My husband has a young adult daughter. I’ve been in her life since she was 10 but due to many reasons we’ve never had a successful step mother /daughter relationship. Mostly due to poor boundary setting from both of her parents. I did try very hard to have a relationship with her but after years of being treated appallingly by the child, her mother and in part her father I gave up.
I’ll call the daughter Mary, not her real name, has a history of bullying at school. I’ve witnessed this in our own home when she’s retelling stories of events that happened and afterwards asked DH to address this. Due to the same boundary issues nothing was ever said and she continued.
I work with a parent of a child Mary has bullied. Mary and this child used to be very good friends. The parent of the bullied child has spoken to me about the bullying and knows my situation in that I’m a non-involved stepparent and her behaviour is nothing to do with me. We haven’t discussed it again.
At our Christmas party partners were invited. My DH couldn’t make it so I went alone. The other parent of the bullied child made it very obvious she feels I am to blame for Mary’s behaviour and made the whole evening difficult.
I am appalled by Mary’s behaviour as I would be by any bully but she’s not my responsibility and I’m angry to be blamed for it. Who is being unreasonable (apart from Mary).