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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/feed_me_something on 2023-08-07 13:29:26.

So my 16-year-old son “Josh” was having a movie night with three friends the other day. One of the boys “Matt” is new, I haven’t seen him too many times before so I don’t know that much about him except that he’s slightly younger than most of my son’s friends. Anyway, the movies Josh and the other boys wanted to watch were horror or superhero themed. Apparently Matt tried to come up with some other movie genres/ideas but was shut down.

I’m making some hot dogs in the kitchen, and Matt comes in looking kind of sheepish. I ask him what’s up and he says he’s really scared to watch the movies Josh and the other boys want to see because he has epilepsy and a lot of the films they chose have strobe light / flashing light sequences. I said why not just tell them, and he said he was very afraid that once they knew, they were going to try to trigger him on purpose “for the lols.” Now I know my son like the back of my hand, he would never do anything like that. I tried to reassure Matt of this but he just shook his head and basically begged me to switch just one movie so he could watch it with them and then he’d leave early (his logic being that if they didn’t listen to him about it, they’d defer to my authority).

I thought about it, but had to say no because I doubted my son and his friends would agree to just switch the movie without a good reason being provided. I suggested to Matt that if he really didn’t feel safe telling them to just close his eyes if he suspected a strobe / flash scene was coming up, and that if he still didn’t feel safe he could just go home.

I guess Matt decided it wasn’t that big of a deal after all because he went back in there and didn’t complain. But when my wife got home and I told her about how the day went, she was appalled that I didn’t switch the movie or confront our son about how they were treating Matt. I told her it was no big deal and that the day went fine, the guys are old enough to handle conflicts on their own. She disagreed and won’t back down on this issue. I think I did fine tbh, like I said no harm was done and I don’t believe in getting in between my kids’ conflicts with their friends. AITA?