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.

It’s not “an en suite bedroom” - it is DSD’s room. This is the root of the issue.

So what are you going to do OP? Do you accept that the answer is no, your SD's bedroom is not available for use as a guest room?

This seems to be the crux of the issue. The OP simply cannot accept that this bedroom is not spare or a guest room. It is her SD's bedroom and her husband/partner/boyfriend has paid handsomely to ensure that it is so. She either accepts it and lets it go or she moves on. From this thread and her previous one (I can't comment on the others as I haven't read them), it seems clear that despite her protests the OP has an issue with her SD and her husband's constant support of her. It won't change so she needs to accept that and learn to live with it.

To be clear - you would want your mum to have her room even if SD was there for Christmas?

This for me is the bit that gets really cheeky. SD likely doesn't give a toss whether your mum is there so why should she be the one who is inconvenienced? It should be you or your DD

The simplest solution is surely to just move the baby back in with the parents, since apparently this was the situation until fairly recently anyway. It's unlikely to cause sleep regression and surely people do this all the time when visiting relatives or going on holiday. Not a big deal.

In fact if OP decided to take the children to stay with her mother, where would they sleep? Dedicated bedrooms for all? Somehow I doubt it.

You’ve had a problem with the extension since your partner had it built. You know it isn’t there to be used a guest room, by your ‘own mother’ or not, and that trying to use it as one would cause conflict.

You resent that your stepdaughter didn’t want to share a bedroom with your daughter, and that her father made it so she didn’t have to. I suspect this was an attempt by you to make it happen.

This does seem to provide further context. Why did the OP want the SD to share with her daughter?

Take it with a pinch of salt op. There are some very sad individuals on this thread who clearly have too much time on their hands and have gone through your old posts to try and dredge up more assumptions about your family. It’s incredibly weird.

You will also be instantly unreasonable in some people’s view purely for being a stepparent. Being a stepparent who is trying to assert boundaries is unthinkable.

Anyone with a shred of common sense will see how stupid it is to leave a good room empty while everyone else squeezes in together and makes do. If your dsd isn’t there you need to seriously question your husbands logic on this. If she is then I think you’ll have to go back to the drawing board.

Have you never read a post on Mumsnet and thought that the situation described sounds familiar to a previous one and checked? I don't think that's weird or unusual.

Regardless, as many posters keep repeating, IT DOES NOT MATTER whether you or the OP or anyone else thinks that that it is ridiculous to leave the SD's bedroom empty. Her husband has made it very clear that the room is not to be used as a guest room. End of discussion.

The OP can think it's stupid all she wants, but it won't change, so why ruin Christmas for herself stressing over it when she can simply put the baby back in her bedroom instead.

"Might not be in use"

It is SD's room. As such, it should be considered used at all times. Not an en suite room for your relatives. By putting your mom in there, you would be keeping SD out of her own home. You have multiple other options.

Of course it's unreasonable.

Do you think your husband enjoys you starting shit about his daughter and her having a place in his home every holiday?

You've said your oldest doesn't have much paternal involvement. Yet you're trying to lessen your SD's place in her father's life. You might want to think about that.

No. I’m really not that invested. If I’m going to comment advice on a thread I take it at face value of what’s been written in the post. I’m not going to do a deep dive into someone’s posting history.

OP asked if she was being unreasonable to suggest the UNUSED bedroom be borrowed by her own mother for a few nights over Xmas. The majority of people have said she isn’t. And if I were her I’d be having a serious conversation about the dynamics within the household because the message he’s sending is that his daughters wants and needs trump everyone else’s.

Good point. Surely at some stage the husband is going to get really tired of the OP causing drama over his daughter every holiday.

I'm not sure it is the majority: I haven't counted up. (if there is a poll, I have blocked polls!)

But in any event - a significant number of posters (whether or not the majority) do think that OP is being unreasonable, especially as there are a number of other options such as moving the baby in with them. So it is not a slamdunk vote for OP and against DSD (and DH).

But the bedroom may not be unused. That is as yet unknown. And if the OP decides that her mother is going to stay there, that sends a clear message to the SD doesn't it? Suddenly her bedroom is not available so she can't stay anyway.

It's been gone over again and again on this thread. The dynamics of the household are not going to change. They are what they are the OP can either accept it or not. Her husband has determined that this bedroom is for his daughter's exclusive use. And that is the end of it. The OP is just upsetting herself causing drama over this when there is no point.

