How would you react if you found out you had a child and the child was already six years old?

Would you try to make up for lost time, or would you stay away thinking it might be disruptive to the child to come into their life after so many years?

In today’s story, a dad originally decides to stay away, but years later, he did an about face and wants to spend as much time as possible with his son.

The boy’s mom is furious.

Let’s read all the details to see if the dad went too far with his admitted bribery.

AITA for bribing my son to come live with me?

While this feels like a scumbag/sleazy way to go about things I do not know what else to do.

I was not a good parent when my son was young.

I didn’t know he existed until he was like 6 and by that point I felt it was too late to try and integrate myself into the family dynamic.

So I just paid child support for the years I’d missed and the coming years, and largely ignored him.

Again, I know this was ridiculously scummy and I’m not trying to excuse that.

He now sees his son quite a bit.

When he was 11 his mother got married and for some reason this prompted my son to reach out to me, and complain about my lack of presence.

I had no excuse for my behavior, and hearing his anger knocked some sense into me.

After that day I’ve been involved in his life, he comes to me whenever he feels like it.

This actually reasonably often, and so i gave him a kind of taxi account so he can use my money to get a cab to me any time he wants..

He’s started doing this pretty frequently, and even staying the night

(I am considering offering him a driver but I feel like this would be extremely forward.)

The boy’s life with his mom doesn’t sound that great.

He’s 14 now and he talks to me often about his mother, stepfather and stepsiblings.

At first it seemed extremely sweet and I was glad he was part of a functional family but innocuous statements started piling up.

He does most of the chores, his stepsiblings order him around, his mum has grown distant (I feel this is partly my fault, he looks a lot like me) and his stepdad treats him worse than the other kids.

Despite this, he doesn’t want to upset him mum by complaining and is ok with just sucking it up.

He now realizes that he was trying to bribe his son.

At this point, he is comfortable staying with me, but doesn’t stay overnight often, because he doesn’t want to get through awkward conversations with his mum.

So I had the idea of making my house more appealing to him.

He said he always wanted the top bunk, so I got him bunk beds so he can do so, and got him a few games, decorated his room helped him buy some stuff, etc.

It didn’t start off as bribery, but in hindsight thats exactly what I’m doing.

I’m bribing my son to come live with me.

He got into a fight with the boy’s mom.

This got the attention of his mother and therefore tonight I and his mother got into a large fight over this bribery, and she accused me of exploiting our son.

I accused her of neglecting him and she told me that was rich, (which fair) and she called me a rich and pompous jerk who was trying to steal her son.

AITA?

I know I’m not the best father, but I think in this case bribery could be helpful for his wellbeing.

I can see both sides of this.

The big question is what the boy wants to do.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

He didn’t do anything wrong.

He should definitely take what his son says seriously.

He is free to buy whatever he wants for his son.

It wasn’t really bribery.

He sounds like a great dad.

At least, he is now.

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.