How Far Should Parents Go To Get Step-Siblings To Get Along?

Blended families are becoming more and more common as time goes on, and anyone who has ever been a part of one knows that the process of coming together is full of growing pains.

There can be resentments due to the previous divorces, grief, personality clashes, you name it – and families like this one have to wonder how far they can push their kids to get along.

This woman had her son young, and raised him with the help of her parents after his father skipped out on them.

She adds that he’s autistic and doesn’t like people messing with his things.

I(29F) had my son(11M) with my ex. My son is autistic and does not like it when people touch his belongings. When I had him, my ex decided he didn’t want to be a father and abandoned us.

My parents were life-savors, they took care of him when I had to attend college classes. I work full-time now and live in a great apartment.

Her ex has since come back into their lives and claims to want a relationship with his son. They’ve been trying it out, but an incident with the son’s Switch and the ex’s girlfriend’s daughter has her rethinking the whole thing.

My ex reached out when son turned 8 and wanted to meet him. I brought him to a nearby park and we came to an agreement that son can stay with ex every other weekend. I bought my son a switch for his 8th birthday and he brings it with him everywhere.

My ex has been seeing a girl for the past couple of months who has a daughter(15F). My son came back home yesterday and didn’t speak to me at all when I picked him up. I was extremely worried and called my ex when I got home.

He told me that son wasn’t letting girlfriend’s daughter play on the switch and he grabbed it out of son’s hand. Girlfriend’s daughter dropped it down the stairs and it has a huge crack in the screen.

She spoke with her son, who said he didn’t want to spend time with his father as long as the girlfriend’s family is involved.

Mom stood up for him, but now her ex is accusing her of keeping them apart for her own nefarious reasons.

I went to talk to my son and told him that I would be happy to get him a new switch and any game that he wants. He was very happy and told me that he didn’t want to go back to exes house because the daughter was mean to him.

I told him that I was not going to force him to do anything he didn’t want.

My ex wanted to take my son this coming weekend, I told him that we had plans to go to a theme park and that son didn’t want to go over to the house. I told my ex that the daughter made son very uncomfortable.

My ex flipped out and accused me of keeping son away from him. I had enough at that point and hung up on ex.

AITA for not forcing son to like girlfriend’s daughter?

Is he right? Should they have tried harder to work it out? Let’s see what Reddit has to say!

The top comment points out what we’re all thinking, which is that after leaving them alone for 8 years, he really isn’t in a position to demand anything.