Bullying - step daughter and work colliding

[DearHelper]

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).

He let a child treat you badly.
You don't expect him to do anything about the fact you're being blamed for his absolute horror of a daughter.

That's not treating you well. That's someone who is nice to everyone for an easy life.

Yes possibly, he is nice to everyone for an easy life.

Years ago I would have been stressed by his lack of action - but not now. She’s an adult and responsible for her own behaviour.

I don’t like being held responsible for her poor behaviour and don’t think I should be. I would not be praised if she did good so think it should work both ways.

can you tell your colleague this?

In your post you say you are angry and ask who is being unreasonable. There is a long back story about other people and what they have or haven’t done.

First up are you asking who is responsible for your anger? Because it isn’t just one person and it isn’t about just the work place.

In terms of the workplace your colleague isn’t doing anything wrong. He isn’t bringing a non work related issue into the workplace. However at this work event his wife was there and she behaved in some way that made you feel something. But you don’t describe what she did and you don’t explicitly say that it was her behaviour that caused your anger. If you want advice then you need to unpick and explain that.

It is fairly clear that your anger isn’t just from this one evening and how this woman you don’t have much interaction treated you. The anger is linked to the behaviour of your step daughter, husband and his ex wife. Since you say 2 of those people aren’t part of you life, and neither is your colleague’s wife, that really implies your issue is with one person. That person is your husband.

In reality a lot of your anger is about people you have no relationship with, your step daughter, your husband’s ex and your colleague’s wife. No relationship means you have no influence or control over what they do. You also have no responsibility or accountability to anyone for what they do.

The bottom line is that this is about your relationship with your husband and your anger is linked to resentment about his decisions and behaviour as a parent. Which have impacted you and over which you have had no say. I think your recourse is to at least get your husband to acknowledge this and apologise. If that isn’t enough you have decisions to make. If he can’t do that he is unlikely to change the way he parents and is with his daughter, which isn’t going to end just because she is an adult.

I would speak to your colleague about his wife’s attitude towards you. She had no business making you uncomfortable at a work social event. I think it’s understandable that the mother of a bullied child would feel antagonistic towards someone she perceives to be the parent of the perpetrator but she obviously doesn’t understand your role in this. He owes you an apology on her behalf.

The adults raising her

I think bullying has so much fallout and the effects remain for years, sometimes lifelong. Unfortunately you are associated with an extremely difficult time in your colleague's family life. It doesn't make you responsible but i think you have to accept that the girl's mother probably thinks you are part of a particular poor parenting setup. You almost have to accept that, as it's part of what your stepdaughter has caused. She is to blame, as are her parents, particularly your husband if he just denied the whole thing and refused to address it at the time.
Your colleague's wife doesn't need to concern herself with how you feel about this, because her hurt relates to what your family did to hers.
You're focusing completely on the wrong person here.

Thank you very much for this response. It’s very helpful and you’ve highlighted something I was struggling with.

It’s not really about my colleague’s wife - I understand why she is still upset and why I would be an obvious target for her anger. Although I’ve made I clear I’m a non-involved step parent it must be difficult to accept I didn’t have any involvement. I truly didn’t and did try to get my DH to address it.

As Christmas approaches I may need to see
Mary at family events. I only usually see her at Christmas. This is brewing a feeling of discomfort and anxiety. There are unresolved issues that I can ignore most of the time but when forced to be face to face come to the fore.

Just let it go. Someone had too much to drink and behaved like a twat. It happens.

As long as your colleague is decent and it's not affecting your work relationship, it's all noise.

She’s an adult. Also teen bullies know that bullying is wrong - often their parents are not bad people, just unable to change their child’s behaviour.

If the issue is the way your colleague's wife treated you speak to him. Tell him you felt uncomfortable that his wife seems to hold you responsible for Mary's bullying but I thought we were all good about how I had no influence and I was equally as appalled by her behaviour at the time. I would therefore appreciate it going forward if your wife didn't go out of her way to make me feel uncomfortable in a work setting. (I know it's a cop out to tell him but I assume there is no way to directly address it with her unless yoh could ask him whether it would be worth a conversation).

She was a teen when this bullying event happened. She’s now a young adult.

