Am i being u reasonable not doing dinner for my 18 year old step daughter?

[Natz281092]

Long story short, my 18 year old step daughter of 12 years does nothing, no job no education and doesnt lift a finger around the house. I have 3 other children and another step daughter. They all have their chores i.e unload dishwasher, sweep floor help clean table and they all do it. Thier ages are 4, 5, 6 and 12 they all do there bit, but my 18 year old has not done nothing in over two years. I stopped doing her washing 4 months ago cause i never even got a thank you. She does nothing me and her dad have tried our hardest to support her but she has been so disrespectful and also bullies her younger siblings. I cook our children thier dinner earlier than mine and thier dads and often we offered to her she said "i will eat it later" and then it would go to waste and she would never clean her plate. So now i dont dish her up a plate, i always cook extra anyways but as i dont put it on a plate for her she will cook herself noodles and then go eat her room which she knows she isint aloud to do as she caused a mice problem last year. And as she knows she isint aloud she waits for me and her dad to go to bed. So im sorry if its too much but am i being unreasonable to stop doing her dinners?

In that case yanbu

My apologies- I see you have already mentioned counselling.

She needs help.
What is her dad doing to help her?

If anyone showed my 10 year old naked boyfriend/girlfriend photos, they'd be out of my house so fast their feet wouldn't touch the ground.

And this along with the naked photo showing is extremely disturbing...

This all stemmed from her first phone getting taken off her because she was a 12 year old talking to older random men and telling them our address and sent photos of our younger children.

Can you be sure your kids aren't being abused, or their privacy violated?

YANBU to not cook your 18yo step DD dinner because she doesn’t want it anyway.

YABU for the rest of it.

Let her eat in her room. If you’re worried about mice, ask her to return her dishes to the sink before bed. Dirty dishes in her room attracting mice is partially because she is trying to avoid being confronted about eating in her room or making her own food. Just unclench a bit.

Her mum died 4 years ago and you say she refused to see her the last 2 years of her mum’s life. You say she hated her mum. Going on a limb here, was her mum abusive? This will make her grief that much more complex and hard to process. She is allowed to think the therapy she got was “crap” because some therapy and therapist are in fact crap some are worse than crap.

Where is her dad in all of this? Why is your step DD welfare seemingly all on you?

I don’t know why either of you expected her to be able to concentrate on GCSEs, A levels or working.

This barely adult needs help. I see she refused help, well how many times has her Dad tried to find someone she could talk to? Has he got support from charities, from young people’s services? Has he validated that the therapy she did get was crap, but to keep looking because the reality is therapy is hit or miss until you find what works?

Please do not punish an already traumatised teenager. Her mum dying four years ago probably still feels like yesterday to her. Have you lost your mum yet? Talk to other teens who lose a parent young, it’s not the same as being 45+ and a parent dying. It’s much much worse.

She seems deeply unhappy. Does she have any friends? anyone she can trust that she can talk
to? No 18 year old wants to be sat in a room all day, with nothing to do, or look forward to, and spend most of thier time alone.
She needs to know who’s on her side, to support her through. How often does someone tell her that they love her ?
Before DD was diagnosed, she was very much like this .. didn’t go to school, didn’t talk to us, ate in her room, was prone to outburst. I would airways tell her I loved her, but, the breakthrough came when I said “I’m on your side”

She sounds deeply troubled, and it's not surprising given what she's been through. She was groomed by older men at the age of 12, and the response was to take her phone away? She lost her mother a year later. Like a lot of young people, she's struggled to engage with counselling. She's out of education and can't see a future for herself. She has no real positive relationships within the family and nothing to look forward to. She must be utterly miserable.

What is her father playing at? He should be the one trying to engage with her and get her help. She needs someone in her corner, persevering with her and supporting her, not an oblivious father and a stepmother quibbling about plates of food.

Shame on the poster who recommended making her homeless.

Even if they were your 16yr old child that had been groomed by pedophiles aged 12? You’d throw a vulnerable, 16yr old girl into the streets?

Nobody mentioned the streets except you.

I'd protect my children though of course, and wouldn't have them living under the same roof as someone abusing them.

And showing them naked boyfriend/girlfriend photos is abuse.

Is she autistic?

I’d go a step further and kick her out the house.

That’s why I wrote it as a question. What did you mean then by saying
”they'd be out of my house so fast their feet wouldn't touch the ground.”

It doesn’t sound at all pleasant. More like picking them up like a bin bag of rubbish and tossing them out of the house.

And where would this 16yr old someone go?

And showing them naked boyfriend/girlfriend photos is abuse.
No it’s not. The photos might be evidence of the step DD being sexually abused/raped though as they are at least two years old from the OP’s chronology. She could have been 16, or under 16 at the time of the sex in the photos.

