It’s tough watching a child struggle when the adults around her can’t agree on what she actually needs.

So, what would you do if your stepdaughter had a serious health issue and kept missing school, but her biological mother wouldn’t let you homeschool her, even though you have the right training?

Would you let it go? Or would you push to get your way?

In the following story, one stepmom finds herself in this situation and just wants to do what’s best for her stepdaughter.

Here’s the story.

AITA for insisting on homeschooling my step daughter

My husband and I have 3 girls, 3, 5, and 12. Our 12-year-old is his from a previous relationship.

Our 12-year-old has an undiagnosed stomach issue. We’re working with a gastroenterologist. They’ve done blood tests, stool tests, colonoscopies, endoscopies, biopsies down her GI tract, ultrasounds, CT scans, and MRIs.

There are a few things that it might be, but nothing fits so far.

We’re going to another hospital across the country in a few weeks to see basically a real-life Dr. House.

They had already decided to homeschool their other daughter.

Her mom can be problematic. She believes in natural medicine and fought her being put on meds, gave her supplements that made her worse, withheld medication, and missed appointments. We had 50/50 custody until recently.

My stepdaughter was missing 3-4 days a week of school and was falling behind, so my husband and I thought it would be best to homeschool her.

We had already made the decision to homeschool our 6-year-old for other reasons, and I taught elementary and middle school in that district for nearly 20 years, so I’m qualified to teach her.

Fortunately, they won the case.

Her mom refused to allow us to homeschool her because it would be unfair for us to see her on her mom’s weeks, and she refused our other suggestion, which is online school through the district, because it doesn’t count as real school.

We were already taking her to court over the difficulty with meds and appointments, so we added the fact that she’s stopping my stepdaughter from getting an appropriate education to the list.

The judge sided with us, and we are able to make all medical and educational decisions. She sees her mom for 2 hours on Saturdays while being supervised.

Now, their families think they’re wrong.

My family and my husband’s family think we’re being cruel to my stepdaughter and her mom, especially because she had gotten better about complying with her doctor’s orders after we threatened court, but wouldn’t budge on homeschooling.

In their minds, we took her daughter away because she didn’t want her to be homeschooled.

Now I’m wondering if I’m wrong for insisting on homeschooling and taking things this far.

AITA?

Eek! This is such a tough situation.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit feel about everything that happened.

This person explains why school is ideal.

According to this comment, her stepdaughter may grow up and resent her.

For this person, there are no winners.

Here’s someone who doesn’t think the mother should have a say.

Hopefully, someone asked the girl. Being homeschooled is life-changing, and she’s old enough to have a say.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.