DSD doesn’t want to come to our house

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Hi guys,

Could do with some advice if anyone has experience of this (either as parent or professional).

Background : DH has two children from previous marriage. I’ve been married to him for 6 years. DSCs spend alternate weekends and 1-2 weeknights each week with us, and half of all school holidays. Their life at our house vs life at their mum’s house is very different - different parenting styles. We are on the stricter side and their mum is on the more lenient side. Their mum has a history of trying to prevent us from seeing them - she tried to apply to court to move them abroad, and we recently had to apply to court for half the school holidays as she kept refusing DH's requests for extra time.

Current situation : DH picked DSCs up yesterday to spend a week of the Easter holidays with us. He took them out today on a day trip, sounds like they had fun by all accounts. DSD (age 9) had a regular activity this evening and so DH took her along to that. During the class she apparently started crying (DH found this out later when he went to pick her up), and saying that she didn’t want to come back to our house because she gets shouted at a lot (an example she gave from today was that she got told to take her headphones off when somebody was speaking to her - there was actually no shouting involved, as confirmed by her brother).
So tonight she’s at her mum’s, who says that she’ll ask her tomorrow what she wants to do.

Question : what happens now? What should we do? It’s not like we want to force her to go where she doesn’t want to go, but equally she’s just a kid who prefers the house where she’s maybe not told off as much and is that really a basis to not see a parent?! Obviously either parent asking her what she wants to do isn’t going to clear anything up as neither parent is impartial. Do we get professional people involved and if so, who are those people and how do we go about it?

@MrsTerryPratchett

Yes there are multiple joint children on both sides and we've just found out that her mum is pregnant again so that could be causing some feelings to be up and down.

She has a difficult relationship with her little sister on this side (the headphones thing was when her little sister was talking to her and being ignored apparently), so that might be a part of it, but apparently she's exactly the same with her same-aged little brother on her mum's side.

I try to keep out of conflicts between them and let DH handle it as I don't want her to think I'm siding with my own children over her.

He is on most stuff yeah. ExW made it very difficult generally and specifically with this hobby kept him out of the loop a lot as she sees it as 'her thing' - e.g. intentionally kept event dates on weekends 'hidden' from him and told him with not much notice until it transpired during the court application that they release them in September each year. He's now on their emails but overlooked having his phone number on there as he never usually takes her (only since it's holidays and he has her out of the ordinary pattern).

@EliflurtleAndTheInfiniteMadness

Thankyou for your response. She's done a full week here a couple of times now and there's been no issue (that we know of).

My DD is like this with her younger siblings, I think its fairly typical. DD seemed to turn into a tween around that age, she got a whole lot of attitude, a fierce need to be left alone and headphones that seemed permanently attached. Does DD have somewhere private she can go and be left alone? My DD really needs that.

Blended families can be tough on everyone, including the various parents involved. You sound like you care about her. How long has she known about her Mum's pregnancy? That could make her cling to her Mum more. Sounds like a lot going on. When kids feel unsure/insecure they can go through period's where they can't cope with as much and seek comforts they used to rely on more, so needing to be back with Mum more. A lot of problems can be solved with good communication and listening between all parties involved, but that predisposes everyone's willing to be reasonable which isn't always the case.

If I was DH, I would try to downplay this as much as possible and carry on with the normal schedule. As others have said, this is not unusual behaviour for a 9yo. If she wants to stay at her mum's today then that doesn't seem like a big deal, but next time it's dad's turn she doesn't get asked. And I would stop trying to force her to interact with her step siblings if she's listening to music and doesn't want to talk to them.

I think DH did the right thing in letting her go to her Mum's.
New baby on the way explains a lot.
Be flexible/sensitive and don't take it personally. Try and stick to the usual routines but don't stress if it gives a bit, there may be times in future when she prefers to come to you.
I think discipline/rules are fine to vary at each house but I would really nip the younger children bothering her in the bud if you can - I think that's a factor where she might seek to be elsewhere. From her point of view - to have both of her homes also lived in by other children who she can't get away from must be very stressful. Step sibs or otherwise.

DH was only married to her mum until she was around 18 months old.

So differing parenting style / two houses has effectively been her norm for most of her life. Having read the responses on here and the more I think about it, I think that's not the root cause.

I think people are right in that at a point when she was feeling particularly overwhelmed (either in the moment - maybe her class was difficult ..... or the current week - a whole week away from mum ...... or more generally - worried about yet another sibling) , she just wanted her mum and this was her way of articulating it.

We are conscious of and try to use terms such as 'mums house' and 'our house' etc instead of saying 'home' for her mum's - because as you said we don't want them to think of their mum's as 'home' and ours as 'not home'.

She could go and get comfort from her Mum then to return to Dad.

Re your update about Mum being pregnant is most likely the issue. She's afraid of Mum being too busy for her.

My kids did 10 years of contact. They had periods of not wanting to go to dad’s too so I agree with the hypothesis that it’s a developmental stage. Neither of us had more kids.

We weren’t there but maybe sd wanted to listen to her music in peace ? If your h wants her to always respond to the younger ones then he needs to consider allowing her to listen without headphones so she can listen and chat. Might be more annoying for you to have to listen to her music all weekend and battle over volume but your h will know which battle is more important and maybe sd was using headphones to ignore step sibling on purpose. I live with teens and they all walk around the house with AirPods on. They will take one out to talk to me but I’m not an annoying younger sibling so will keep questions to a minimum.

Your sd is close to the age where she’d be allow to choose how much contact she had with each parent. If her mum went to court now then sd’s opinion could have a small effect too. It may be a good time to reflect on whether the stricter parenting is appropriate because we don’t know if mum is too lax or dad is too strict due to lack of info. Now that a precedent has been set, she hopefully won’t use it to disrupt contact each week and gradually reduce her time at your house. I’m not saying don’t tell her off but she could do this again if she doesn’t like something dad has said and you don’t want reduced contact and her siblings to follow suit.

I think she’s old enough to choose. It’s not like she’s a small child.