TIFU by calling my son a failure

Today I really messed up.

My fifteen-year-old has never been a top student. He’s smart but easily distracted, the kind of kid who does just enough to get by. Then suddenly his grades went way up. I thought maybe he’d finally started caring about school.

Then I got a call from the school director. They told me he’d been selling access to an AI program and teaching other students how to use it to write their papers. He was basically running a little side hustle built around cheating, and now he might get suspended or expelled.

His dad came with me to the meeting. On the way home he actually said he was proud of him for being entrepreneurial. Said, “He’s got initiative, he just used it the wrong way.”

As soon as his dad left the room, I lost it. I yelled at my son. I called him a failure. He didn’t yell back, just stared at the floor. That silence hit harder than anything.

Later that night he told me he only started doing it because he wanted to prove he could be good at something. I haven’t stopped thinking about that.

TL;DR: Found out my son was selling access to an AI tool and teaching classmates how to cheat. His dad said he was proud. I lost it and called him a failure. Now I feel like the real failure.