AITAH for allowing my step son to be publicly humiliated?

A Reddit user shared a parenting dilemma involving their stepson’s struggles with self-confidence and motivation. The situation escalated when the user’s wife, in an attempt to boost their stepson’s morale, added an unearned stripe to his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu belt. When the stripe was left on during class, the stepson faced teasing and humiliation, leading him to quit training altogether. The user wonders if they were wrong for not removing the stripe to avoid the incident. Read the full story below for more details.

‘ AITAH for allowing my step son to be publicly humiliated?’

I have a 14 year old son from my first marriage that lives with me, my wife has a 13 year old son from a previous relationship that also lives with us. They’re both good kids and get on well with each other but they are very different. I pretty much raised my son on my own from the age of 5 after his mother passed. I didn’t date until he was 11 and just focused on being a father.

He didn’t really have any female influence in his life and I’ve raised him to be disciplined and believe in himself. He’s very confident, hardworking and driven to succeed, especially in sports. He is captain of the rugby team in school and the local team he plays for. He also competes in grappling and BJJ, regularly winning competitions. He’s training or playing 7 days a week and is very dedicated to succeeding.

My step son is a really kind hearted kid, very empathetic, funny. I get on with him well. However, he really lacks self confidence, plays video games most of the time and lacks motivation, preferring to lie in bed on the weekends rather than do any activities.

His mother gets annoyed with him, she wants him to do more, and has unfavorabley compared him to my son a few times when they’ve argued about his attitude. I think this really hurt him and he asked if he could come and train Jujitsu. I was happy to take him so he stared coming three times a week.

He had never done any physical activity before and he was not naturally athletic, so he was very uncoordinated so his progress was slow but he tried really hard and didn’t quit. My son was also helping him train at home.
In BJJ kids get stripes on their belts to mark their progress, all of the kids that started around the same time as my step son had got at least one stripe and he was upset he didn’t get one. He told his mother and she decided that he deserved one and put one on his belt herself.

I told her that it was inappropriate and that the value of the stripe is in earning it. So I took it off the belt when I took them training. He thought he deserved the stripe as well so told his mother, she was pretty mad I’d done that, saying it was her son and if she wants to put a stripe on his belt she will.

So the next time I took them to BJJ I didn’t remove the stripe that she put back on and basically a few kids noticed it in class, all the kids were whispering about it and then they started teasing and laughing at him throughout the lesson. My stepson does not take teasing well at all, he took it all very hard and felt humiliated. He’s quit training as a result and refuses to go back and his mother is just letting him quit.

I knew this was likely to happen if I didn’t remove the stripe but I left it on because I didn’t want to fight with his mother about it again. Ultimately, he is her child and she made the decision and he was happy to go along with it despite my advice.. AITA for letting it happen ?

See what others had to share with OP:

Willing_Fee9801 −  NTA. It’s your wife that’s failing the kid, not you. She’s hammering his self-esteem and saying she wants him to improve, all while actively standing in the way of it.

Beneficial-Sort4795 −  NTA. Participation trophies aren’t a thing past a certain age/in some sports. He wanted the honors of being further along without earning it- that’s not a good thing to think and it’s best he lose that now.
You need to have a frank conversation with your wife about her wanting accolades (and future opportunities) your son has with his strong work ethic while actively impeding her own son’s ability to obtain them if she steps in like this again.

He has to learn/earn. The child wasn’t being bullied- he hadn’t earned the honor yet and was humiliated for pretending at it. He would’ve earned it with time, there’s nothing wrong with needing more time. And it would’ve meant a lot more than that unearned stripe she gave him. So if sports aren’t her thing, she needs to trust you, her husband, who also cares about her son (and is also raising a good one) to guide him a bit.

You need to have a gentle conversation with your stepson about WHY he got such negative attention for trying to give himself an honor he didn’t earn, why he can go back to training and eventually earn the honor but he has to be patient with himself because he’s new to it. And that it will mean more when he really earns it than if he tries to have it handed to him and skip steps.

Him complaining to her that he was disappointed he didn’t earn it yet- totally fine. Her trying to ‘fix it’ by just handing him one and him thinking that’s ok- not fine. If he’s not ready to go back to classes, see if he’ll ask your son to keep practicing with him at home. The goal is to try to get him over his embarrassment so he can remember he enjoyed the activity. It’s not like he’s never died in a video game but he didn’t give them all up after, did he?

gregwhale5 −  No. Both mother and child wanted it. They didn’t understand what would happen. You tried.

UndebateableMom −  You didn’t embarrass him. A student can’t just decide when a stripe is added. You tried to stop the embarrassment. Your wife embarrassed her son, and herself. She needs to be an adult and own up to that.. NTA.

StephenTrollbert −  NTAH. While I agree with you that it’s her kid, it should show her that you are trying to help him and show interest in his development. Was she there to see the others whisper and make your step son embarrassed? If not, I think that would have been a pivotal moment for her and help her understand things better.

manzanapocha −  My stepson does not take teasing well at all, he took it all very hard and felt humiliated. He’s quit training as a result and refuses to go back and his mother is just letting him quit. Pretty big red flag here. If you care about that kid at all, have a serious talk with your wife. She is positively and absolutely raising a l**er.

Her comparing it with his “athletically gifted” sibling is creating psychological wounds that will take years to heal. And allowing him to join/quit stuff on a whim at the slightest sign of inconvenience is coddling him. This repeated behavior (especially on teenage years) is going to raise an adult that never puts 100% into things, and his go-to excuse for everything will be “why bother” because mommy always taught him that struggle is unpleasant and optional.

LetsGetsThisPartyOn −  NTA. Damn your wife is failing her son hard! There is what we “think” should happen in a fair society! And then there is what happens in society. Especially with kids. Kids are tough! Who in their right mind thinks “ok all these kids trained and passed a test for a stripe, my kid deserves one for nothing” No wonder that kid has never tried. Imagine he had worked and tried and got a stripe. He’d actually be proud of himself.

SugarSweetSonny −  As someone in BJJ, this is really really bad.. You did the right thing. His mother has no idea how this works. First things first, only the instructor gives a stripe. You don’t give yourself one and mommy can’t give you one. All I can say is that you should have explained to him that the other kids would make fun of him (on the minimum). Personally, you shouldn’t have taken him if he was going to insist on wearing that stripe. You KNEW this was going to happen.

RedneckDebutante −  NTA There was no “letting.” She’s a grownup who made a choice. It was a bad one. You can’t exactly pull the stripes his belt off before every single practice for all eternity. I don’t know how you do it, though. I can’t respect somebody who’s ruining a kid like that. I’d never be able to watch that happen in my house. It’s a grave disservice to him.

Agoraphobe961 −  NTA. He’s 13, it’s a good time to learn actions have consequences and mommy doesn’t always know everything.