Am I the Asshole for being upset that my stepdaughter came on our anniversary camping trip and ended up ruining the weekend?

[Lollylucyclark101]

I want to start by saying that I’m a stepmum, and I’ve been in my stepdaughter’s life for nearly 11 years. She was three years old when I met her, and she’ll be turning 14 in November.

I have a very good relationship with her mum, and I do a lot for my stepdaughter. I take her to and from school twice a week, cook for her, do her washing, clean her bedroom, look after her when she’s ill, and generally do all the things a parent would do. I also have an 18-year-old son. My stepdaughter comes everywhere with us—shopping trips, the cinema, family days out. We rarely get weekends to ourselves because she’s usually with us, and I’ve never had a problem with that because I genuinely love her.

Every year, my husband and I celebrate our anniversary with a trip to the Lake District. This year was supposed to be no different. However, earlier this year we found out we were going to be made homeless, so we had to cancel both a planned family holiday. All of our money had to go towards moving costs, deposits, rent, and setting up a new home.

We still have a couples holiday booked for September to celebrate ten years together and two years of marriage, but our usual anniversary trip to the Lake District had to be cancelled. Instead, we decided on a simple two-night camping trip. The plan was for it to be just me and my husband.

As soon as my stepdaughter found out, she was furious. She felt it was unfair that we were going away when she hadn’t had a holiday herself and insisted she should come too. (Despite her already going away with her mom twice this year, and another break planned in August) Honestly, I didn’t want her to come….. and we didn’t invite my son.

There is one day out of the entire year that I feel should just be for me and my husband. However, my husband thought it wouldn’t be a big deal and said we should take her.

So we did.

That meant buying an extra airbed, packing more food, and accommodating her gluten-free diet. On the day we left, I gave her a backpack and asked her to pack a couple of days’ worth of clothes, plus essentials like deodorant, a toothbrush, and a hairbrush.

She came downstairs with three overstuffed bags full of clothes that had simply been thrown in. I ended up unpacking everything, folding it properly, and repacking it all into one bag myself…… with her being argumentative and rude as I didn’t it, trying to explain it would all fit. I also had to remind her multiple times to get her toiletries…. Which she didn’t do, so had to use all of mine….. (which meant her diving into bags that were not hers, moving and loosing things whilst we were there, and generally making a mess with the bags)

Fifteen minutes into the journey, she announced she was hungry….. this is despite her eating before we left and her having snacks for the journey……. She got rude and argumentative, until we said she had to wait an hour. We stopped at services for food and to walk the dog, where she decided she needed to empty the car to find the hairbrush she didn’t bring.

When we arrived at the campsite, she refused to help put up the tent or unload the car, and when she was wanted to do was explore…… all fine…..but there’s no need for the attitude. All she wanted to do was wander around with the dog. There were sheep in nearby fields, so I specifically told her not to take the dog up there and not to wander off.

For the first two days, the dog was perfect. He was off-lead the entire time, ignored the sheep completely, and stayed close to us. He is well trained and has specific commands, all of which he immediately responds to.

The first night, she complained about sleeping alone in the tent, despite us explaining before we left, and when we initially invited her; that she and the dog would be in the tent while my husband and I slept in the car.

She complained about the food (BBQ), the ants, the spiders, the sheep poo, the midges….. everything that I had warned her about BEFORE WE LEFT.

The next morning, instead of getting dressed and helping us get ready for the day, she disappeared to the lake with the dog because she wanted to go swimming….. she didn’t ask and for a few mins we didn’t know where she or the dog was! We were literally trying to detach the tent, get dressed and leave for the day, and she simply ignored what we’d asked her to do….. and when she came back it was “oh sorry, I didn’t know” (and I’m like YEA YOU DID!)

She was fine in the local town and beach because it’s what SHE wanted to do. Usually we would have just hiked with the dog all day, but she complained about us wanting to do that too, so we didn’t.

The second night cooler and was windy and rainy. She was perfectly safe in the tent but decided she no longer wanted to sleep there at about 3 am, screaming (instead of just knocking the rear window of the car) and waking up the whole campsite…..she wanted to sleep in the car with us instead. So all three of us ended up squeezed into a Volkswagen Passat on an airbed.

Nobody could move. It was hot and she spent the next hour complaining that she was too hot and didn’t have enough room, that she was uncomfortable…….Eventually I completely lost my patience, got up, and tried to leave to sleep in the tent with the dog instead. Only then did my husband offer to move.

By the final morning, everyone was exhausted. I was trying not to loose my temper, but everything I asked her to do was “why can’t you? or “I’m not doing that”….. when I specifically to help us pack up her things and put everything in one area ready to load into the car, she again complained she didn’t have room for everything in her one bag abs threw it on the floor saying “well you do it then”……..

Instead, she wandered off again with the dog, whilst we were distracted.

The dog followed her towards the area where the sheep were. This time, he decided to chase them. The moment I shouted for him, he stopped immediately and came running back to me and i immediately put him in the car.

My stepdaughter came back saying she didn’t understand why he’d done it and that she’d been telling him to stop but he wasn’t listening.

At that point, I completely lost my temper and I really, REALLY shouted at her. I told her that farmers are legally entitled to protect their livestock and that the dog could have been shot dead because she ignored my repeated instructions. I had specifically told her not to go up that part of the camp. She kept blaming the dog and saying it wasn’t her fault.

The dog had behaved perfectly for two days. He had not been on a lead the entire time and if I saw his focus drifting, he was recalled and refocused on his ball or food or something else It was only when she wandered off up near the sheep because SHE wanted to “catch” one, that there was a problem.

