Stepmothers and stepfathers can sometimes struggle as they learn the best way to parent the children of their partners. Hopefully, those struggles aren't about the more basic parts of parenting, such as providing food and safety and keeping the kids clean.
However, one stepmom recently shared on Reddit that when it comes to her stepdaughter's hair, she's at a total loss. At this point, she usually refuses to do her stepdaughter's hair at all, and now the child's mother is raising allegations of neglect.
Her husband isn't always home.
"I've been married to my husband for two years," the woman begins. "Together we have a one year old. I have four kids from a previous relationship and he has two kids from two previous relationships. He works 12 hour shifts and sometimes they land on the weekend he has his two kids."
When she's solo-parenting, she feels like she doesn't always have enough time for each kid.
"Which leads me to my dilemma," the woman continues. "My steppdaughter who is 6 has long hair. It's thick, and down to her butt. It takes a good hour plus to wash, dry and style to my step daughter's high expectations. My husband isn't always home, and I have five, sometimes six other kids that I have almost full time to tend too and don't have the time to fix her hair."
So now she has basically given up.
"Often I don't even bother washing her hair, and leave it braided the entire weekend because of how much work it is. It says in my husband's custody papers that he has to have the mother's approval to have her haircut."
The girl's mom is mad.
"My stepdaughter's mother almost every weekend is texting both me and my husband about how we aren't brushing her hair and sending her home with dirty hair that is full of tangles. We tried to explain to her that we make sure her hair is brushed and braided. I suggested maybe a haircut to make it more manageable and she got mad and told me I was being lazy and this was neglect."
Now she wants to know: Is she wrong?
People are displeased.
The top comment lays it out pretty clearly: "The poor kid doesn’t have a choice in the hair that grows out of her head and as a 6 year old child she probably can’t manage it herself. If you’re leaving it unwashed every single weekend because her hair type is thicker and takes longer to wash and style then that’s definitely an issue."
But they are frustrated with the girl's mom, too.
However, the blame doesn't totally fall on just the stepmother. As one commenter notes: "If she has the kids for 2 days a week how is it neglectful to leave hair unwashed for 2 days? couldn’t her mom wash her hair during the week. i’d argue it’s more neglectful for the mom to leave the hair unwashed for 5 days as opposed to 2."
Ultimately, the hygiene issue does need to be resolved.
Another person lays out the real issue clearly: "The problem is the child is going back to her mother's with tangled, dirty hair. So it's clearly a hygiene problem and needs at least some care. An active six year old gets dirty, which would include the long hair. And tangled hair can hurt to fix. If it was just not being washed but otherwise good, it would be fine. But the kid is going home with a mess of hair by the wording."
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
