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Mom Accused Of Favoritism By Ex-Husband For Punishing Her Teen Daughter

Parenting July, 07, 2025

A woman took it to Reddit to share her story and to take the user’s opinion on whether she was wrong or not. She elaborated that she has three daughters. She had her eldest 16-year-old daughter with her ex-husband while her other two daughters Lily, 9 years, and Grace, 7 years with her second husband.

She explained that Lily has always been an emotionally and sensorily sensitive girl. She could not stand lots of sounds like rain and doesn’t like lots of touch sensations as well. The woman and her husband noted that and they think that Lily has autism which is not diagnosed yet.

Lily seeks comfort in a teddy bear she has during her sensory hardships. Lately, Annie started calling out Lily because she thought that Lily is too old to be carrying a teddy bear everywhere. Whenever Lily had her teddy with her, Annie called her baby and made baby noises which upset Lily. Her mother tried to stop her and even confiscated her phone for a day but to no avail.

One day, the woman was at work and her husband had a very important client call as well. Annie thought it would be funny to flood Lily’s teddy in the sand in order to try and wean her off. It started to rain and Lily started looking for her teddy for comfort and found it completely drenched in the sand. Lily freaked out and had a meltdown waking up Grace who was sick that day which led her husband to come off his conference call to deal with the situation.

Both the parents felt that what Annie did was cruel and had to be punished. So, the teen was grounded for a week and her parents confiscated her devices for a few days as well. It upset Annie who thought it was unfair and told her mother that she was siding her new daughters and new man over Annie.

The woman disagreed and told the daughter that she loved her and her sisters the same but Annie broke all the rules that they had given her and could have potentially damaged her father’s career.

The woman further revealed that her ex-husband who is Annie’s dad thinks that she is harassing Annie and told her that she had gone through so much already and she is a bad mother for putting Lily over Annie.

So, she took it to Reddit and asked the users if she was wrong or not. The Reddit community agreed that the woman was not at fault but Annie needed help as well.

One user wrote, “Annie is deliberately being abusive to her younger sibling. It seems like she is acting out, she also sounds like she is jealous of her sisters (having both parents in the house, not having to go through the same hardships/parenting she had before you married your now husband). The punishment sounds reasonable, but I wouldn’t just leave it at that. I think she would benefit from therapy to get to the bottom of her anger at her sisters and your husband.”

Another user pointed out that it was the mother’s responsibility to fix her teen’s relationship with her stepdad.

The woman agreed that she would take Annie to the therapy as she believed that her daughter had some issues to deal with.

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