Dreading step-daughter coming home

[AquaAnsie]

DH and I have been together for 7 years, married for 3. He has one DD, she's 24. I have 4 DC, DS is 26 then DDs who are 25, 23, and 20.
My two middle DC have autism, they have always really struggled with socialising and my 23 and 20 year olds live at home, my 25 year old lives 5 minute walk away.
My children and DSD went to school together, she was a year below my eldest DD and a year above my middle DD. My DD's really struggled in school, which wasn't made any better by bullying. DSD was part of the group who did a lot of the bullying (all very sporty, very pretty, middle class girls picking on those who hadn't quite settled, were from lower income families). DSD claims she was never the one doing the bullying but my DDs really struggle when she is around.

My 23 year old really struggles with her autism, she hates it when DSD is here, basically never leaves her room, she is very intimidated by DSD. DD also struggles with routine changes massively and is easily overstimulated.
When DSD is here, she plays music all the time, goes out with her friends and comes back at 2/3 am (she isn't loud but DD is a light sleeper and this will wake DD up and scare her to the point she won't sleep again). My DS also puts on an act when she is here, tries to buddy up with her BF and basically ignores his sisters and says they have to grow up.

Over the years there has been a lot of back and forth. We went out a walk one year and my eldest DD was complaining she was tired and DSD loudly muttered "if you lost weight you wouldn't be tired", she apologised but DD is very insecure so this has stuck with her (DD is a size 14/16 so not exactly big or anything, but DSD is a size 6 and very judgy of any overweight). In an argument about 2 years ago she also shouted at my DD's "You need to grow up, get a real job and stop getting my dad to fund your life". This obviously left sour taste but she again apologised.

DSD has a bit of a superiority complex, she is an Oxbridge grad, now doing her training contract for a law firm in London making crazy money for a grad (she's a couple years behind other her age on average as she did a gap year then a year abroad at uni). She looks down on my family as my DDs didn't go to uni (well DS did and he is the only one she actually gets on with).

On Sunday she and her boyfriend are coming back for a few days, they've only been dating since spring and her dad has met him but none of the rest of us have. As if DSD being home won't cause my girls enough stress, a total stranger in the house will make it 10x worse.

I just know their will be an argument, my DDs will get upset, DS will side with DSD as he thinks it makes him look smart.

DH never has any input, he thinks his DD can do no wrong, total princess in his eyes. He never outright agrees with her but he never tells her to say sorry or calls her out.

AIBU to be absolutely dreading her coming back even if it is just for 3/4 days? I find her so hard to be around at times!

OP, you are right to do whatever is in your power to support your dc with autism yourself. Your DH is extremely kind to be helping you with rent for your 25 year old.

I feel you aren’t unreasonable to be dreading the DSD’s stay as it puts your 23year old DD at a real disadvantage for reasons to do with her disability. and this causes disharmony in the household, the brunt of which will be on you. It must be awful for you to have to see her suffer. But nevertheless, the onus is on you to prepare to somehow smooth DSD’s visit over for everybody’s sake.

Where you are going wrong is blaming the DSD for anything at all. You are focussing on her instead of how to try develop, in tiny steps, your own DD’s tolerance and resilience to normal adult life.

DSD’s life growing up was completely different to that of your children growing up and she made the best of the good hand she was dealt in terms of education, friendships and future career. It is good that she is bright, friendly, confident and successful but she too will be facing challenges at some points in her life which you will be unaware of.
The couple of unthoughtful comments she made a few years ago (for which she apologised) should be put to one side now and that’s what you should be helping your 23 year old to do along with helping her put up with the music, the stranger and the late homecoming all of which are normal in a household of twenty something year olds. Maybe you could sleep in her room with her if the late night comings and goings make her feel scared and anxious.

I feel that if you can’t provide the new coping strategies needed, or if your DD is immune to them, then it would be better for you both to remove yourselves and stay with a friend or relative - or indeed a hotel for the duration of DSD’s stay with her DF. What about the other property your DH owns…is that available or maybe a cosy Airbnb? I do hope you can find a way to ease the situation for your DD without having to do that. Good luck with it all OP.

It does sound like you just don't like DSD which can't be very nice for your DH who lives with your children, no doubt accommodating their needs all year.

She was an adult when her home was taken over. Losing a parent young doesn’t give her Carte Blanche to be a bitch.

Wow. There are more than one of them.

