Stepdaughter’s bedroom at Christmas

[Balletbabe]

My 14 year old stepdaughter has an en-suite bedroom at our house which she uses maybe two or three nights a month.. This room is sacrosanct and DH won’t entertain conversations about it.

Essentially she will not allow my mother to use it over Christmas even if she isn’t here.

My sister is with her in-laws.

We either put my daughter in with our youngest two, or bring baby back in with us. Either of these solutions would potentially lead to sleep regression for both the younger kids. Or we travel for just under an hour to my mother’s, taking kids away from their presents and she will then feel the need to host us.

We still have no idea if stepdaughter is even going to be here.

All DH will say is he wouldn’t want anyone in his room either and he is willing to collect her after presents and she could get Uber back.

Maybe, but I have also seen recommendations that children at boarding school always know they have their own space at home, that they can turn up any time and it's there. I can also see it as the kind of reassurance a father would give his daughter when he's bringing a new family into their lives. And it's done - he's made the commitment.

My sense is that OP is looking for any problem which can only be solved by putting DSD in her place, but there are lots of other solutions to this and to any other scenario that don't involve using DSD's bedroom. Just imagine it doesn't exist and work from there. They should honour the commitment and not make a meal out of this.

It is fair. He remodeled the house to make it so. OP wants the entire space now. She's trying very hard to push her SD out of her father's home and her dad's not having it, to his credit.

She's also put up threads with her SD as a target for online vitriol more than once. The family dynamics here are squirrelly, to say the least.

This.

But I do like the idea of giving your mum your room and making DH sleep on the sofa - might focus his mind a bit 🙂

This isn’t a bad option.
Or maybe DSD would allow her dad to stay in her room? Or you both even?

OP’s husband paid 62k precisely to accommodate his growing family, and ensure that his daughter would have her own space when she visited.

It’s useful to have the context of the back story, which OP’s previous post about her SD provides. The SD is away at boarding school and already spends a limited amount of time with her father. It’s important she has her own space in that home that’s hers. Which she has. Paid for by her father, at no detriment to her half and step siblings.

You sound so invested. And like you know the op personally and understand her intentions and motivations. It’s a bit weird to be honest. Draw your own conclusions if you must but don’t spout them about as if they are factual.

It seems like op is getting stick purely because she’s a stepparent daring to challenge the unfair special treatment her Dh is showing to his daughter. He needs to work on that because it’s very unfair to the rest of the family and actually isolates the stepchild more.

They should get whatever form of spare bed or other set up they need to be comfortable, if OP's mother's visit isn't very much a one off. No need for any drama. Sounds as if the DH is earning enough to manage a good sofa bed or whatever else is needed so that they can welcome OP's relatives when she wants that, without reneging on commitments to anyone else.

But why is it exclusively off limits when she isn’t there?

Because that's the commitment he made to his daughter.

You sound so invested. And like you know the op personally and understand her intentions and motivations. It’s a bit weird to be honest. Draw your own conclusions if you must but don’t spout them about as if they are factual.

Hardly invested. It's opinion, just like yours. I think OP is weird having issues with her SD having her own space in her father's home.

You can’t buy familial harmony though, he doesn’t just get to write a cheque and dust off his hands. You need to listen, respond and respect eachother.

As I’ve said in a pp we use my Ss’s room as an office but if he asked us not to or we thought he’d dislike it we genuinely wouldn’t. I suspect subconsciously knowing we wouldn't pressure him is why he’s fine to share his space. Now OP has put this battle line down before working on improving the dynamic it’s going to be hard to ever get her to give up the space voluntarily. And her DH also hasn’t helped by apparently throwing money at a workaround not looking at the real issue.

This is totally a control, dominance thing. Husband is treating you and yours like outsiders while also accommodating his daughter's bratish, disrespectful behaviour. Don't allow it. Can't understand why people here think OP is being unreasonable. Ridiculous

Yes, I like your approach, and I think you are very wise about battle lines. It is bad that this has been allowed to become a battle line. It will be worse if it becomes a battle the teenager loses - because then it's just about power and putting her in her place. In a few years time I'm sure she'll feel more secure in the family situation, but for now, even if promising her that space was a misstep, the family needs to find other solutions than going back on that.

With only a few weeks to go, your husband and his ex need to sort themselves out and decide where she will be spending Christmas, for everyone's clarity.

Christmas plans depend on the health of an elderly relative of DSD’s @JFDIYOLO - no one is being vague for the sake of it.

Or OP is treating DSD like an outsider, asserting dominance?

I'd say you could read it either way, and the family needs to stick with the commitments made to DSD at this point. If the rest of the family has needs that aren't being met, this should be tackled without taking from DSD.

SD only uses the en-suite bedroom 2 or 3 nights a MONTH and gets to dictate (or DH does) what else you use it for the other 29 days of the month? Hell no. Even if SD is coming for Christmas, it would still make sense to let the guest have the en-suite room. We all survived giving up our rooms for relatives at Christmas when we didnt have en-suites and lived there 100% of the time 😂 Come on now.

Problme is OP on numerous threads has bitched about her SD and has given the impression she does not like her and wants her out of perfect family and life.

Her DF is actually standing up for his daughter.
May be ask her when she is coing over Xmas but with the attitude of the SM I would run a mile. If she is coing even for 1 day then the room is not an option

Duplicate post, sorry!

What OP is asking is perfectly reasonable. Whatever arrangement you have, it's not acceptable that everyone else should be inconvenienced for a child who may not be present at the time and isn't a permanent fixture in the home. Absolutely smacks of bratish entitlement.

Absolutely this. Already mentioned earlier how op from previous threads is absolutely against dsd having anything her dd doesn’t get, to the extent of sobbing and drama because he wanted to take the dsd and 3yo to visit his side of family, and op was sobbing at unfairness of this to her daughter as it meant dsd and 3yo would have time together, but completely discounted all the time her dd and 3yo have together when dsd at boarding school.

Yep. People really need to understand the backstory.

It might have been a good idea to establish this arrangement at the beginning, maybe, but having made the commitment the family shouldn't criticize DSD for holding them to it. It's not a refugee crisis - it's a visitor to a house with plenty of rooms and plenty of people able to move to accommodate her.

The op has explained all the different permutations of room arrangements if the DSD doesn't relinquish her room and none of them are as convenient as you describe. Also arrangements change. Deal with it. Also, need to stop accomodating entitled behaviour. She'll benefit from the lesson as a result.

Agree. Even the fact of DSD being away at boarding school sheds light on the 2-3 nights a month thing - the split of time between DSD’s two homes is much more equal than it sounds from this number stated without context.

But her dad doesn’t want the room change either.

The poster suggesting that either OP’s mum or OP’s eldest DD go in with OP and that DH sleeps on the sofa (or in DSD’s room if she isn’t able to come for Xmas and is ok with her dad sleeping there) had the best idea.