FAMILY drama is never fun. Oftentimes, we don’t know how to navigate the problems that our family members present and end up in a blowout fight. Families are even more complex when there are stepparents and stepchildren involved. One 36-year-old woman shared a negative experience she recently had with her husband Jon and his […]
FAMILY drama is never fun.
Oftentimes, we don’t know how to navigate the problems that our family members present and end up in a blowout fight.
Families are even more complex when there are stepparents and stepchildren involved.
One 36-year-old woman shared a negative experience she recently had with her husband Jon and his young daughter.
Posting to Reddit, she began: “Jon has a 13-year-old daughter, Grace, from a previous relationship.”
The woman explained that although Jon and his ex, Grace’s mother, do not have a formal legal custody arrangement, they agreed that Grace would live full-time with her father as she wished.
Grace only really sees her mother on special occasions when the whole family gets together, she said.
“Recently Jon had to go on a work trip for about a week.
“He asked if I could watch Grace and I said I really didn’t want to. He said I had no need to worry and just to make sure she was home each night and help her if there were issues.”
Jon assured his wife that Grace was independent and knew how to take care of herself.
“I still said I didn’t want to but I had no choice really, so I reluctantly agreed.”
Their first day was going smoothly until they ran into an unexpected problem: Grace wanted the woman to drive her to a nearby trail to walk the dog.
“I asked why she couldn’t just walk down the road, and she said it was unsafe and her father didn’t want her doing it.
“I told her she could either walk down the road, not walk the dog, or I could take her to her mother’s house until Jon got back.”
The child grew upset, questioning why her stepmother couldn’t embark on the short, five-minute drive to the trail.
Grace accused the woman of being “purposely unhelpful.”
“I told her I wasn’t going to tolerate being spoken to that way, so I called her mother and dropped her off at her house.”
When Jon heard about this, however, he was furious.
“He said I was being reckless with his child and he didn’t want Grace going to her mother’s house without him knowing and having a way to contact him to be picked up at all times.
“I told him that he was overreacting, and that Grace was obviously fine.”
The concerned father rushed to pick up his daughter, and thankfully, everything was ok with her.
“Jon is still very upset with me but I don’t think I did anything wrong—I just dropped Grace off at the house of a known, trusted adult when I couldn’t take care of her.”
Still, the woman asked the reddit community what they thought.
Contrary to what she had hoped for, the majority of readers believed she was in the wrong.
One user commented: “[You’re] definitely fulfilling the role of wicked stepmother. All of this fuss over a 5 minute drive. [Everyone sucks here] except for Grace.”
Another person felt the woman was being callous towards the child: “Yeah, if you decide to marry someone with a child you are taking on the role of a parent.
“You don’t get to just shirk the responsibility because you don’t feel like it. Stepdaughter can talk to [the stepmother] however she likes because it’s clear [the stepmother] doesn’t respect or care about her.”
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