The entire drive home, I barely spoke. I was upset, frustrated, and honestly resentful. My husband has told me I’m being too harsh and that I need to let it go and she understands.

My husband DID tell her off each with each incident (so did I in my interactions with her), so we arnt letting her get away with it.

My view is that she shouldn’t have been on the trip in the first place, that the whole point was for my husband and me to spend some time together, and that her behaviour throughout the weekend made what was supposed to be our anniversary trip stressful and unenjoyable and the incident with the dog just was the icing on the cake. She’s nearly 14. Big enough to follow instructions.

Safe to say she won’t be coming with me again. I’d rather not go than take her again. My husband thinks I’m being silly.

I’ve had a 14 year old and out of the 2 she’s the more sensible.

Yep she did. Because we were dead asleep!.

have you not seen how a car tent works?

Not until the stepdaughter was invited?!

we were initially just us. But when she was invited, we asked my son too…. Ya know to make it fair. 🙄

Not initially.

init it was me and my husband.

then husband invited daughter, who said yes. Then I invited son who said NO!

You had a couples break booked for September when you started posting. Now you only wanted 2 days out of 365 as a couple and are trying to take the kids away at the end of the year.

If this is how you respond to criticism, maybe you can empathise with how your stepdaughter felt that weekend 🤣

You know what I bloody mean though lol 😂

its in response to all of the questions not just yours lmao 🤣

Never ever would I take on someone else’s child, no man is worth this. She sounds an absolute brat and imagine have to deal with this shit from someone else’s child.

If she's 14 in November, then she's 13 years and 7 months old at the oldest. Why are you referring to her as 14? No one does that.

Are you going to answer this question, OP? Why do you keep saying that she’s 14 when she’s only 13???

The real problem is all three of you letting your fecking dog roam free where there are sheep and presumably other livestock. Idiots who don't belong in the countryside.

And where was your 18 year old son going to sleep?

In the tent with his 13 year-old step-sister? Roof of the car?

“It’s not acceptable that the dog chased the sheep (for less than 7/8 seconds) I completely accept that and accept that I should have been watching him and got distracted taking the tent off the car. HOWEVER my stepdaughter is nearly 14 and can understand clear instructions and chose not too.”

You lead by example or you make sure you’ve bloody well educated her why the dog has to be on lead. If she doesn’t know why, it’s your and her dad’s job (as the dog’s owners) to make sure she does. “You must not ever let dog off lead near livestock. Even the best trained dogs can have unpredictable moments. They can attack / scare sheep which can lead to injury, death or miscarriage. If a dog is causing harm to sheep the farmer has the right to shoot him.”

No kids in my family would take a dog off lead in a farmer’s field, they only go off lead in suitable parks / walks / woods etc. Even the gentlest and best trained.

Ive voted you as unreasonable, purely for not having the dog on a lead near sheep.in fact its disgusting.

Does it really matter if she's 13 or 14? I can't understand why everyone's being so petty over a few months.

Well there’s your problem.

Why an earth would DH invite teenage bratty DSD along to your romantic couples getaway?

That is the real problem here, he can’t grow a pair and say no to her. Gross.

Would you have insisted they shared in the tent? I can’t imagine you and your DP agreeing to sleep separately on your special anniversary night in a field. You were happy to leave DSD in a tent alone.
The tent outside the car.

Your first post had paragraph after paragraph listing problems that occurred before the dog incident 🤷‍♀️

Yeah exactly. So we’ve got Schrödinger’s tent, in which you are simultaneously both within and outside of the car; and two opposite-sex teenaged step-siblings invited along for sleepovers. And Timmy the dog.

So that’s normal.

It matters because OP keeps changing things she’s said (and then claiming she hasn’t done that). I think she needs to re-read her own posts before adding to them…she can’t seem to keep her story straight.

Mostly she’s changing details to try to make her look better and DSD worse. The increase in DSD’s age is just one example of that. It’s not usual for people to refer to 13 year olds as being 14 unless their birthday is imminent. It’s a ploy on OP’s part and I’m afraid it’s not working. On the contrary, I don’t believe one word OP says at this point. She’s shown herself to be an unreliable narrator multiple times now.

If you read her response to me she doesn’t think she’s done anything wrong around this.

i grew up in the countryside I know of multiple dogs that have been shot by farmers. It’s not a joke it’s sad for everyone involved.

One minute she wakes the whole field up screaming, the next the field was empty, and then suddenly other campers were in the field with their off lead dogs.

on top of that, the expected behaviour instead of the ‘screaming’ when she was scared was to knock on the boot of the car, but also you were all together and if you put your hand out you could have touched her head, which would make me think that she could have just said ‘dad’ and he would have woken up. Not sure how you would knock on the open boot of a car.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting ‘just 2 nights out of 365’ with no kids. Even on top of the 7 nights you have planned later in the year. It’s just that your maths is quite out.

I’m assuming you paid for a campsite, everyone I have ever stayed on always has a sign saying dogs must be kept on lead or did you just pitch up somewhere without permission. That dog should have been kept on lead, all the mardy teenager stuff happens, stop pa seeing. Who cares if her clothes are creased and stop cleaning her room, mine had to clean their rooms from secondary school age, if it became a tip then so be it.

To be fair, campsites - yes, dogs on leads.

but there are places like I’m assuming the OP went to where it’s basically a massive field, you pitch/park wherever you want and the field owner will just swing by twice a day to take payment from anyone that’s turned up since their last collection.
the only rule there is that you pay.
obviously you just hope that people use common decency with regards to noise and behaviour, but when we go somewhere like that our dog is off lead the whole time unless there’s a reason for him not to be e.g - sheep in a nearby field