Elder daughter father giving rules about my younger kids

[Dazedandconfusec]

My elder daughter is 12 and Grade 5 piano and flute and began guitar in an afterschool club at school last year. She gave up violin when the teacher moved house but still has two violins which she occasionally gets out.

My ex has facilitated her music and has bought all of the instruments and paid for lessons but I obviously had to facilitate the lessons for flute; the piano teacher comes to the house.

My younger daughter elder daughter’s half sister, has now started piano at school. Elder daughter has locked piano as her dad has instructed that my younger children cannot use the piano or have use of the other instruments.

Why would your DD be upset if the piano moves to her father's house and another piano is installed in your house? Her siblings are not playing her precious piano, she still has a piano to have her lessons on that they can all share

Not in this house, it isn’t. This piano isn’t communal property for OP’s family. What you think it should be for doesn’t change the reality of what it is there for. It’s there for the exclusive use of their shared daughter. The baby grand is not something her siblings get to share and take a turn on.

Pianos can be personal property. My mother had/has her own that my brother and I didn’t and don’t use. It was never a big deal, or a deal at all tbh.

OP your attitude here is mental.

Either you should be taking the piano key from your eldest and telling her there will be no more locking of it, or you should be saying to your ex that he needs to take that piano back to his house and you will get another that everyone can use.

It's absolutely unreasonable to allow him to control things that happen in your household in this manner.

My daughter has half-siblings too and none of the parents in our situation would allow or expect any of this.

Well it's not your house. And if you are lucky enough to have money and space for a piano apiece, spare a thought for the mere mortals who live on Planet Normal where we can't just go buying personal pianos for each child because a dickhead who doesn't live there wishes his kid's siblings didn't exist and wants to exclude them somehow.

Some things are totally personal and private, the frigging behemoth in the living room that makes beautiful music is an exception. If knobhead wants to control everyone who touches it, he can keep it in whichever one of his homes he finds most convenient. Meanwhile, OP has a normal family to run.

Why can you not just say that it’s your house, your rules and your rule is that your children share. That’s it and all about it. If she can’t share her piano then she can’t use it herself.

I didn’t claim it was. I’m repeating what OP has said - this piano isn’t communal property for her family to use. It’s there for her daughter. Behemoth or not, it isn’t an exception. Like it or lump it 🤷🏻‍♀️

The father appears to have done this because his daughter doesn’t want her siblings using it, and wanted him to say to her mother what she’s unable to.

OP has to either accept this, or have him remove the piano. She’s decided on the former, and is going to get the younger children a keyboard.

Given that her husband suggested getting another piano though, it seems they do have the ability to do just that. I guess that means they’re not on ‘planet normal’ either.

The oldest is hardly the golden child. She's paid scholastically for her mom's new family and move. She's got a sibling trying to use a £9000 gift from her dad to her. Her dad has stepped in to protect eldest from having her things be forcibly shared. She's got a different dad and she's been made quite aware of that by her stepdad's family. There is background to this.

If OP has already decided that she's going to commandeer a piano for only one of her children, she wouldn't be asking for opinions here.

The father doesn't live there and he doesn't get to dictate who does what in OP's home. And a 12 year old doesn't get to dictate that only she uses the massive, multi thousand pound instrument sitting in their communal area when she's got younger siblings who are also learning. That's life with siblings. I'm the youngest of three, I got the smaller bedroom growing up and gradually got promoted as the others left. That's how it is.

Either knobhead takes the piano into his own home (apparently he's got a selection so I'm sure he can find somewhere), OP offers to partly buy him out so they co-own this piano (I mean, that's frigging ridiculous but it removes what tenuous claim he's trying to use) and if neither of those is acceptable, she takes control as a parent and makes it clear that there are some things which can be obtained for each individual person's sole use, but a bleeping piano is not among them for reasons too obvious to state for a fourth time. She's providing the storage so she can set terms to make it worthwhile.

ETA: Keyboards are not pianos and the more they learn, the more they'll realise this. And just because you can throw out £9k at will and lose several square feet in floor space because it pleases your 12 year old and the ex who doesn't live there does not in any way oblige you to.

Is it not a gift? Since when do people who give gifts then dictate what happens with them?
This I presume is your home where the piano is? Then your home, your rules. Honestly he is being unreasonable.

Did you say the piano was worth £9,000! How old are the younger children? I kind of understand why he wouldn't want the other children playing it. Its clearly very expensive.

Did you say the piano was worth £9,000! How old are the younger children? I kind of understand why he wouldn't want the other children playing it. Its clearly very expensive.

A PC definitely is a personal possession. I had one, as did adult son, until replaced by laptops a few months ago. I would not share my PC with the household. I might let someone use it, but it wouldn’t be a given that someone could just use it when they wanted. What about a car in your garage? If someone in the family didn’t have their own car, and not feasible to buy their own due to room on the property, would the car owner be forced to share with any siblings? Yes, a piano might take up a lot of room, but it’s irrelevant if it’s a gift presented to them where permission has already been granted by OP to have it in her home.