I think you'll find it's the OP and her scrounging children who are at fault here

I fail to see how SD is a horrible bitch, like some people here claim. 2 unkind comments over several years? While OPs DD accused SD of bullying, even though she was actually never accused when the bullying was taking place, and it seems it's just because she was friendly with many people, including some bullies.
And when she visits her own home, some of the adults living there, bankrolled by her father, show how much they hate her by avoiding her and not leaving their rooms, plus making demands how she can act and when she can come home or not. Sure makes SD feel welcome.

I think this is a good start

I think you also need to call out your DDs if they are rude to her when she is here.

More fundamentally - looking ahead to the future, when DSD may get married and have children who won't be perfectly quiet and work around your DDs one of two things will need to happen:

1. your DDs will have to become more flexible. I can't believe you thought your DSD's boyfriend shouldn't speak his own language

2. If your DDs autism is so severe that she really needs to control every aspect of her environment to function, perhaps you need to live separately or work towards her moving to supported accommodation

What's non negotiable is your DSD being welcome in her father's home

I also wonder how happy your DH can be living in this environment where he also presumably can't play music or have a friend over - is it worth asking him?

Her father {because of her Mother's death} has a load of insurance to pay off the mortgage and fund the freeloading non working new wife's adult children.
No wonder she's annoyed.
Freddie freeloaders are being funded by her mother's death.

And the house she grew up in is now their house, and they would prefer she stay in a hotel over Christmas!

I find it truly mental that OP married a man who’s daughter (allegedly) bullied her kids at school, demonstrating a total lack of concern for them, but at the same time has total tunnel vision and insists their needs come before everyone else’s at all times.

Or is this a long waiting game for revenge on this young woman? By making her feel unwelcome in her own childhood home she can’t even bring a boyfriend home to meet her dad, have friends over or even play music. That you and your adult children only live in (mortgage free and one has their rent paid for her elsewhere) because your stepdaughter’s mother died when she was 4. If so, it’s a doozy. That would cut like a knife for lots of people.

The other thing I would add to what you can do and encourage your daughters to do is see it from her perspective more - for example

We moved in together to DHs home in summer 2019, this was the end of DSDs gap year. within about 2 weeks of starting uni she had met a guy (5 years older than her), she ended up living with him during covid and continued between his and halls, just coming to visit.

To me it sounds pretty clear that she didn't feel comfortable in her own home at 19 years old because of you and your kids. But this doesn't really seem to have occurred to you?

I think it probably makes your DH very sad that she didn't continue coming home at all during university holidays which are lengthy with Oxbridge.

You might feel she has any easier life than your DDs and in some respects she does but she is still a person with feelings and she has had some tough times too - like losing her mother and now her home to a load of step siblings who hate her

It's unreal.
I think OP is jealous of the beautiful, clever accomplished daughter- only her son has any nous about him, and she even moans about the son siding with the actual Daughter.

Blended families just never work in my opinion.YOU failed your daughter by marrying the father of someone who “bullied” her. Your HUSBAND failed his daughter by marrying you and moving your family into her childhood home and financially supporting you all.

It just never works, I feel sorry for all the children involved.

Mangling is such a good term.
''Blended'' is a ridiculous term.
More like ''oil and water''.

I can well believe that he wasn't aware of these 'complex needs' at the time he moved the OP in and married her. He probably thought they were just normal teens, not as high-achieving as his DD, which would be pretty standard for most kids, but still at least average and fairly capable of functioning perfectly normally in life. Not going into meltdown with paranoia when someone speaks Italian in front of them, not incapable of going for a walk without getting tired, (I doubt they were attempting to climb Snowdon) not whingeing about feeling intimidated by his DD, not having to creep around his own house in silence in case they get 'scared'.

I suspect what has happened is that as they've got older and their relative lack achievement has become more and more evident in comparison to his DD, the diagnoses have arrived along with the copious excuses for why they can't possibly be expected to continue in higher education or work full time, or have as many friends or boyfriends, or live independently or pay their own rent. The better his daughter does, the more the OP will pathologise and excuse her own children's relative lack of success in life and demand that the household revolves around adjusting to their ND needs. I imagine she hopes this will stop any direct comparisons, where clearly all four of her own children will be found lacking, and three of them quite markedly so. So she goes all out to make sure everyone focuses on their autism, because it's easier than having to admit that they just aren't as clever, resilient or popular.

