Being a parent comes with a whole lot of beautiful moments, but it also often means making compromises for the good of your offspring. Unfortunately, this at times can mean choosing between a partner and your own child.
A woman wondered if she went too far when she evicted her BF and his kid after the child would not stop purposefully scaring her baby. Despite her regular demands that he stop, her BF proved to be quite unhelpful, so she decided to take action. Commenters debated the BF’s behavior versus her response to it.
Sometimes parents have to do what’s best for their children, at the cost of their relationship
Image credits: RDNE Stock project / Pexels (not the actual photo)
A mother had to evict her BF when his son kept scaring her baby
Image credits: Antoni Shkraba / Pexels (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Ill-Document-4572
Because the couple shares a child, just evicting the BF isn’t necessarily enough
Image credits: Alex Green / Pexels (not the actual photo)
The word “eviction” tends to evoke a pretty strong emotion from most people. After all, getting kicked out of the place you live, possibly by law enforcement, can be quite traumatic. This is, perhaps, why so many people thought OP “overreacted” by kicking the BF and “Jake” out. It’s not a small decision, seeing as many places have certain tenant rights and they are both, legally, parents of the daughter.
Comments note that kicking out the BF is not a long-term solution, even if they break up. After all, they share a child and OP would need to get a court to create some sort of separation if they want to go that route. While the BF is responsible for Jake, as his child, OP’s decision is, ultimately, a result of Jake’s behavior. She can’t exactly kick out a child without kicking out his or her parents.
On the other hand, just as one can’t toss a kid into the street, it’s also not entirely possible to blame a child for his or her behavior. Yes, a twelve-year-old isn’t a baby, but, after all, his biological father seems to not be taking any steps to make him understand that he absolutely should not be scaring the baby. OP states that Jake does love his sister, yet he also understands that OP hates when he scares her.
Jake understands that OP doesn’t like his actions, but seems to think it’s ok to ignore her
Image credits: cottonbro studio / Pexels (not the actual photo)
He needs to understand that this isn’t just some “weird” rule OP is “imposing” on him, but something that is actively bad for his sister. This is where the BF should have stepped up. Because, for one reason or another, Jake doesn’t seem to care too much when OP tells him what to do, only following her rules when she is around. So it’s only natural that he probably values his father’s rules more, so the BF really did need to do more.
In that sense, OP is right to take the actions that she did. A baby is still quite fragile and causing it to be scared and cry repeatedly is cruel. Even worse, this boy refused to actually stop doing what he was doing and his father was of no help either. It’s no wonder that OP felt like she was at her wit's end and had to go as far as eviction to make her partner understand just how important this was to her.
The BF needs to get his priorities straight
Many of the comments, some of which can be found below, suggest that there is something wrong with Jake, however, it would appear that there is perhaps too little information to go on. More importantly, OP does not see him as “disturbed” or “psychotic” and she definitely knows better than some random person who just finished reading the story five minutes ago.
The real crux of this disagreement is OP’s relationship with her BF and his inability or unwillingness to actually parent. In a perfect world, Jake would take OP seriously, but since this is not the case, the BF needs to be more proactive. It’s strange that he wouldn’t be more active, seeing as this “case” involves both his biological baby daughter and the explicit requests of the woman he lives with.
Some people wanted more information
Most readers thought OP was defiantly NTA
