Chip Chick
This girl’s cousins Jamie and Alex, as well as her Aunt Savannah, all recently moved in with her and her family because Savannah has been going through a divorce.
Her young cousins are pretty active children and seem to have high energy all the time. But lately, she has felt annoyed by her boundaries being broken.
Jamie and Alex have continuously barged into her room unannounced, even when she’s tutoring. She has been trying to have conversations with them about needing her space sometimes and even put up little signs on her door to let her cousins know when she was busy.
However, her requests and signs went unnoticed, and her privacy continued to be invaded. This was especially frustrating when she was tutoring because having them come into her room multiple times within an hour-long session was very distracting for her and her student.
“I also talked to Aunt Savannah about it, but they keep doing it, and my aunt doesn’t really enforce that boundary,” she explained.
After this, she tried to have a conversation with her parents about Jamie and Alex’s behavior. They urged her not to complain about it too much to her aunt, reminding her that divorce is a difficult transition and they don’t want to upset her aunt any further.
Her parents would also not allow her to lock her door during her tutoring sessions, and if she did, the children and/or her father would simply knock loudly on the door until she opened it.
“They don’t see Jaime and Alex barging in as a big deal since my tutoring is technically volunteer work for my school’s honors society, and it’s not a ‘real job’ in their eyes,” she said.
Feeling the need to take matters into her own hands, she decided to cover her room in realistic-looking fake spiders! And after a few run-ins with spiders on her doorknob and seeing them within her room, her little cousins have now started avoiding her room at all costs.
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