She Doesn’t Want Her Or Her Kids To Attend Her Stepdaughter’s Housewarming Party Because Her Stepdaughter Doesn’t Feel That They Are Her Family And Has No Photos Of Them Hanging Up In Her House
It can take years for a child to warm up to their new step-parent. Sometimes, the step-parent and step-kid relationship never reaches its full potential for several reasons.
One woman is feeling hurt after noticing that her stepdaughter didn’t hang up one photo of her half-siblings out of dozens in her new home.
She and her husband have a blended family. He had an eight-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, and she had a baby boy from a previous marriage. After getting married, they had three more kids, ages ranging from four to seven.
She’s had a tough time building a relationship with her stepdaughter, as she had a rough childhood. Her husband and stepdaughter’s mom divorced when she was eight. Then, her mom died not much later.
“My husband and I had talked about marrying before she died, and we delayed it for a couple of years to allow my stepdaughter time to grieve and adjust to the changes in her life,” she recalled.
“We knew a child who lost someone so close would need extra help.”
Her stepdaughter is now 20-years-old. She had hoped that over the years, as her stepdaughter got older, she’d feel closer to their new family. However, her stepdaughter was never very close with her siblings and never got too involved with them.
Recently, her stepdaughter and her boyfriend moved into a house together and have been planning to host a housewarming party. She went to the house with her kids to help her finish setting up her dining room.
As she walked around the house, she noticed that her stepdaughter and her boyfriend had hung up many photos around their house. There were some of her stepdaughter’s birth parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, etc.
ALEXSTUDIO – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
However, she couldn’t help but notice that there weren’t any photos of her or the other kids hung up anywhere.
“There was no sign of the kids anywhere,” she explained. “All of the photos with her dad were older ones from before we met.”
In all of the photos her stepdaughter had hung up, there were none from her family life after her mom’s passing.
Her boyfriend, on the other hand, hung up a bunch of pictures of his siblings, which made her stepdaughter’s choice of pictures feel more deliberate.
“I always knew she wasn’t super crazy about her siblings,” she said.
“I always hoped as she got older, she would feel love for them. But it feels like she doesn’t think of them as family or as special enough to be included. The three kids who noticed were hurt.”
The next day, her husband called her stepdaughter to ask about the photos, especially since her siblings were upset.
She told him that she only wanted to hang pictures of people she considered family and didn’t consider her stepmom or other siblings her family.
After hearing what her stepdaughter said to her husband, she doesn’t want to attend the housewarming party with her kids anymore.
“I know she’s also entitled to feel how she does,” she explained. “As a mom, I just want to not put my kids in situations like this where they feel unwanted.”
Her husband and in-laws have been arguing with her about the kids not being there, but she doesn’t want them walking around their sister’s house feeling like they don’t belong.
Do you think she made the right choice?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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