Your stepdaughters are 18 and 12, and you’ve been with their father for 12 years?

Would the reason why her mum died have any bearing on how she behaves, as you said she hated her for 2 years before the death ?
i.e. if Mum died from an illness or disease that's tragic, if she died from an overdose or something similar then maybe daughter blames her Mum for her Mum's death ?

It might be worth reading about Attachment Disorder, and see if anything chimes. She certainly sounds depressed.

As a poster above said, she would benefit from some good therapy if she could be persuaded to give it another go.

If she can be persuaded to get a bit of fresh air and exercise that might really help.

Bullying the younger ones cannot be accepted, so don't feel that you can't still be firm about that.

It is really, really hard when someone won't engage and is being difficult to live with, but I would persevere in a loving, kind way if you can, as she has been through a lot.

You sound, understanably, ground down by it, look after yourself and be kind to yourself too.

It must be tempting to tell her to move out but I’d really fear for her safety. She would be really vulnerable to abuse as she’d be desperate for love.
Only suggestion I can make is having you and her dad chat to her with no other kids in the house. Point out she’s 18, technically an adult, time to step up now and work. Can you make her room into a bed sit? No cooking facilities ( could have her own kettle, mini fridge ) but maybe a small sofa? https://www.amazon.co.uk/OFCASA-Portable-Bedrooms-Thermoelectric-Refrigerator/dp/B09W8W4PRT/ref=asc_df_B09W8W4PRT/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=641814015358&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6870201380546781019&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045798&hvtargid=pla-2005580674220&psc=1&mcid=0a16a7801f06368eb24e82f3c1223def
You could have a behavioural agreement — she gets the better room/fridge etc.. she steps up with chores and no bullying of younger ones.

If she won’t accept counselling you can’t force her but always keep that as an option. I know a counsellor specialising in bereavement and she’s said that even if children have counselling after bereavement it frequently comes back “to bite them on the bum” in teenage years.

She sounds deeply troubled. I think I'd let the dinners and chores slide and and try to tackle the bigger issues. I'm not convinced that tough love is the way to go here.

Same here. She may think her life is derailed so what is the point. Instead of telling her do this, do that, you’re an adult get a job. Ask her what she wants what dreams she still has and try and support her towards them. It’s not too late to go back to school or to try different therapy.

Hi, im sorry i know im the one that has been writing all this byt her dad is very much involved and does the heaving lifting im the support to back him. She has been offered so many different things with all different types of social, counselling, doctors, group's she was even offered her favourite teacher to talk to at anytime and she took advantage and would go see them during maths which she hated. There is a lot with her mum but she wanst abusive but was an alcoholic "who loved her other two children more" which i know is absolutely heart breaking and my god i know my SD has been through it. But she has made the choice to refuse every bit of help we offer to the point we have had to ask previous boyfriends parents for help and her boyfriends but she is abusive and controlling over them. Just to add she good an amazing grade in art and a great one in english but she has never had ambitions or goals she got offered a spot at a art college and turned it down coz it was too far away from her boyfriend of 3 weeks. I havent lost my mum i dont think anyway i havent seen her since i was 14 coz she tried k*lling me. I do know what loss is i lost my 1st daughter. Also have asked her to bring plates out and she doesnt until its too late i.e ive gone to get them after a month or we have ants and mice. I understand she might think all the help she had was crap but to say it to your little sister whos mum it was also that died and make her feel it wont help her.

So she was 6 and her sister just a baby when you started a relationship with her dad? That could itself be quite traumatic depending onthe circumstances of him leaving the family home. Then she was treated badly by her mum so she moved to her dad's and refused to see her mum around age 11. At age 12 she was groomed by paedophiles and your husband's response was just to confiscate her phone. At 13 her mum died and her dad had a newborn, a baby and a toddler with you so how much parenting did she actually get at a time when she needed it most?

Her behaviour is horrible but she has been severely let down by the adults in her life. Is it really that surprising she's traumatised?

I volunteered for a while in a youth offenders unit. And I've worked extensively with offenders in the past. Almost every one has a couple of things. Over and over you see it. Witnessing violence and/or a significant bereavement at a young age.

You cannot overstate this troubled relationship with a mother who then died. It's bone deep pain.

You need family therapy even if she won't attend.

i would think she is rebelling because she is unhappy but doesn’t know how to grieve. Have you contacted grief charities. Is there a plan for job/college. I think it’s hard but putting to many rules in place is going to make her rebel more. If she is happy to cook her own food I would say that’s ok. But maybe a couple of times a week she needs to eat with you. Can you speak to her and involve her with plans so they don’t seem like rules? Maybe try contacting the school nursing team for your area they should be up to 19. Hopefully they could help. Also if possible can your husband make time with her alone even once a week, it sounds like she needs it.

Thus girl is crying out for help, 😞