A woman’s kind gesture to her stepdaughter has gone viral, not for its warmth, but for the hurtful turn it took.
In a Reddit post, the 37-year-old woman, posting under the username Capable-Schedule-864, shared that she lent her cherished silk prom dress to her 16-year-old stepdaughter, Amy, as an act of goodwill. But after Amy needed money for a new pair of earphones, she sold the dress without her permission. Since the post was published, it has received over 7,000 upvotes.
Newsweek spoke to Cameron Normand, a lawyer and blended families expert, about the dynamic at play and how it might be healed.
fotodrobik/Getty Images
In the post, the stepmother explained that Amy was looking for formal dresses when she mentioned she had her old ones.
“She picked my old prom dress to wear, and she has kept it in her wardrobe since wearing it at prom,” she wrote, adding that she doesn’t fit into the dresses anymore and planned to give them to her nieces.
What was a harmless situation soon escalated after Amy damaged her earbuds.
“Amy left her earbuds in her sweatpants pocket and turned on the washing machine,” the stepmother wrote. “When she asked for new ones, me and her dad told her to save up to buy new ones (she works part time) as she wanted an expensive brand-new pair and not the wired earphones I had offered.”
Sometime later, Amy appeared with the expensive earbuds.
“I asked if her mom had bought them for her, and she said she had resold my dress on a second-hand site and bought herself the earphones,” the stepmother wrote. “The dress is 100 percent silk, one of a kind, and the brand doesn’t exist anymore. I was really upset to hear she had sold my dress without even asking.”
In response, she confiscated her earbuds and told her she would give them back when she repaid the cost of what she sold the dress for. But the decision caused even more friction with her husband and stepdaughter.
Redditors largely sided with the stepmother.
“Wow, is Amy a piece of work,” one commenter wrote. “When she broke her earbuds, you offered to replace them with a wired pair, when you had no obligation to give her anything at all…Amy sounds like a selfish, manipulative brat to me.”
Another commenter agreed with the consequences: “She’s lucky she’s not getting a worse punishment. Your consequences fit perfectly. I would be very careful about her stealing other things of mine.”
An Expert Weighs In
Newsweek spoke to Cameron Normand, lawyer, founder and CEO of Stepfamily Solutions and creator of the Stepfamily Coach Academy, for her perspective on the stepfamily dynamics at play—perhaps surprisingly, she deviated from many of the Redditors.
“It’s totally understandable that stepmom would feel hurt by her stepdaughter selling the one-of-a-kind dress,” she said. “But there may have been some crossed wires around expectations around gifting and there are a few ways this could be handled differently.”
Normand emphasized the unique challenges in blended families when it comes to boundaries and discipline.
“The strategies stepfamilies should employ are very different than those that work in first families,” she explained. “Research shows that stepfamilies are better served when the stepparent does not engage in discipline and lets the parent handle consequences—at least until a bond is fully established with the stepchild.”
Regarding the specific incident, Normand suggested that the stepmother might have inflamed the situation with her punishment. Instead, she proposed an alternative approach. “Stepmom might be better served having a conversation with her stepdaughter around future expectations around gifts of valued personal items,” she said. “Give the stepdaughter the benefit of the doubt this time for hopefully not realizing that selling the dress would be so hurtful.”
Newsweek reached out to u/Capable-Schedule-864 for comment via Reddit.