Both of her parents are partly to blame for her bullying. DH could have done something. His ex wife actively encouraged her bad behaviour towards me for one.

I used to be married to a 'nice guy'. Until I realised nice didn't actually mean nice. It meant cowardly avoid conflict at all costs to yourself even when this has a negative impact on your loved ones. I don't go near 'nice and laid back' any more.

You are the adult here. And now so is she. So you can tell her that you think she is a bully and that her behaviour is unacceptable to you. You don’t have to tiptoe around her because seemingly everyone else does.

My daughter was so badly bullied we had to move schools.

Although it's not the most mature reaction, I have to be honest and say if I bumped into her step mother at a works event I would probably have just ignored her, and possibly gjven her the side eye. It was a very difficult time and I couldn't just pretend everything was fine.

Your OH sounds a waste of space for allowing his daughter to bully someone.

I’m sorry you and your daughter suffered at the hands of a bully.

Ive used the term step parent/mother here for ease of explaining but I don’t consider myself a step parent to her. She’s my husband’s daughter and nothing to me.

@Likewhatever you’re right we are both adults but she lacks any emotional intelligence or maturity so a conversation would do nothing. This may change as she matures but she’s definitely not ready yet.

I understand why you’re angry to be blamed, but I also understand why the mother of the bullied one feels so angry with any adults connected with Mary. She probably feels that you could have done more to influence your partner to deal better with Mary's behaviour and stop the bullying. Only you know if that is true.

I would have made it clear to the mother that I sympathised but sadly I had been unable to do anything about it. You could still communicate that.

So your stepdaughter has 2 useless parents and a stepmum who had nothing to do with her, maybe there is a reason she hasn’t turned out to be very nice

Did you have DC with your DH @DearHelper

You should have stopped your first sentence after 2 useless parents, Her behaviour is not my doing.

At the end of the day you had to put up with one evening of feeling uncomfortable, the bullied girls mother will have had months of listening to her daughter break her heart over Mary and her bullying so I think you have got off very lightly.

The more you try and deny any responsibility for Mary the more I feel sorry for the bullied girls mother, she must have been at the end of her tether when none of the adults in Mary's family seemed to give a shit that Mary was a vile bully and just said it wasn't their problem.

It’s interesting how the posts are starting to allude to her behaviour being partly my fault.

If tables were turned and she was winning awards for being the loveliest you can be damn sure a step mum wouldn’t get any recognition or praise.

Please be assured I didn’t get out of anything lightly.

I very much feel for the bullied child’s mother. But the blame lies mostly at Mary’s mother and partly at DH as the NRP. As a partner and later wife of DH she made my life pretty miserable for a long time. Even if I had put my opinion to her it wouldn’t have made a jot of difference.

Interesting that your comments are getting increasingly hostile and now saying I escaped lightly. Really not the case.

At least it's showing you where the other mum's behaviour is coming from. It's inconceivable to some that you aren't somehow to blame. Add in the fact that you were the only one available to bear the brunt of her frustration, the night ended up where it did.

Plus, this is Mumsnet , a step mum's role is in the wrong.

I think the wider question you're asking is how responsible should a step parent be for a child's behaviour.

This probably depends on the age of the child since you've known them, and how often you have them.

Children are a product of the people around them, firstly their own parents and secondly their step parents.

Having two useless parents and then a step parent who wants nothing to do with her, isn't likely to result in good behaviour from the child.

So, having read the comments on this thread, i do think a step parent is responsible too, on a much smaller level than the parents absolutely, but a bit.

I also think if you're not prepared to be a step parent, you shouldn't get in to a relationship with someone with young kids. Because it's not fair on the child.

Thanks for your points - a little correction is needed.

Her behaviours towards me were the reason I decided after 6 years that I no longer wanted to have anything to do with her. Until then I’d tried everything. Literally everything. It wasn’t like I decided from day one I didn’t want to know Mary.

Even after my decision to disengage I still cooked for her, did laundry, cleaned her room, washed her bedding, etc. so even though I had emotionally disengaged I still made sure she was not disadvantaged when at her dads. Even up to the last time I saw her I was still trying to some extent but her final tantrum has written me off.