Trust is the foundation of any family, but once cracks form, the whole structure starts to wobble.

When her stepdaughter begins a pattern of pathological lying, one stepmother begins to wonder how much more of her trouble making she can really take.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

AITA for telling my husband he would be responsible for his daughter from now on?

So, my stepdaughter is about to be 13 years old.

She has primarily lived with us since she was 5 ½.

Over the years, I have loved her and treated her like she was my daughter.

Even after having kids of my own, I never treated her differently.

But recently, the road has gotten noticeably bumpier.

I’d like to note that she is starting therapy next week.

Because over the last year, she has started becoming a habitual liar.

She lies about stupid stuff and big stuff.

The stepmother gives several examples.

Examples of things she’s lied about: feeding the dog, who she’s talking to, where she’s met people, if she did her chores, and crushes at school.

She’s even completely made up situations like being asked out or getting into fights.

All these things we have caught her lying about, and she will continue to lie to us until the proof is in her face.

But then her deception escalated.

The biggest thing happened earlier in December.

She took my little one downstairs and offered to watch him and my two younger ones while I slept a little in the morning.

(I work nights, and my husband was at work.)

She asked what time I was getting up, and I told her 9 AM, which was in about 30 minutes.

It turns out, this was just another one of her lies.

I wake up, and she was GONE.

She and the dog were gone.

My 6-month-old was in his bouncer crying.

My 6-year-old daughter got my dish soap, smeared it all over the bathroom, and then locked herself in there when she heard me coming.

My 4-year-old son said she took the dog for a walk.

She has no cell phone.

I got the situation at home taken care of, and she still wasn’t home.

So then a full-blown search ensued.

I realized it had been an hour, so I went out and started looking for her.

We live in a small town. I searched for three hours.

My husband finally left work in a panic, and we searched and called the police.

A search-and-rescue dog finally found her.

It took us six hours to finally find her.

She, to this day, won’t tell us where she was.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

Fast forward to today.

She said her stomach has been hurting for two days.

She’s thrown up once and had diarrhea—none of which happened while my husband and I were around.

I just got over a cold, sinus infection, stomach bug, and kidney infection.

So I felt bad and took her to the pediatric quick care.

The stepmother gave her an opportunity to tell the truth.

On the way there, I told her that if she was faking, she should just tell me so I wouldn’t waste time and gas driving her.

It was my last day off before I had to go back to work, and I needed to get some things done.

She told me no, she really was in pain.

She told the doctor the same thing.

But she still had her doubts on whether her stepdaughter could be trusted.

But in the waiting room, she was laughing and talking normally.

That doctor sent us to the ER because of how much pain she claimed to be in.

Now, in the ER, they ruled out appendicitis.

Again, she was laughing and talking just fine.

Which, ultimately, she couldn’t.

Turns out she has been EXAGGERATING how much pain she’s in, and now I’m stuck waiting for results.

My husband can’t switch places with me because he has no gas, and we had to drive 30 minutes into town for this doctor.

I’m so mad.

So then she came to her husband with a demand.

I told my husband he can deal with everything with her from now on—discipline, appointments, parent-teacher conferences, everything.

He thinks I’m overwhelmed and going too far.

I married him, and she was part of the package.

So, AITA for telling him this?

Raising a teenager may be a challenge, but it’s not a job you can clock out of when it gets overwhelming.

What did Reddit have to say?

This commenter thinks she’s right to put the onus on her husband to control his daughter’s bad behavior.

Unconditional love means loving even when it gets difficult.

If she treats a step child differently than her biological children, then she doesn’t get to say she loves them equally.

Maybe the stepdaughter is picking up on some of her hesitancy too.

Biological child or not, parenting isn’t about picking and choosing when to show up.

It’s a full-time commitment, even when the road gets bumpy.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.