Mom Who Runs Day Care ‘Rejected’ Stepkids’ Younger Siblings From Enrolling, Starting Drama
Blended families can often come with their own challenges. It’s hard when a relationship ends and we have to move from being angry with a former partner to finding ways to create a positive co-parenting relationship. Add in other partners and more kids, and there are bound to be some murky moments where the right or best decision isn’t always clear.
But boundaries also are needed – especially so if there are some complicated or toxic vibes between people. That’s what one mom tried to enforce when her stepkids’ parents tried to push where the mom had a hard limit.
The mom (OP) sought the help of Reddit, so she told the story in hopes of some outside perspective.
Posting in Reddit’s AITA community, OP gave some necessary details on her blended family before jumping into the issue she finds herself in.
“I married my husband 10 years ago. My stepkids were 4 and 5 at the time, now 14 and (just turned) 16,” she wrote. “My husband’s ex has despised the fact my husband and I married before her and her husband. And she has made her hatred of me/us known to my stepkids, and in turn my stepkids have closed themselves off from me and rejected my attempts to get close to them.”
Their relationship seemed anything but civil, and it’s clear that OP and her husband’s ex do not get along.
OP explained that she and her husband have tried to work things out in order to have a healthy relationship for co-parenting purposes. “We've been to court, we have presented proof to the judge, taken them to therapy, but mom's hold over them is strong and her words are taken more seriously than my husband’s with the kids,” she shared.
“I tried to be a loving, caring stepmother who didn't overstep,” she wrote. “But my stepkids have been perfectly clear; I am nothing to them and will always be nothing to them.” After years of this, OP used to stay awake at night worried about how to help the stepkids and her form a relationship.
However, despite her best efforts, OP's stepkids haven’t come around.
“Now, I'm sad, breaks my f------ heart that I love them and they don't reciprocate because of some dumb issue their mom had with me that turned to hate,” she explained, “but it's the cards we have been dealt with.”
More recently, a new issue between OP and her husband’s ex came up.
“I run a daycare. It's the cheapest daycare around because I always dreamed of giving back in some way to working families,” she wrote. “And so I was able to make it work. It is popular but we always do our best to take kids when needed.”
OP’s two worlds of stepkids and day care collided one day.
“My husband’s ex and her husband have kids together,” she explained. “Their youngest two are not in school,” she wrote, adding that the family was “hit hard” by the global health crisis “so they tried to register their kids in my daycare.”
OP caught that and put an end to them trying to register.
“I did so because I did not feel like it would be healthy to have that extra layer of dealing with each other. The woman already hates me, has told me not to touch her kids, and while I run the place, I also work there, with the kids, so never interacting with her kids will not be a thing that can happen.”
OP’s not trying to be petty – she’s worried about how her husband’s ex will manipulate the situation.
“I am afraid she would go out of her way to try and get me shut down as some petty revenge thing,” OP wrote. But even her rejecting the application is causing drama.
“The issue is she was p---ed about the rejection and told my stepkids, and they told my husband’s family, who now think I'm [an a—hole] as well as the ex and my stepkids because this could have been me showing my stepkids that I am willing to go out of my way for their other family.”
OP doesn’t so much care what her husband’s ex thinks, adding “except I have always done my best to be kind, to be friendly, to not fight, and it wasn't enough. I don't see this one thing tipping the scale after a decade.”
She then turned to Reddit, wanting to hear from the community if she’s wrong for rejecting the ex's application.
“She asked you not to touch her kids,” one Redditor replied. “How can you do that if they're at your daycare?”
“Your decision seems well thought out and you have the right to do what’s best to protect your own family and business," another person commented. "I can’t even comprehend after everything she has done to you that she would even think this was ok to try to enroll her kids with you. Though it may very well have been another ploy to make you look bad.”
“It sounds like you have a d--- good reason not to be anywhere near her kids,” someone else added. “If she's already told you not to touch her kids, then tries to enroll said kids at your daycare, yeah I'd be worried too that she's trying to pull something.”
We have to agree, really. It sounds like OP’s best move is to be very intentional about the contact she has with her husband’s ex so things don't get even worse.
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