The irony is that the OP insists her DDs could not possibly have managed to go to university because of their autism so it's unfair to compare them to this Oxbridge graduate that 'poops unicorn rainbows'. But autism and ADHD (or just the general Gen Z affliction of collapsing mentally and emotionally when faced with what should be ordinary everyday challenges) not only never stopped anyone getting to any uni in recent years, but it never even stopped anyone getting into Oxbridge. It's not her DD's autism per se that is stopping them achieving in education and in life. It's their lack of intellectual ability, presumably. And that must sting.

'Over the past 15 years, disability at Cambridge has increased more than fivefold, and is now declared by some 6,000 students (roughly one in four). The two major areas of growth have been ‘mental health conditions’ and ‘specific learning difficulties’. Many students register anxiety as the cause, yet the university and the NHS have neither the bandwidth nor the incentive to stress-test the claims. In four years, the number of students with ADHD has doubled, and is now approaching a thousand. As a result, the university’s Accessibility and Disability Resource Centre has gone into overdrive, mandating changes in teaching and examination across the board.'

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/decline-and-fall-how-university-education-became-infantilised/

one hell of a fricking drip feed that DSd Mum died when she was a kid!

I feel sorry for your DSD. She had the absolute trauma of losing her Mum when she was still a child. This will have hugely impacted her, made life challenging - no wonder people go out for her way to praise her, they might remember the sad years! Her childhood home is now not her own and she is unlikely to feel welcome when she is there.

You are so fixated on your own DD and making their life easier, you are not considering things from DSD point of view.

I have now, and adjusted my response - see above.

Your DSD sounds like a nightmare. Take heart, though - if her experience as a corporate law junior is anything like the half dozen I've known, within a few years she'll be stressed, burned out and overweight from sitting at a desk for 10 - 14 hours per day. Hopefully that experience will make her humbler and more empathetic. But even if it doesn't, she'll likely be too tired to bully your DD, or in fact won't even be able to interact much with your DD, as she'll be spending her Christmases working.

Also from the son’s perspective, he probably isn’t only agreeing with his stepsister to “seem clever” but because his spent as long as he can remember coming second to his sisters’ needs. Judging by the OP’s determination to put her daughters’ needs first with no expectation on them to adapt to other people in the household, I’d guess he’s put up with a lot over the years and he’s human, it’s going to be a drag at times.

And I say that as someone who’s 2 older children both have autism. My daughter finds day to day life much easier than my son- who has other issues too- and while I’ve always tried very hard to not blindly put him first at the expense of my daughter (the 3rd child is a teeny baby so different needs to my teenagers) I know she’s felt pushed out at times, especially when my son was little and harder to manage.

You need to work on your reading comprehension.

The only bully we can infer from this thread is OP.

A child loses her mother, lucky to have a loving dad.
Manages to apply herself and to be a high achiever. (Probably through a lot of masking)

Still a teen & finding her way as a young woman, dad meets a new woman.

New mother figure in her life.

Chance of having siblings.

But, accused/ambushed about bullying at a family dinner, in public.

She's outnumbered, resented, walking on eggshells, step children's feelings take priority, no support, all the new females jealous of her, step brother is chastised for being on her side.

Good thing to come out of this is you agreeing with @DaniMontyRae 's comment and others, to apologise.

You're not doing your kids any favours by behaving the way you have.

You can turn things around and be a happy and supportive family. Let bygones be bygones and start on a new page.

The fact that DSD still visits, talks to you, goes on family walks is credit to her, considering how unloved by you she is.

I seriously cannot believe there are more people like the OP. Have you read the thread? OP and her daughters are the arseholes. DSD has done nothing wrong. Even by the convoluted admission of OP, during her drip feed. OP is lucky she’s not out on her arse from her behaviour. I also suspect it is DSD’s house and not DH’s thanks to DSD’s inheritance.

What an absolutely unmitigated mess!

OP you really are something else. I feel incredibly sorry for DSD in all of this nightmare.

I was starting to think this thread couldn't possibly be true but actually I think @TwigletsAndRadishes had nailed it. That's most likely exactly how this played out.

I think OP has done a real number on this poor unsuspecting dh & he must be very sad that his daughter is not welcome on her own home. I'm even suspicious about the reason why he travels to London to visit her every 6 weeks or so & whether this was orchestrated by OP as a helpful suggestion which of course ensured DSD would not be in the house every 6 weeks.

I think that rental house is the DSD's rightful inheritance & the OPs house sale savings should be her kids inheritance. End of.

And yet again this absolutely reinforces my long held belief that 'blended' families are a huge mess in the greater majority of cases. This situation being a particular low.

Whilst funding them too.