I left my husband, Mark, alone with the kids for a week. When I came home, I found our boys asleep on the cold hallway floor. Alarmed, I checked the house and discovered Mark in the boys’ room—now a full-blown gamer cave—glued to his controller, surrounded by snacks and energy drinks.

When I confronted him, he shrugged it off. “They thought it was an adventure,” he said. That’s when I snapped.

The next morning, I served him breakfast on a plastic plate, gave him coffee in a sippy cup, and introduced his new chore chart. For a week, I treated him like one of the kids—bedtime stories, screen-time limits, dinosaur-shaped sandwiches, and gold stars for cleaning.

It all came to a head when I called his mom. Her arrival was the final blow. “I’ll whip this boy into shape,” she declared.

Mark finally apologized, realizing just how badly he’d messed up. I accepted, but reminded him: the kids need a dad—not another kid.