Why are you complaining to him about a pair of broken headphones? Just order her a new pair. He makes seven figures for goodness sakes. It really sounds like you're trying to score points for yourself by criticizing her to him. To his credit, he's uninterested in choosing you over her.

I mean you basically are in a parental role. I would ignore your DH and work with SD’s mom directly.

Stop blaming the ex. We all know that's what you mean by "relaxed". I get that you need more structure because of soon having 5 kids, but she doesn't owe it to you to change her parenting for that reason. She's probably trying to help SD cope with the tremendous amount of change her father and you have imposed on her in a short period of time. The poor child is having to share what little time she has with her father and it's entirely normal and predictable that she would be struggling.

Remember you chose to play life on the hard setting here. Five kids is a lot. But that's on you.

He probably feels guilty for spending so little time with his daughter. The new kids further reduce his attention to her, and put stress on everyone. This is a classic case of a man agreeing to a blended family and then not being able to handle the juggle, but feeling stuck with it anyway.

Maybe your husband just isn't such a great husband or father. He's crabby and he rejects your input and he doesn't address his daughter's needs. That's what you've said here.

It sounds like he does not agree with your parenting and is trying to get you to see that. He is rejecting your input, but you don't want to take no for an answer so you persist. You need to hear his message even when he expresses it rudely. Pare down what you say about your SD to the bare minimum.

You are parenting with a man whose parenting you disagree with. Why?

It sounds like you have more children and a more complicated household than your DH can handle.

You need to have one rule for all the kids. Walk her back and someone sit with her till she falls asleep.

Anonymous wrote:The only advice I can give you is that YOU need to find a therapist who specializes in stepfamily issues. Even then, the prognosis is not good because I think your DH has placed his daughter on a pedestal and he will be very reluctant to bring her back down to earth.

As she enters her tween/teen years, it will only get worse. She will assert her primacy with your DH playing her "power" as daughter against yours as his wife. Sleeping in your bedroom is just the tip of the iceberg. (Which IMO should not have been allowed for any of your kids, including yours.)

The fact your DH cannot bear even the slightest criticism of SD, despite it being reasonable, is highly problematic. I would be very concerned about this if I were you. This can also have bearing on the other children in the house. They will pick up that there are different rules for SD and she is not subject to the same rules they are.

FWIW, the most difficult relationship to try and develop is one between a SM and a SD. It is usually fraught with many problems. There is often a deep psychology at work which even therapy cannot often fix.

Go talk to a professional about this, alone at first. Then ask your DH to go with you and see if therapist can assist in his mindset.

If not, I am afraid you are in for a lifetime of being in the difficult position of being the "evil stepmother" who is standing between a father and his daughter.

And when I say lifetime, I mean it. I know of people who have SDs in their 60s who are still creating difficulties within families.

Good luck.

This is such good advice.
Blended families are so hard OP, and it sounds like yours is going pretty well for the most part, this just has to change.

The only advice I can give you is that YOU need to find a therapist who specializes in stepfamily issues. Even then, the prognosis is not good because I think your DH has placed his daughter on a pedestal and he will be very reluctant to bring her back down to earth.

As she enters her tween/teen years, it will only get worse. She will assert her primacy with your DH playing her "power" as daughter against yours as his wife. Sleeping in your bedroom is just the tip of the iceberg. (Which IMO should not have been allowed for any of your kids, including yours.)

The fact your DH cannot bear even the slightest criticism of SD, despite it being reasonable, is highly problematic. I would be very concerned about this if I were you. This can also have bearing on the other children in the house. They will pick up that there are different rules for SD and she is not subject to the same rules they are.

FWIW, the most difficult relationship to try and develop is one between a SM and a SD. It is usually fraught with many problems. There is often a deep psychology at work which even therapy cannot often fix.

Go talk to a professional about this, alone at first. Then ask your DH to go with you and see if therapist can assist in his mindset.

If not, I am afraid you are in for a lifetime of being in the difficult position of being the "evil stepmother" who is standing between a father and his daughter.

And when I say lifetime, I mean it. I know of people who have SDs in their 60s who are still creating difficulties within families.

Good luck.

OP, I overreact to DH sometimes. For me, it’s overwhelm. I am completely overwhelmed by my life (therapists and doctors have confirmed that those feelings are valid.) I notice that you said DH makes seven figures. People don’t get paid big money to do easy jobs. One possible reason for his overreaction could be that his cup is near full most of the time, and it only takes a little to put him over.

