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Agony aunt
Step-children issues
Katharine Whitehorn advises three worried step-parents on their issues with their partner's children
Treading on eggshells around his children
Q: My intended partner is so worried about upsetting his children that he does not talk to them about our plans to move in together. They have all had an awful time with a mentally ill mother so I understand up to a point. I feel this is about choices for us all. He has six children but only two at home aged 19 and 15. I have been waiting for about two years. I get on well with the all the children. I am at a loss to know how we should proceed. Do we need professional help to sort this out?
A: Sooner or later the children have got to know, and obviously it would be better if your partner simply told them. But I suspect you have two worries: that the children might blow up, make things difficult for you – and heaven knows step-children can, and frequently do, sabotage a relationship. Or do you fear that your partner is shying away from making this commitment at all? Having a row about it wouldn’t help; but I think you could risk asking him, lovingly and frankly, if he’d really be happier just to go on as you are – and judge whether he’s horrified at the idea or relieved. Then if you’re sure that it’s just telling the children that’s the trouble, suggest that you gradually let the news seep out - here a discussion of curtains, there talk of redecorating the kitchen or visits to Habitat. It’s a minefield I know, but it should be possible, with care, to cross it safely
Excluded by step-daughter
Q: Over the past six years, my 30-year-old step-daughter (her mother died) has covertly made my life miserable. Since a big falling-out with us 18 months ago, what little contact there’s been has been hostile. Now it suits her she wants reconciliation with her dad but on her terms, excluding me. Have I have the right to say to him that it should be on our terms and include us both? I dislike her intensely but "making-up" could mean the whole family (two adult kids each) reunites. Just making-up with him would maintain the divide, suiting her.
A: Your husband would obviously prefer not to be at odds with his daughter and for all sorts of reasons you, too, would be better off in the long run if this rift could be healed. And she certainly has no “right” to exclude you. It’s quite illogical for daughters to resent their fathers’ second wives as much when the first has died, as they might one who had “stolen” their father away; but logic doesn’t much come into it — somehow she has to be won round. The key to this is your husband, and I doubt if you’d get far with him if you try to insist on your “right” to be included in any contact with a woman he knows you dislike; you have to persuade him you really do want things to be warm and cheerful all round and are distressed by the rift in the family. By all means encourage him to meet his daughter without you the first time, but he must persuade her that you badly want to be friends again too. It may take time, but it will be worth it.
Taking a tough line with step-children
Q: After meeting and blending two families (eight teens) all the same age, their dad and I decided to get married. The oldest and youngest (his girls) have become total monsters saying things like their dad was never there for them or did anything for them etc. He is the most amazing man I have ever known and has done more for these spoiled little brats then any person I know. I gave them a choice of either cleaning up their act and joining us in our wedding or not – was this a good idea?
A: I don’t think it would be a wise move for you to give these girls ultimatums of any kind. Teenagers and even much older offspring can bitterly resent anyone moving into what they see as their mother’s place; these girls may not have realised how serious your attachment to their father was. Now they do, and feel threatened and respond as such youngsters do: by being utterly tiresome and impossible.
What you have to do is to convince their father that he - I repeat, he - must be firm with them; must insist they behave themselves in a halfway civilised manner whatever they actually feel, and that you are here to stay and they have to make the best of it. If you weigh in with the heavy guns it just gives them an excuse to regard you as an enemy.
