Divorce and subsequent blended families can be tough to navigate for everyone involved. When you add teenagers to the mix, I’m sure “tough” is putting it lightly.
This girl’s parents divorced when she was young. She spends most of her time with her mother but has a decent relationship with her father.
They still spend time together even though he has a live-in girlfriend with young kids, and OP does her best to get along with them, too.
She has a lock on her door so that the kids will respect her privacy when she’s not there.
My (f16) mom and dad got divorced when I was 11. My parents have 50/50 custody of me but I mostly live with my mom and spend a lot of my weekends and summers at my dad’s house.
I have my own room at my dad’s house and I am allowed to lock it when I am not there because the woman he lives with 27 has two young kids and they went into my room an wrecked some of my stuff when she first moved in. My dad replaced everything, told her that my room is off limits without my permission, and got me a lock with a key that only him and I have.
My dad 47 seems happy to spend time with this woman and her kids but he still makes time for me and makes me a priority.
When he got a new TV I got the old one and he mounted it in my room.
The main issue is that the girlfriend has other moms/kids over and likes to manipulate OP into babysitting for free and without warning.
Her father has taken her side on the matter.
One thing though. This woman likes to have other mommies and kids over for play dates.
That’s fine. Maybe her and my dad will get married and she has every right to have guests over. The problem is that sometimes she expects me to watch all the kids while her and her friends sit outside and drink wine or something. She even tried leaving them with me and going out for brunch with her friends. Not okay.
My dad has told her to knock it off. He told me it might be nice if I chose to help but that I wasn’t obligated to help.
Recently this happened and when the kids were dumped on OP she did not change the movie in her room, which was not appropriate for the kids.
Her dad’s gf wants the tv taken away and OP punished, but although her dad thinks she could have handled it differently, he agrees his girlfriend was wrong.
So yesterday and today are days off from school so I was over at my dad’s for a long weekend. My mom was having a Halloween party and I didn’t want to be around.
So I’m in my room when I hear a knock. There she is with four kids. She wants me to entertain them while she talks to her friends. I say no thank you. She insisted. So I said I was watching a movie. And I was it’s called Ready or Not and it’s kind of gory. Not super gross or anything. Just not meant for little ones.
But it starts out with a pretty wedding.
So I opened the door and let them in. And they are bored because it isn’t be a cartoon or a Marvel movie. But they go running when the killing starts.
She comes back inside and tells at me for scaring the kids. She says she is going to take my tv away. I laughed and closed the door.
She is mad and told my dad I was a disrespectful brat and that my tv should go in the kids playroom. He said no but he talked to me and said I could have handled it better. He isn’t mad. But he’s disappointed.
Was OP wrong in the way she handled things? Let’s hear what Reddit thinks!
Boundaries have been set but not followed.
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Play stupid games…
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Some people suggested some other creative ways OP could make her point.
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I think there’s enough disappointment to go around.
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This person says OP just needs to hold firm.
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OP may be acting like a teenager, but in this case its working to her advantage.
Anyone disagree with the verdict here? Let us know why or why not in the comments!
