Stepdad blames teen for his 6-year-old daughter’s constant stealing and problematic behaviors, so she starts documenting every incident to prove it isn’t all in her head

Author image for Etai Eshet
Etai Eshet • Editor
Sep 10, 2026 7:45 AM EDT

A six-year-old with access to debit cards, cash, electronics, phones, watches, collector's items, school IDs, perfume, remotes, private writing, and an extraordinary ability to declare herself innocent after every disappearance sounds like a very real problem

Because this little girl is being taught that if she looks confused enough, somebody else will be blamed and the adults will call it sibling conflict.

The teenager has reached the point where keeping a list is basic record-keeping, because living with someone who takes belongings, hides them, threatens people, and repeatedly crosses every privacy boundary becomes surreal when the adult in charge responds with "stop blaming her for everything."

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  • Teenage girl sitting on a stairwell with a frustrated expression, with overlaying quote: "Her being little can’t excuse her actions"
    via Meg

    Frustrated teenager sitting on a stairwell

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • To start, I'm 15 F and my sister is 6 F. Do not think that her being little can excuse her actions. When my sister was little, she was
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  • a nice child to be around. After starting school, she's become aggressive and irritable. And, she's become quite the thief.
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  • Taking a few of my things is fine, but not to this level. She's taken (and lost) my debit card, stolen cash from my wallet at least four times, and has hid my apple
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  • pencil for 2 weeks before finally coming clean. Several times she has taken each of my school IDS, my food, my accessories, my
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  • electronics, and whatever else she can get her hands on. I'm not the only victim, either. She's stolen my mother's phone, hid her
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  • uncle's Nintendo and collector games, as well as my grandmothers watch and phone.
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  • My stepdad and I have never gotten along. I was an undiagnosed au tic kid who, I'll admit, didn't treat him that well because I didn't know any better.
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  • frustrated teen girl sitting alone on a staircase, resting her head on her hand
    via Meg

    Teenager sitting alone 

    Representative only.

  • Still, he hasn't been the kindest either, calling me spoiled and a brat, badmouthing me to my sister. He claims I would bu y my
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  • stepsiblings, when it was HIM buying me. Making "jokes" that would leave me crying and hiding my things knowing it would make
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  • “Stop blaming X for everything” is bringing a lot of trouble to a ton of housleholds but the gaslighting work it does here is hard labor. And it’s carrying an entire household on its back while debit cards vanish, remotes disappear and an Omen style child is running through hallways.

  • me distressed. He insists I've manipulated my sister against him. He got angry when he found out my dad bought her a cake pop when he was getting me
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  • starbucks. Yet, he's always gotten angry when I refused to share the food my dad bought me with her. And just barely in the last 5 years
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  • has he bought something for me in addition to his daughter. He went on a trip to Japan and got her several gifts, whereas I got
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  • one plush I asked for a two random trinkets he assumed I would like.
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  • Yesterday, I was asking for the remote to the TV in our office. She has a history of taking the remotes, hiding them, and swearing she doesn't know what
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  • Stepdad’s approach seems to be that his daughter is always the victim, even when she is caught with something that doesn’t belong to her, while the older child is automatically the aggressor for being upset about it. It’s a useful system if the goal is to make one child feel untouchable and the other feel permanently guilty for noticing what’s happening. 

  • happened. She liked this TV in particular because she got to watch Youtube instead of Youtube Kids. She comes home with my stepdad, and I ask her for
    via Little-Ad-368
  • the remote. I've been waiting for her to give it to me, but let her off the hook because she had to go, and if she didn't leave then, she'd be left without dinner because her dad treated her differently than his other kids. Worse.
    via Little-Ad-368
  • I ask, and she goes to her usual act of insisting she doesn't have the remote. Her dad backs her up, saying, "stop blaming her for everything." Stop blaming her?
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  • My sister has given me several scars from "fighting back", something HE encouraged her to do. She's threatened to k I me and to cut my throat open. She's only six but has threatened to k Il herself whenever she's in trouble.
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  • The sister may be six, but six is old enough to understand that taking money, rummaging through private belongings, and making threats bring consequences. And six, just like in The Omen, is probably when the problem should be addressed before it becomes a problem for society and not just your household.

    This girl needs adults to recognize that these behaviors are serious, rather than treating them as proof that her sister is somehow provoking her.

  • I decide to speak up for myself and start naming a few things she's taken for me, mentioning how she usually hides the remote. I don't get much in because there's contractors, and my mom ushers me into the office anyway.
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  • At this point, I'm irked. He's always blamed me whenever something went wrong, I've always been the problem. Even
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  • when my sister lost my debit card and got grounded accordingly, he was banging on the front door demanding her iPad.
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  • So, today I got to work. I typed up and wrote out a list of all the things she taken from me, big to small. She has school while I'm off, so I'm planning to hang the list up where she can see it. The
    via Little-Ad-368

  • The list might not fix anything, because a list cannot force a defensive adult to become reasonable, and hanging it where a six-year-old can see it may simply create another argument. Still, the urge to write everything down makes perfect sense when a person keeps being told their memory is exaggerating and their boundaries don’t matter. Documentation is what people start doing when repeated incidents are dismissed as isolated misunderstandings.

  • next time her dad tries to shift the blame on me, I'll read out everything she has taken from me, being sure to mention the threats against my life. I'm sure he'll blow up at me, but at this point, I don't care. I'm done with him.
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  • I know it's petty from my part, and my sister's only six, but would I be the j´?
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  • edit: I want to make it clear that my mom is not allowing this all to happen. She argues with my stepdad and defends me. She cannot divorce him until my sister is 12 and able to choose which parent she lives with. She does protect and stand up for me, and
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  • tells my sister that what her dad says about me is wrong, etc. We both agree something is wrong with my sister, and my mom thinks it's Youtube paired with last school year, since she was really distressed during that time.
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  • My sister is grounded for several months and has been spanked a few times, but the behavior still persists.
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  • TL;DR My stepdad got on my nerves one last time telling me to "stop blaming your sister for everything" so I went ahead and compiled proof of every offense shes done.
    via Little-Ad-368

  • But the most disturbing part is not the missing remote or the perfume. It’s a household where a teenager is expected to absorb insults, invasions of privacy, and threats while the adults argue about blame instead of building consistent rules and support for both children.

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entitled parents siblings stepfather favoritism stepdaughter sister stepdad
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