How Do You Feel About Allowing Stepparents To Discipline Your Kids?

Blending families is one of the hardest things to do well. People work at it for years and still struggle to get it right.

This woman’s journey is just beginning, as she has three children and is set to marry a man without children soon.

She says that he’s a good father and treats the children as his own, but that he thinks they need more discipline.

He’s taken it upon himself to provide that in the form of little “tests” to find out how they’ll “react” in certain situations.

My fiance (40m) and I (36f) have been together for 2 years.I have 3 kids from my former marriage (7), (11), & (14). My fiance loves them and treats them as his own but he constantly complains about certain behaviors and says that the kids lack “some forms of discipline”.

I never understood what he meant but mind you he’s a teacher and can take this whole discipline thing a bit far.

I noticed that he’s been doing some “tests” lately to see how they’d act in certain situations. For example, he once left his journal lying around to see if any of my kids would snoop, he also would leave money lying around to see who’d touch it. Or even lie saying “who wants skittles?” to see if any of the kids would come to him downstairs.

Things came to a head after her oldest son “failed” one of these tests, which basically include the man lying to children to see what he can catch them doing,” after which he wanted to remove privileges.

The recent one (that I wasn’t aware of til later) was yesterday. He told the kids that he lost a “dollar” from his pocket and offered 10 dollars to whoever finds it. The kids began searching the house for an hour.

My 7 & 11 year olds couldn’t find a thing, but my 14 year old went to my fiance and told him he found the dollar and gave it to him. My fiance lost it and started yelling “Aaaa gotcha now!”.

My son was confused. Turns out, my fiance didn’t lose any money and lied about the dollar to see how the kids would react.

My son obviously had “failed” because he pretended to have found the dollar but in reality he took it from his allowance and gave it to my fiance hoping to get that 10 dollars.

My fiance said that because of my son’s dishonesty and greed, he’ll punish him by taking all his allowance for the month as well as electronics being taken away for a week!.

OP says she refused to let him punish her son for that and they got into an argument about parenting and how she was undermining his authority.

I got into an argument with him and called him delusional because those mind games were getting ridiculous and besides, it’s not like my son stole anything from him, he just failed his stupid test and kids make mistakes and learn.

He still talked about how this is about principles and that he’s trying to teach my kids to become decent adults, but I thought this has gone too far. I refused to let him punish him now he’s calling me an enabler and said that this attitude won’t be of much help when we get married because it undermines his authority as a parent, and enables unacceptable behaviors from my kids.

He said and I quote “I will not tolerate having greedy and dishonest individuals live under my roof”.

Reddit has decided OP is the a$$hole here, but not for the reason you might think.

The top comment says that OP is the jerk here – for letting her kids be abused by her future husband.

Image Credit: Reddit

This person piled on, stating that if she didn’t put a stop to it, her children probably wouldn’t forgive her.

Image Credit: Reddit

Some people were slightly kinder, saying OP sucks almost as much as her fiancee.

Image Credit: Reddit

Not to mention, the kid should maybe be rewarded for thinking outside the box.

Image Credit: Reddit

Everyone agrees that the guy has major issues and doesn’t deserve to be around children.

Image Credit: Reddit

I hope this OP takes everyone’s thoughts seriously and moves on.

Otherwise I do fear her children will never be the same.