Blended families can be great, especially when everyone involved works hard to put the kids first.

What would you do if your step-kids mom told you not to post pictures of her children online, but then when you posted a picture of you and your biological kids online, she got upset that her kids weren’t included?

That is what happened to the stepmom in this story, and she doesn’t think she did anything wrong, but now mom is mad and the kids feel neglected.

Aita for “excluding” my step kids from a family photo?

Hear me out, I know how the title sounds. I (36F) have been married to my husband (39M) for four years.

We have a three year old daughter together.

My husband had two children with his ex fiancé well before we met. His boys are 10 and nine.

My husband ended the engagement years before we met due to her cheating.

Anyways, I adore my step children. We get them every other weekend. They have their own rooms which we let them decorate.

This sounds like a wonderfully close family.

They helped decorate their sisters nursery before she was born. We try our best to be a blended family and include the boys.

Recently, we took the kids for a weekend family getaway with my BIL’s family for some hiking in the woods and we rented a nice cabin near a lake.

I took pictures all weekend. We got many photos of the kids together, us with the kids and of course a family photo.

Ahh, this makes a lot of sense.

This is where the problem starts. His ex has made it clear we are not to post her kids on social media.

I completely respect and understand that, it’s for their safety.

However, I still wanted to post some photos from the trip. One of the photos was one of just me, husband and daughter as I keep everything private so I don’t mind my daughter being on my page.

We actually took the photo while the boys were with their cousins fishing.

Well, my husband’s ex saw that I posted this photo and decided to accuse me of excluding her sons from the family.

Wow, that mom is really out of line.

She went so far as to start telling the boys we don’t see them as family.

This really hurt them and we have been trying our best to reassure them they are very much a part of the family and that I was just respecting their mothers rule.

A part of me thinks I’m in the right to post a photo of just the three of us but then seeing how it upset the boys has me wondering if I was wrong for taking and posting the photo?

Mom made the rule about not posting pictures of the kids, and this stepmom was just following them. If anything, she went out of her way to be nice about it. It sounds like mom is just looking for drama.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this.

This isn’t a bad idea at all.

This person thinks mom is just causing drama.

This commenter says to talk to the boys.

This might be the best approach.

I sure hope she did.

Maybe it is time to just ignore the mom and do their own thing.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.