dsd says i'm not maternal towards her

[Boosta]

my dsd and her father had a heart to heart recently and she made the comment that she feels i am distant towards her and not maternal enough. she compared me to her step father saying that he is like a dad to her where i am not like a mum. my husband tried to explain that her step father lives with her 85% of the time and therefore it is natural that they have a far closer relationship, and that she cannot expect the same closesness from a relationship where we only see each other for 2 days in every fortnight.

does anyone else have these issues?

i find step parenting so hard, my dsd is 13 and my dss is 10. i also have a 19 month old son.

Do you think you are distant towards her? Do you think the relationship could should be better? Would you like to be closer?

If the answer to any of the above is "yes", why not arrange for your dh to look after your ds and his other son, and let you and your dsd go out for some "girly" time together, maybe once a month. Make it her choice - could be a case fo going for a "grown up" coffee somewhere, or a wee bit of pampering if you can afford it. Or even just looking at clothes together, so you know the sort fo things that she likes when birthdays/Christmas come around.

BTW - I think your dh's explanation to her was really good.

if i am being honest i would say that yes our relationship could be better.

it is very hard. i made a concious decision to not try and be a 2nd mother to my stepchildren, because i didn't want them to think i was trying to step into their mums shoes. so from day one i have always maintained an older friend / aunt type of role instead. typically this has now backfired on me, and at this stage, 6 years down the line it is quite hard to change the way our relationship is.

i know that i should spend some more time with them as individuals, but i never know what to say or do with them. this mainly stems from the fact that they are very secretive about their life outside of our house, and for many years wouldn't share any information with us, and on several occasions were made to lie to us by their mum and step dad about life at home.

the result of this is that i dont really know them at all, and because i know they lie quite a bit about life at home i tend not to take everything they say as truth and it has become a bit of a barrier between us.

part of my problem is also my own personality - i'm not a kissy/cuddly person with people other than my husband and son. it just isn't something i feel comfortable with, having been brought up in a family full of boys where this just wasn't the done thing! i do kiss my DSD hello/goodbye/goodnight etc. but it always feels very awkward. on top of this i am also not a very girlie person, so the idea of spending girl time together is quite daunting - it doesn't come naturally to me, i even struggle to spend girlie time with my best girlie friends who i have known for over 20 years.

oh dear, what a mess i am....... i will just have to try my best and try and think of something to do with Dsd that i will feel comfortable with as well.

Right, you must do something about this problem.

You say that you are not affectionate/demonstrative to anyone except your dh or ds, well the truth is that these children are not anyone and need to feel a bit of affection from you. But agree that there is no point in forcing this.

I think it would be a good idea to isolate something that you could develop/nurture an interest in with this child. It could be anything, for me it's cooking, my dss is now a fab cook because I have spent time teaching him. And with one of my dsd's when she was feeling akward we baked a cake together and she iced it.

Is there anything that you could teach her, computers, sports, make up/fashion, a musical instrument. Even just going to a chickflick is good as it is something that her dad wont want to do with her. All I'm saying is that I think you suspect the your dsd is right so it is up to you to step up to the job and try really hard to make her just feel like you like her.

And you absolutely can't blame her for lieing, she is a child who has been emotionally manipulated by her mother, she cannot have acted out of malice. hth.

Why not ask her what she'd like to do with you? She is 13 now and seems to have an idea of how she would like things to be.

Say to her that you've been thinking about what she has said (which you have!) and would like to spend some more time with her, but are not sure waht she would enjoy doing - so what does she suggest.

What do you enjoy doing? Is there anything that you could do with her? Make her feel grown-up?

You're right - you do have a different relationship and won't ever have a "mother/daughter" relationship. But you can work on building the relationship that you do have. Don't worry about their life at their mum's home. Just conentrate on what yo do know to true and what takes place when they are staying with you.

Don't forget that 13 is a terribly difficult time for a girl - my own 13 yo dd seems not to want me to be maternal at the moment! I think time together doing things is a great idea, but don't get too overwhelmed by her comment.

That's what I thought too , fairy. It's so difficult to get things "right" with 13 year old girls, and it will probably get worse for some time before it gets better.

I'm afraid I know exactly where you are coming from Boosta.

It's really hard to know how to pitch thnigs isn;t it, especially as they get older.

I was really quite close to DSD when she was younger, and when they stayed over I always read her bedtime story.

I am not a particulalry touchey feely person but I gave her a lot of attention and we did things together.

I found as a teenager things drifted a lot and I felt I didn;t know her very well after all. Thinsg really deteriorated when she was around 15 and we started trying for DS (long & involved with IVF etc).

Now our realtionship is non-existant and she babrely has any contact with DH.

It saddens me a lot. I would try to make as much effort as you can now. I wish I had made more, with hindsight.

Things that you could do - maybe offer to take her & firends to the cinema / bowling / girly shopping while DH looks after the boys?

thanks for all your advice ladies. i will ask her next time we have a free day if there is anything she would like to do with me. the trouble is finding the time to do it. with our social lives, and the limited amount of time her mother allows us to see them doesn't give me much opportunity!

reading some of your messages made me realise that i have actually tried to do things with her in the past, we used to do a lot of baking/cooking together as an example, but due to having DS and life in general getting in the way we haven't done that for quite a while, so maybe that is where to start.

i always encourage her to invite friends round and hang out at our house, but they are at an age where i dont think they would appreciate me tagging along (i.e. the idea of taking her and friends to the cinema). they are quite indipendant in a lot of things and when she is with her friends they dont want adults cramping their style!!

i am also not going to take the whole thing too much to heart because as some of you said it is very hard to get it right with 13 year olds, and i could quite easily go too much the other way, so i will just take it easy.

i will encourage her to help me with the cooking / baking etc. to try and spend some time together and then see what else she would like to do. hopefully this should improve things.