Parents slammed for lying to son for years about deadly allergies: 'Manipulative and poor parenting'

It’s not out of the ordinary for parents to tell their children the occasional white lie while they’re growing up, but the parents of this Reddit poster went way too far.

A 19-year-old posted on Reddit’s popular AITA (Am I the A**hole) forum to ask whether him cutting off communication with his parents was too much of an overreaction to learning they had been lying to him for years.

“For as long as I can remember, I have been allergic to several things: dairy, wheat/flour/gluten and legumes,” the post began. Since he was young, the teenager had missed out on major experiences because of his strict diet. His parents kept all of it out of the house so he would never be tempted.

But on his 19th birthday, he started to question things.

“I was at my aunt’s house for my birthday party, and she made brownies for everyone,” he said. “For me, she took great steps to make them with almond flour and avoided all of my allergies. I started eating them and thought little of it until my aunt suddenly looked at me and, in a panicked way, asked which plate I took the brownies from.”

It turns out, the teen had eaten off of the plate with regular brownies, made with flour. His aunt started to freak out and search for his EpiPen, as he stayed seated, completely frozen in fear because he’d never eaten flour before.

But then his mom told his aunt to calm down because she had switched the plates when no one was looking.

“I found this incredibly odd because, really, why would she swap the plates? That doesn’t even make sense,” the post continued.

The teen dwelled on the incident for a week before going to the doctor to take a proper allergy test. He wasn’t allergic to anything.

“I was furious and called my mother. She eventually admitted that she lied to me because she wanted me to be on a Paleolithic diet, and wanted me to be able to avoid all temptations,” he said.

“She spams my phone with messages about how healthy I am — that I never had acne, that I have been in great shape my whole life, that I have strong teeth and bones, and even that I got onto a D1 college tennis team,” he continued.

He said his mom called him “ungrateful” for not appreciating her lying, but Reddit had a field day with the extreme helicopter parenting.

“You spent your entire life thinking that you could easily die because your mom wanted you on a special diet???” the top comment said. “What your mom did was manipulative and poor parenting.”

“Some parents are so terrified at losing control of their kid’s lives that they will go to any length to make sure they don’t deviate from the planned paths,” someone else replied.

The silver lining is that the 19-year-old doesn’t have to live in fear anymore. In fact, in the comments he mentioned finally trying out some of the foods he’d been forbidden from eating for almost two decades.

“Cheese is absolutely incredible,” he said. “I almost cried over a double bacon cheeseburger.”

Think this is bad? Read about the woman ruining traditional British recipes on TikTok.

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The post Teenager discovers parents have been lying to him about deadly food allergies appeared first on In The Know.

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