I am wondering when you are bringing these things up to DH? Could you have a family meeting on Sunday nights and designate that as the time to discuss “strategize for the week ahead.” I wonder if he’s prepared to discuss these small topics, if they would be less threatening, preventing the overwhelm. I agree that you might want to run your delivery by a close friend and get feedback.

Here a potential script:

DH, I noticed that you had a really big reaction to my comment earlier. I love you, and I don’t want you to feel so overwhelmed. I also don’t want to model that dynamic for any of our children. I was wondering if there was a better time to communicate the normal parenting tasks. Would Sunday nights feel better to you? We could grab a cup of tea, stick the kids in front of the TV for twenty minutes, and strategize for the week.

If he can’t handle feedback at a neutral time, then that’s a bigger problem. I wouldn’t have more children with him until you get this dynamic smoothed out. He probably didn’t have time for therapy, but he probably needs it.

(Pp here-I also type too fast and have typos 🤣)

You’re going to get a lot of snark here about how he has a high earning, high stress job and you live the good life as a sahm so stop riding him. But that has nothing to do with this, don’t let those comments distract you.

What is failing here is the communication. He sees your comments as criticism for whatever reason, so your communication of these things could probably use a tweak: either you don’t realized that how or when you say things aren’t quite right, or he really is oversensitive so you need to somehow make it sound like your thoughts are is his idea. So make sure you’re not springing things on him when he’s at the height of stress or tired, and turn your comments into questions—when do you think we should get her back in her own room? How should we re-train her? Do you think she’ll be more confident if we did this or this? Ask and listen to what he says, if you don’t love his answers don’t be angry or push, say things like “I hear you. We can hold for now. But we should keep thinking about this in case she doesn’t grow out of it”

OP: Excuse the multiple typos, I type too fast and don’t reread.

Some background info: DH and I have been together for around 8 years, married for 6, now have a 3 year old son together, and we are expecting a baby girl in a March. When we met, DH was divorced from his ex-wife who is currently single and had one daughter who is now 10. They share 50/50 custody of my stepdaughter since their divorce. I also have two girls who are teens, 15 and 17, and they also spend half the time at their dad’s house. We’ve been divorced since my teens were 4 & 6. We had a not so great marriage ajd and an ugly divorce but we’ve matured a lot, and have had a civil relationship ever since for the sake of our kids.

DH and I have been struggling with boundaries around parenting my stepdaughter. Things are quite different at her mom’s house, more relaxed, so it’s a little challenging. The thing is that we’ve sat down and have had set boundaries around how we parent our stepkids and how our family would operate since day 1. But, DH wants me to take the role of another parent and have all the duties and reasonable of being a parent to my stepdaughter and that isn’t a problem, but the issue is that he gets upset when I give him any input/ideas that he hasn’t already noticed or any advice that he doesn’t agree with. I value his opinions and ideas regarding how I parent my teens, but he doesn’t reciprocate and is instead pretty dismissive. Sometimes he’ll get angry and use an irrational reaction.

One recent example is that my stepdaughter has been sleeping in her mother’s bed because of feeling scared/bad dreams. She wanted to sleep in our room around two months ago, so she started sleeping in an extra bed we had brought out in and has been doing that since then. Sometimes, she wakes up in the middle of the night and tries to climb into our bed too. My oldest DD went through this around 7/8, but it was only occasions and I did not want it to become a habit, so I made sure she went back to sleeping in her own bed room after a few weeks. I told DH that he needs to start gradually transitioning her back to her room and he snapped and said it wasn’t my business, and that he would work on it. He apologized later and said he was tired, but he does that a lot.

DH has a very high-stakes job and a very high earning (seven-figure) job, so I stay home with the kids. Because of that, I spent most of the time with her when she is here, so If I suggest something that seems critical of his parenting to him when he is back home that he doesn’t like, he gets upset. Things like me telling him she broke her school headphones and needs new ones or that she might need to go to the doctors for X or X. He uses my role as a stepparent against me to say that my input isn’t needed on big or small things.

Besides this DH is a great husband, dad, & step dad. But, he is very stubborn so I am not sure how to bring this up to him and I need some advice.