trees over son’s nut allergies

A mother sparked debate after asking a couple who moved to her neighborhood to cut down walnut trees because her son was highly allergic to them.

The issue was brought up in Reddit’s “Am I The A**hole” forum where it had more than 11,400 upvotes and 1,900 comments.

The Original Poster, who goes by the name of “u/DishProfessional432”, wrote that she and her wife had moved to the country from a city.

One neighbour, a “distressed” woman called Amanda, soon stopped by the house to ask why they had scattered peanuts on their porch, to which they replied it was for birds and squirrels.

The woman, who lives several streets away, then explained that her 11-year-old son had severe allergies to peanuts, nuts, eggs, and shellfish and asked them to stop leaving them out.

“As she explained it, birds and squirrels could drop or hide nuts close to her house, a few roads over,” the post stated.

“I will admit, I got my back up a bit because we had purposefully moved to a rural area to get away from restrictions, but my wife convinced me it wasn’t a big deal and we could just switch to seeds.”

The OP said that they switched to seeds for the sake of the youngster, but that they now have a new issue with the mother.

They explained that they have been selling walnuts from 10 trees on their property to make extra money, but now Amanda has an issue with it.

“(Two) weeks ago, Amanda came pounding on our door,” the post stated.

“My wife, who is very non-confrontational, answered and Amanda demanded to see our walnut trees as she had heard from a neighbour that they were on our land.”

She then told them that “obviously they’ll need to be cut down” and added, “tsk, tsk, we’ve already had this discussion.”

Later, she showed back up at the house with a petition, signed by less than 20 people in the neighborhood, demanding that they remove the trees.

Many Reddit commentators said that the couple was right to not remove the trees.

“NTA. Amanda sounds nuts,” one user commented, while another wrote, “It’s unrealistic to expect someone several streets away to cut down trees she didn’t even know about for years.”

And another added: “This reeks of an over entitled mother that is using her child’s allergy as a way to get her rocks off bullying people.”