My daughter (13F) and wife (45F) are incredibly upset with me (47M) for giving candid feedback about my daughter’s writing.

I’m an English professor and a professional editor. My daughter “Emily” has been very much into creative writing since she was 9, which is wonderful. Recently she showed me a short story and a play she wrote and asked me to critique it honestly to help her improve. I was more than happy to.

I was candid (but also encouraging, or at least I thought...) in my feedback. I wrote up a document (like I do for my professional writer clients) regarding her writing, keeping in mind that she is only 13.

My feedback was not received well. My wife said it made our daughter sad and discouraged enough to where she cried (which of course I feel like a grade-A asshole for) and has given up creative writing since she thinks she sucks at it.

My daughter has been avoiding me and I haven’t talked with her about the whole writing thing directly. When I ask if everything’s okay, she says everything’s fine. I’m not sure how to bring any of this up or if I should even try. She’s stonewalling me.

My wife too is angry with me because she thinks it was obvious Emily was looking for validation and emotional support, not criticism and craft guidance, and that I should have known that.

Is there anything I can do to help mitigate this situation? My wife thinks I need to address this with Emily and apologize, but I don’t want to make things even worse. I also honestly do not believe my feedback was harsh in any way - it was candid and supportive and intended 100% to help her improve, which is what she requested.

TLDR: daughter asked for feedback on her creative writing, I provided structured feedback, daughter is upset with my feedback as is my wife. Anything I can do to fix this?

Submitted May 02, 2021 at 09:10PM by throwaway900724 https://ift.tt/2RjPo3k