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Most parents would celebrate if their high school senior were accepted to multiple Ivy League schools. Right? Maybe not. For one young man, his parents held onto a very dirty secret for nearly a decade because they didn’t want to inconvenience themselves when it came to their son’s choice of higher education. They actually hid his Ivy League acceptance letters from him until he was 24. In a post to X, the man’s now wife shared the story of how her husband’s parents sabotaged his future for their own selfish reasons.

For parents, watching their kids go away to college can be bittersweet. While they’re embarking on a new chapter of their lives and leaving the nest, it can be hard to let them go. That parental struggle should not bleed onto a child on the cusp of adulthood, however. 

A young man’s parents hid his Ivy League acceptance letters from him because they didn’t want to ‘travel far’ to visit.

In her X post, the man’s wife showed the various acceptance letters that her husband had received, including Columbia University, Yale, and Cornell. She explained that these were only a few of the letters that he’d received that he never knew about, thanks to his parents.

“Some of the recruiting letters my husband’s parents withheld from him until he was 24 because ‘we didn’t want to have [to] travel far to home meets, and you aren’t that smart anyway,'” she revealed. “I was there when they handed him these opened letters.”

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His parents’ decision to withhold his acceptance letters was a violation of trust and likely illegal if he were 18 at the time.

Opinions on the value of higher education have been changing in recent years, and there has been a marked increase in parents who would prefer not to send their children to four-year colleges. In fact, a Gallup survey found that 46% of parents would prefer not to send their children to a four-year college after high school, even if there were no obstacles, financial or otherwise. There was only a small majority — 54 percent — who would still prefer a four-year college for their children. 

The concept of college wasn’t the issue for this man’s parents, however. It was the location of the schools. They wanted an easy commute to visit him. This was obviously a violation of trust, but since he was likely 18 at the time he received the letters, it may have also been illegal.

According to an expert lawyer on Just Answer, “In the United States, mail tampering is a federal offense under the Postal Reorganization Act. It is generally illegal to open someone else’s mail without their permission, regardless of their age.” He went on to say, “When it comes to minors, their parents or legal guardians typically have the right to open their mail, as they are legally responsible for their children’s welfare. However, once a child reaches a certain age, they may have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and their parents should respect that.” 

Obviously, we don’t know where this young man was living while he was in high school, but chances are he was 18, or at least very close to 18, when he received his college acceptance letters, making his parents’ decision to open and then hide the letters a federal offense.

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The man’s wife pointed out that her husband did really well in high school.

“He was [a] national champion in high school. He could’ve gone anywhere. Who does that to their kid?” she questioned. “He passed advanced physics later on btw. He is incredibly intelligent.”

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She admitted that she’s still, even all these years later, struggling to forgive her in-laws for being as cruel as they were to step in and change the trajectory of their son’s future without his consent or knowledge. On top of that, she noted that it wasn’t just his parents who were involved in hiding all of his letters from him.

“For those that don’t know, these usually go to the high school. The athletic director didn’t give them to my husband, he gave them to his parents. My athletic director gave mine directly to me. So I was understandably flabbergasted these were withheld from him, and more than just his parents were in on it,” she added.

While it’s always scary for parents to send their child off to college, that’s a decision that they should be able to make for themselves instead of it being ripped away from them. As a parent, it’s your job to encourage your child to reach for the stars even if their journey is overwhelming for you because at the end of the day, you want them to be able to have a fruitful and exciting future. But, if you’re holding them back from achieving that out of your own selfish and misguided fears, then you’re not really protecting them, but in fact, you’re stunting the growth that they could have.

Raising children means being prepared to let them walk along their own path and find out who they are outside of being a kid. Letting them go might be a hard thing to do, but holding onto them too tightly can end up damaging the relationship that you have with them.

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Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.