Source: Reddit
My son (10) recently started receiving allowance from me since his dad is unemployed and also because my son likes to have his own money to spend on stuff he wants.
The problem is that I discovered by accident that my husband has been taking the money from our son to buy his own stuff like cigarette or a drink. He’d approach our son whenever he has money and tell him he’ll buy him what he wants but ends up spending the money on something else, something for him not our son. Our son abviously can not drive by himself and buy his own stuff so my husband offers to buy stuff for him using of course his allowance. I’m a nurse working long shifts most of the time so I’m not always home
Everytime our son wants something my husband would be like “Hey bud, you want a few bags of doritos for you and the other kids?. I’ll stop by the supermarket and get them for you then. That would be $$$” then our son gives him the money but never receives his doritos. Rinse and repeat. This went on for 2 months til my son told me.
Turns out my husband asked not to tell mommy because she’d get mad at him and he’ll be in trouble and promised to get him his stuff but he never does. I had a big fight with my husband about it. He said it wasn’t bug deal since he always end up getting our son the stuff he want 99% of the time. He told me to consider this as “gas money” since he drives xxx of kilometers to the supermarket to buy what our son wants.
I shamed him for taking advantage of our son and taking the money that was meant for him and said he was acting like a thief but worse when stealing from his own son. I then said I won’t be handing our son any allowance anymore and my husband said I was overreacting and punishing our son for no reason. I said I’ll handle our son’s needs from now on but he argued that I can’t when I’m busy working all the time. I said it was none of his business and walked out the room. He kept negging me saying my son will resent me if I stop handing him money but I refused to engage any further in the argument and the guilt tripping. He keeps calling me heartless and financially controlling to take away the allowance. Am I Overreacting?
Here are a few comments on the story where it was originally posted:
