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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/inspiremeproject on 2023-08-10 11:52:25.
I (30f) have a niece, Lucy (10) who is my sister Maggie’s stepdaughter. Lucy’s dad Jason (37) has been with Maggie (35) since Lucy was less than two years old, so Lucy has been in our family’s lives for pretty much all of hers. They also have a son, Adam, who is 5.
A couple of weeks ago my parents, Jason, and the kids all came to visit me. Maggie was supposed to come as well but her work changed her schedule last minute and rather than pay to change the flights for everyone, Jason brought the kids alone.
During the trip, Lucy asked if I would be part of a project she had to do for school about women who inspire them. She said everyone in her class was doing it about their mums but she wanted to do hers about me. I was touched and agreed.
The project is part of a media module and had to include some form of multimedia and an interview. Lucy wanted to do an interview video, sort of like those “72 Questions” videos from Vogue, so Lucy and Jason “shadowed” me for a few days and Lucy would film segments for her interview. At the end of the two days I took Lucy to meet a friend of mine who does content creation and he showed Lucy how to edit her video with all the right programs. She also wrote up a more in depth interview. We had a lot of fun and I was really proud of her and she seemed so excited about the project.
Everyone went home a couple of days ago and Lucy showed Maggie the project and Maggie flipped out. She called me angry and said there is no way I should have let Lucy use me for the project. She said the project was meant to be about mothers, and while the school can’t really say that because some kids are raised by other relatives, that’s what is meant. She said I should have known how hurtful this would be to her since she has always tried so hard to be a mother to Lucy and she feels like she’s been looked over. She said it was my fault for letting Lucy use me for the project rather than steering her to ask Maggie. She also accused me of adding extra things to make myself seem more interesting and better than her so that she wouldn’t be able to convince Lucy to change it.
All of this doesn’t represent how I approached Lucy’s request at all, but Lucy did say most people were doing it on their mothers, so AITA for not encouraging her to do it on hers?