Adapting to changes is hard. But what would you do as a teenager if your dad remarried someone and then expected you to call her “mom”? Awkward to say the least.

In this boy’s case, he and his sister refused to do so, and it’s now causing arguments and even visits to a therapist.

Now he’s wondering if he’s in the wrong for having boundaries and not changing his mind even after his stepmother expressed being hurt by it.

Let’s read the whole story to see what happened.

AITA for refusing to change one of my family therapy made rules/boundaries?

Me (16, M) and my sister (15, F) lost our mom 7 years ago and three years ago our dad got married again.

My dad married Kerry.

Kerry has three kids 10M, 8F and 4M.

Kerry’s older two kids’ dad is in prison and her youngest’s dad didn’t want to know. The youngest considers my dad his dad since he basically knows him his whole life.

But it wasn’t ideal for everyone. They needed to discuss things.

Me and my sister weren’t happy when dad told us he wanted to marry Kerry.

We didn’t act out but we were sad and I withdrew a bit, so my dad decided we needed family therapy with him and Kerry and her older two kids before they got married.

Lots of stuff was talked about and the therapist asked us each to come up with 3 to 5 rules or boundaries that we wanted to insist on for us to make things work.

He set some boundaries of his own.

Mine were:

– I didn’t want to share a bedroom with the boys

– I wanted to be able to talk about mom still, spend Mother’s Day with my mom’s side of the family and have photos of mom at home still

– Dad still makes time for just me and him. And I can have time with just my sister too.

– I’ll treat Kerry like an aunt or something but she won’t be my mom or my parent and her kids will be my stepsiblings, but I’ll say step and not just siblings.

His boundaries were put to the test.

Rule 4 was talked about the most.

I was asked how that should look and I said dad should still do stuff for me like he did after mom died, and Kerry didn’t need to take it all over.

Kerry said she agreed and if she wasn’t going to be treated like a parent then she would rather be more of an aunt figure.

Dad said that was good with him.

My dad and Kerry got married after we had 5 months of therapy and things were going fine.

We had some boundary/rule issues.

Here are some examples of the issues.

Kerry’s oldest wanted to share a room with me a few times instead of his younger brother and my dad and Kerry tried to push that a little more but it worked out.

My sister had the same rule but for Kerry’s daughter and again, dad and Kerry tried to push but they backed down on that too.

There was a Mother’s Day issue last year too, but nothing super awful. Kerry’s family were having a big party and dad and Kerry wanted us to go but we wanted to be with our mom’s side.

His dad wanted them to discuss things in therapy again.

A month ago my dad told me and my sister we were going back to therapy for a bit and he didn’t say why.

Our first appointment back was two weeks ago and my dad and Kerry said they wanted to change some of the rules/boundaries.

Kerry doesn’t like not being a parent to me (and my sister).

She said she has really come to love us and that we get along well enough that she thinks it would be better for everyone if we could call her and dad our parents and if she could be given the chance to prove herself to be a good third parent to us.

Both his dad and her agreed, but he did not change his mind.

My dad said he wanted that for us too. That we don’t feel like a traditional family.

The therapist asked them questions about their feelings and they answered them.

Then she asked me how I felt.

I told her/them I didn’t want to change that. I said I don’t want Kerry to be my third parent and I like things how they are.

His sister feels the same way he does.

My sister said she felt the same and that she wanted to add a rule about her not being assigned homework helper just because she’s got great grades and finds school and learning easy.

It was talked about again last week and again yesterday.

My dad and Kerry are mad that I won’t change the rule/boundary and that I’m refusing to see their side or whatever.

AITA?

It’s simple: they don’t want to call her mom, so they shouldn’t be guilt tripped into it.

Let’s see if Reddit has any insight into this situation.

Exactly.

This commenter shares their opinion.

A reader shares their thoughts.

Simple like that.

An interesting take.

Another commenter chimes in.

He respectfully expressed his feelings and preferences, and his dad should be rewarding that.

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.