I think my elder daughter would prefer that her piano is not shared but wouldn’t have challenged me in this way unilaterally.

Is there any chance that your elder DD doesn't want her siblings using the piano but hasn't said anything to you but has mentioned it to her dad?

This is all very Mildred Pierce. I think you are doing your daughter a disservice pandering to this behaviour. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a top notch Yamaha electric piano with weighted keys for a 12 year old, that can be shared with the younger children.

OP, I was your eldest daughter: Pianist, played other instruments at a high level. I went on to study music at university and am now a music teacher, so it’s my whole career.

I always had to ‘earn’ my instruments. Starting with a crappy keyboard, which turned into a decent upright piano once I passed Grade 2. I then got a baby grand when I was accepted into my music degree and had piano as my minor instrument. Same with my woodwind instruments. I have an extremely expensive clarinet which my own DC won’t touch until they get to at least grade 3-4. I will buy them a beginner model until then. They might not even want to learn it, it will be their choice.

My DSis loved music but never had the patience to practise and do grades, so she stayed on the crappy keyboard. She eventually learned drums and got a drum kit, which was all hers (I never played it).

The baby grand was definitely ‘mine’, in that no one else played it. My parents sold it when I moved abroad, because no one else in the house had a use for it anymore.

All that to say - Buy the keyboard for your other kids and then upgrade if they practise and pass their exams.

Is he paying the rent for the space his piano is taking up? I feel sorry for your DD stuck in the middle wanting to please her father.

Since the sibling wants to use a pricey piano eldest's dad gifted to eldest. She is likely afraid to say no and her dad is shielding her from the fallout by setting boundaries for his daughter.

I'd be more concerned by your elder child's behaviour to her sibling, a pretty awful way to treat her brother.

It’s in her updates. Op isn’t commandeering it for her youngest to use, that’s the point. If she tries, he can remove it, and if he removes it the oldest daughter can choose to spend more time with her father/at her father’s house where it is. That’s the outcome that OP explicitly doesn’t want.

It isn’t OP’s piano. She cannot force either her daughter or her ex to allow her younger children to use it. Her eldest daughter, like it or not, does get a say over it. OP does not.

The stepfather didn’t suggest a keyboard, he suggested another piano.

Lol. Clearly, it was a bit too subtle in retrospect, but my point was more that if he’s going to be a horrible, petty cunt, who wants to encourage selfish and divisive behaviour in his daughter, then OP can react accordingly, and doesn’t need to be cowed by him throwing his weight around. I wasn’t actually thinking she’d get him to pay a bill. 😂 Apologies if that wasn’t as clear as I assumed.

He can’t break and enter into OP’s house to take the piano, even if technically it belongs to him. He can ask nicely to retrieve it at a time of OP’s convenience. And he can explain to his daughter that he’s depriving her of the use of her piano in her own home because it’s more important to him to control the OP and selfishly keep his toys to himself than it is to him to foster her development in music, or model treating others well.

So would I, if she was really being that selfish. That’s not an attitude I’d want to encourage at all. But it may well not be her being selfish, but instead she may be afraid of what Dad will say if she doesn’t do his bidding. Sounds like he’s not above being coercive.

Wait how do you know it’s £9k I can’t see this anywhere?

Really? Of course siblings should be taught to share their possessions with their siblings, from a young age even.

My DS has an extremely high powered gaming PC and set up. When DD needed a more powerful computer than her laptop to run software for her DT coursework, she was told she could use DS’s. I would have had zero time for DS had he said no.

Likewise when DS is old enough to drive, he will share his sister’s car until she takes it to university (if she does take it).

We are a family, we share our possessions. My DD reminds me of this value I have instilled in them when she’s rummaging through my wardrobe for bags and shoes!

I disagree that there’s never been any abuse. I think this situation looks like one created by someone who is coercively controlling. I think anyone who openly says their ex should have preserved their life in aspic and never gone on to have new relationships and other children is controlling, and anyone getting their 12 year old child to tell her mother that her siblings are not to use the piano that’s in their house is also controlling and coercing the 12yo. Sorry, but I think it sounds really fucked up. She’s going to end up a mass of stress and confusion with this going on.

Does he also try and tell you what to have for dinner on Friday nights? Or who to be friends with? He seems to think he’s entitled to criticise your relationship and your fertility, even though you obviously aren’t with him now. That’s outrageous!

Ah, my apologies. I believed you more likely to actually mean that over the more…unwise alternative. I remain unsure as to what point OP would be making by levying a threat they both will know to be entirely hyperbolic and empty. That would be OP lashing out, which is not the same thing as being uncowed.

Who said anything about breaking and entering? Presumably he can employ a company to arrange the removal. Not sure why that’s supposed to be onerous, unless you anticipate OP trying to keep hold of it?

OP’s daughter doesn’t want to share it, and OP cannot make her want to, or make her actually do it. She isn’t going to blame her father for it being removed, but her mother and siblings. If anything she will see her father as being the one standing up for her. She can also choose to do exactly what OP does not want her to do, and spend more time with her father in order to use the piano at one of his houses.