I threw away my stepdaughter's birthday cake and have no regrets

"I set up cameras around the house to catch her doing the thing I suspected her doing... so she needed to be punished."

Eleanor Katelaris

3 min read

October 14, 2024 - 6:07PM

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Step-parenting can be a tough gig and one mum knows that all too well.

She recently shared her ongoing struggles with her 17-year-old stepdaughter, Emilie, that culminated in her throwing out her birthday cake.

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Image: IStock

'I set up cameras to catch her ruining the cake'

"I’ve been in Emilie’s life since she was 14, she is now 17. My God has it been rough..." the woman wrote in the post.

"She is with us 50 per cent of the time and when she first moved in we had a whole conversation about how to make this as easy for everyone as possible. If I have an issue I will talk to my husband and he handles all the discipline."

The woman says this is a "double-edged sword" as the daughter is "Sweet as honey when her dad is there" but the moment he's gone "she is an a**hole."

Currently, Emilie's favourite thing to make her stepmum's life hell is to ruin the food she cooks.

"If I am cooking she will dump salt into the stew or other things. It’s so frustrating and I haven’t been able to catch her. My husband knows and asked about it but he won’t discipline her without proof," she explained.

So, the stepmum decided to set up a mini camera in the kitchen to catch her. " I seriously thought I was going insane. Every time I made something it would be wrong. I set up the camera for my own sanity," she said.

"Today I was making her a birthday cake to surprise her on her birthday. I put it in the oven and she goes over, takes it out and dumps a ton of salt on top of it.

"I threw it out and told her that was her birthday cake and she’s not getting a cake now from me. She goes to her father and tells him I messed up the cake and won’t fix it for her."

Despite Emilie deliberately ruining her own birthday cake, her husband is still angry at the OP that she filmed her doing it and so won't discipline his daughter now.

"Everyone is calling me a jerk and I don't know what to do, should I remake the cake?"

'Do not remake the cake!'

The community responded to the stepmum's post with a mix of empathy and advice.

"NTA," one user remarked. "I'd be asking the husband how exactly you were supposed to prove it without cameras. Sounds like he's angry he now has to deal with his daughter more than anything."

Someone else agreed and even took it a step further, writing: "Your husband is angry because now he’s actually expected to address an issue. Before, it didn’t impact him at all - you got stuck with it. If you didn’t have evidence, he could just keep ignoring everything - so of course he’ll be angry with the cameras and not with the wrongdoing.

"He literally doesn’t care what you have to deal with as long as it doesn’t impact him.

"If this is how he’s going to react to evidence of the wrongdoing, I’d be packing up and staying with my own family or friends. If he doesn’t support or respect you, he’s not worth it."

While many agreed that using cameras was the OP's last resort, some suggested an alternative approach. "You could have handled it better: serve the cake and show the video after," a user commented. "This would have allowed your husband to witness the sabotage firsthand."

And most users agreed she shouldn't remake the cake. "Don’t remake the cake! That’s not your problem, you didn’t cause this. Let her make her own replacement cake," one person concluded.

This article was updated in October 2024.