January 21, 2025 at 10:24 pm

Teen’s Joke About Stepfather’s Invisibility At A Kid’s Birthday Party, But It Leads To A Phone Confiscation And Month-Long Grounding

by Heather Hall

Source: Reddit/AITA/Pexels/Kampus Production

Some jokes land perfectly, bringing laughter to the room, but others, not so much.

Imagine celebrating a child’s birthday only to find yourself the target of a teenager’s snide remark disguised as humor.

Do you brush it off as an immature joke?

Or do you punish them to teach a lesson?

In today’s story, one man finds himself in this exact scenario and can’t let it go.

Here’s how it all happened.

AITA for punishing my “stepdaughter” for a joke?

My wife and I have been married for 10 years.

We have a 9yo son together.

My wife also has an “adopted daughter”(16F).

It’s not really her daughter, and she is not exactly adopted; technically, it’s my wife’s niece.

Her parents abandoned her, and my wife took her in.

She is the brattiest, rudest, most annoying child, but I try to tolerate her because it means a lot to my wife.

It all started during an innocent game.

Anyway yesterday was my son’s 9th birthday and we threw a small party, family only.

My son insisted that we play a game in which we have to say what superpower we want to have, and he would tell us what weakness we would have.

When it was my turn, I told him that I wanted to be invisible, so he said you will be invisible, but your ***** won’t be.

My stepdaughter then chimed in and said, “Good, you will still be very hard to notice then, well that’s just what mom said,” and bursted out laughing.

I grabbed her phone and laptop and told her she was grounded for 2 weeks and couldn’t have her phone back for a month.

My wife thinks I overreacted to a kid’s joke and I’m an AH, but she embarrassed me in front of everyone, and I believe she deserves her punishment.

AITA?

It’s easy to see both sides of this, but it seems like the wife may have made things worse.

Let’s see what the folks over at Reddit have to say about this situation.

This person makes a great point.

Source: Reddit/AITA

According to this comment, the son is the one in the wrong.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Here’s someone who thinks the daughter did nothing wrong.

Source: Reddit/AITA

It does seem that way.

Source: Reddit/AITA

He is way too sensitive.

Yes, the joke was very inappropriate, but the punishment he dished out was over the top.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.