Most stepparents yearn for the day they are accepted by their partner’s children. It can be a slow and sometimes challenging process. Children naturally have a loyalty to their biological parents. But, kids also come with a lot of love to give and are often excellent judges of character.
They know when someone truly loves and cares about them and will often open up to those who clearly care about their well-being. One child recognized this about his stepmother and even started calling her “Mom.” But then she did something that ruined it.
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Two years after his father remarried, he started calling his stepmom ‘Mom.’
A senior in high school went to Threads to detail how his stepmother fractured their relationship shortly after he had accepted her as a parental figure. Jean Claude Niyomugabo shared that his parents divorced when he was a baby. By the time he was 5, his father had remarried.
“When I was 7 I started to call my stepmom mom a little and that’s what felt natural to me,” he explained.
Later, Jean Claude’s father told his ex about the new development.
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Then he overheard a messy conversation.
Afterward, the elder Niyomugabo told his wife about the conversation with his ex. They didn’t know that Jean Claude was eavesdropping on their talk.
“Dad and my stepmom started trash talking mom. Dad said mom looked so hurt and offended. Then he and my stepmom said how awful it was that she couldn’t be happy for me and dad called my mom a big baby,” he wrote in his post.
The stepmom doubled down, saying she hoped Jean Claude’s mother didn’t prevent him from calling her mom too. “She also said it was sad that my mom was so selfish and put herself before me,” he wrote. “All this because my mom looked hurt. Not even because she said something. Because she looked hurt,” Jean Claude emphasized.
View on Threads
He stopped calling her mom.
After that conversation, he never called his stepmom “Mom” again. “I didn’t want to hurt mom and I didn’t feel like my dad and stepmom deserved for me to keep calling my stepmom mom too when they were trash talking my mom so much,” he explained.
Naturally, his dad and stepmom noticed the change. “Dad would call my stepmom my mom in conversation sometimes as a test. Like go ask your mom or did you find your mom and I would always say; I asked ‘Marie’ or I found ‘Marie.’”
Jean Claude made a point to tell people that he had one mother, one father, and a stepmom. He made the distinction even if his dad and Marie were around.
Jean Claude’s father told him his mom shouldn’t influence his decision to embrace his stepmom.
Eventually, one of his half-siblings stared calling Jean Claude’s mother “Mom.” His father and stepmom put an end to it quickly and “pretty harshly.”
Now that he’s 18 and in his senior year of high school, Jean Claude’s dad has asked him why he stopped calling Marie “Mom.” He told Jean Claude that he shouldn’t allow his mother to influence his decision to call her mom or not.
“I told him it wasn’t mom, that I heard everything the two of them said, that it made me re-evaluate whether my stepmom deserved to be called mom anymore and I decided nah, because they disrespected mom.”
Now, he wonders if he overreacted.
He continued, “… so go look in the mirror and stop blaming mom when she never even said anything to him and they trash talked her for how she looked.”
Instead of taking accountability and apologizing, Niyomugabo accused Jean Claude of lying. Then he said even if it was true, he was wrong for holding a grudge for so long. Jean Claude asked the people on Threads if he had been overreacting, and almost everyone agreed he had not.
“No you’re not… he didn’t tell your mom as a heads up,” one commenter noted. “His intentions were to hurt her and he did… he didn’t expect you to pull an Uno reverse.”
“You are not overreacting. Your father is acting out because he got caught and doesn’t want to admit that he failed at his most important job – ensuring that his child had healthy relationships with both of her parents,” another person wrote.