I only tend to check once someone else has already commented as I assume most posts like these would be on a name change but the odd one they keep a past thread or two and it triggers a memory of a post that sounds awfully a lot like the same person.

Once you add their history together rather than their cherry pickings you tend to be able to give more accurate advice.

But even in the op she states her husband says no. So really she has no choice anyway. She either accepts his No or fights against it with him. Regardless of the step daughter.

A better post would have been more along the lines of we have no guest room for my mother to sleep, my dh doesn’t want any (even if that’s a small lie but still paints the picture) of the children giving up their rooms. What should I do?

She wants them to be tightly bonded as sisters. Her daughter wants this, the stepdaughter doesn’t.

OP’s request may seem reasonable on the surface, but the wider context is very much relevant here.

She knows the bedroom and en suite were built for the exclusive use of her stepdaughter, and how important it is for her DP and stepdaughter. She knows it wasn’t designed to be a guest bedroom, and that her partner and stepdaughter would not allow it to be used as one. She knew that trying to secure it for her mother would only create problems (not least because her stepdaughter may be there to use it).

The OP seems to have had a lot of expectations regarding her SD and it looks like some resentment has built up because the SD refuses to go along with them. To embrace OP's family as her own and to treat her daughter as a sister. It's a lot to put on a fourteen year old.

Yes I realise this and have said in my earlier posts that if she’s there then they will need another plan.

However if she isn’t there then it is bonkers for the room to lay empty while everyone else struggles. The dh should never have agreed to this. It immediately sets the DSD aside from the rest of the family. She gets her own extension that nobody else is allowed to use ever despite her only being there a few days a month. But the rest have to suck it up and share when needed.

He is obviously feeling some sort of guilt and trying to overcompensate by agreeing to these silly conditions. Yes she deserves her own space. No she shouldn’t get to dictate how it’s used when she isn’t there. And op has every right to question this as she’s part of the family too - along with her kids who seem to be second class citizens in this setup.

But he has agreed to it and not just that, he has gone to considerable expense to ensure it. So evidently it matters a lot to him. OP says he will not entertain discussions about it.

I'm not sure how you can say she deserves her own space but also should have no say on how it is used when she is not there. It is her bedroom, not a guest room and the husband has said that this is not negotiable.

It doesn't matter if he's overcompensating or whatever. He's made the decision and that's that.

I don't see how the other kids are being treated as second class citizens. The OP's daughter has her own bedroom too, and the smaller two seem to share. That seems fine to me. No doubt as the little ones grow and the older girls move on things will change.

He didn’t ‘agree’ to it, he established it as that when he specifically spent money to have it built. He gets to dictate whether it’s used when she isn’t there, and he’s told OP no.

She is different to the rest of the family, and her individual needs (counting emotional needs) aren’t automatically going to be the same as the needs of the other children. This particular family doesn’t emulate a nuclear one, has never tried to, and doesn’t have to. OP isn’t her mother, and OP’s eldest isn’t her sister. Her father recognized how important it was for her, and familial relationships, to have her own established space, and so be provided that for her. He had a bedroom built for his daughter, not a bedroom that can also be used as a guest room.

OP has questioned it more than once, and every time she’s failed to get her way. Unless she’s prepared for her relationship to end over this issue, she needs to stop trying to assert dominance she doesn’t have.

Was this obtained via advanced searching the Op @NoCommentingFromNowOn ?

I think your last point is crucial. It's been made repeatedly clear this isn't up for negotiation so continuing to push it is pointless and likely just upsetting everyone. Better to write this one off as a battle that can't be won. This isn't healthy for OP and it's clearly not making her happy. It's setting herself up in opposition to her husband's daughter and that isn't fair.

For the OP's own good it's really better to let it go and stop upsetting herself over something she can't change and that will likely resolve itself in a few years anyway when both SD and her daughter go to college, move out etc.

If you search the OP's username her other thread comes up via advanced search. Apparently there are other threads under a different username too. I'm aware of another poster with a very similar situation but I'm not sure they're the same person because AFAIK that other poster doesn't have two small children even though the situations seem extraordinarily similar.

There are probably lots of posters with blended families and similar situations, who post regularly on Stepparenting.