Reply to 26 year old step son happily receives Christmas gifts but NEVER reciprocates

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I can't get over that stepmom believes its in her right to dictate how stepson needs to behave in HIS OWN grandparents' house.

I am the type of person who always brings a hostess gift but if I'm going to my own parents or grandparents' homes, I don't worry about it.  Those are the places anyone should feel the most comfortable regardless of if they're 5 or 55 and no one should have formalities or worries about breaking "rules" around things like gifts with their own family.

If the grandparents and father actually cared about the stepson's lack of gift-giving, they would have stopped giving him things long ago.  But they don't OP, because they love their child/grandchild unconditionally and that means not requiring the condition of a reciprocal gift. [/quote]
Right. But that still means adults need to take responsibility for their actions. We can only take responsibility for our own actions. These include how we interact with others.

So much human interaction is based on expectations, which may or may not be realistic. But miscommunications occur when someone doesn't meet our expectations. This is the crux of the matter - not gifts, or how someone acts when they receive a gift, or whatever. The stepson is not meeting the stepmother's expectations.

I think she definitely needs to have a sit down private talk with her husband about expectations regarding his son. She needs to find out WHY he thinks and acts the way he (the father) does and he needs to find out WHY she thinks and acts the way she does. Then I would go so far, since the stepson is an adult and has been one for quite a while now, to say that she probably needs to sit down with HIM and find out what each other's expectations are for adult to adult relationships.

Maybe the stepson won't do this, or maybe the father doesn't want her to do this. OK. Then she needs to figure out how SHE is going to assimilate their behaviors into her life (assuming she is, which it seems like she wants to do) and how SHE is going to act in the future, and why. And she needs to keep it classy no matter what.

I wouldn't personally start with the gifts. Well, I might say something like "You can pick something out and wrap it - whatever you want to do," to her husband, but I wouldn't make a scene with family. For instance, personally I think my husband goes overboard with his adult (26 year old) son. So when on Christmas Eve he came up to me and said "I got him some gift cards too - we need to put them in a card," meaning I needed to put them in a card, I said, "The cards are in such and such a place with a pen." And he knew this was on him. It's just a small thing but it's a thing.

But the bigger thing to me is overall adult behavior. This includes bringing a dish or a bottle of wine or ice or whatever if other adults are also bringing items. This also includes helping with clean up. This is on the dad. He needs to lead by example. And I don't think there's anything wrong with the wife saying "Here's the deal. At the very LEAST I expect him to help with the meal and one of us is going to tell him to do so. Hopefully that's you."[/quote]

But OP isn't even hosting. She is miffed and it has absolutely nothing to do with her at all.[/quote]

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