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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/frontdoor-aita on 2023-08-12 12:21:56.

My mom had a health scare so I’ve been visiting with her last week. Since my 16-year-old son Jéan has been staying home due to a sprained ankle, I let him babysit his younger brothers (7M, 5M, and 3M) while I was gone. He’s done it before and usually enjoys it, and I rarely ever let him babysit for more than a few hours so I’m not “parentifying” him before you guys come at me in the comments. This was an unusual and unexpected circumstance, it would never be this long if I’d been able to plan beforehand.

I checked in every day with Jéan to make sure things were going well, and he always assured me things were fine. But when I called him a couple of hours before I was due to be home, he didn’t answer. I texted him as well but no response. I was a bit worried, but since I’d called him earlier that day and things seemed fine, I assumed maybe he’d put the younger kids down for a nap and had his phone on silencer or something.

But when I got in, the first thing I noticed is that the front door was unlocked, and no one’s downstairs. I almost go full panic mode but when I get upstairs I find all of my sons are in Jéan’s bedroom, he’s fallen asleep and the younger kids are just running around playing with his things. I wake him up and ask him why the front door’s unlocked. He explained they were getting too rowdy in the house so he was playing catch with them in the backyard, and he must’ve forgotten to lock the door when they came back in because he was chasing them around trying to keep them from throwing the ball at the windows. I asked him why he didn’t at least check before going to sleep, and he said he’d meant to just sit down for a few minutes and fell asleep on accident.

I was a bit skeptical because my youngest kids usually are really well-behaved, but regardless I told him keeping the front door unlocked is basic security and he should have checked at least once before going upstairs, so I’m grounding him for three days. He was pissed off and said I was overreacting, and that he “can’t do anything right” in my book. That’s not true, I’m just particularly picky when it comes to my kids’ safety, like any parent.

AITA for grounding him? I know he needs some type of punishment but I can still see where grounding might’ve been too extreme.