Blended family needs help

[doulajen]

I am the mother of three beautiful children. I have a 14 year old daughter from a previous marriage and two boys, 4 and 2 with my new husband. My problem is with my husband and my daughter. In the beginning when she was 10 they got along great, but since she was about 12 they do not EVER get along. My daughter is quiet and does not fight verbally....it is all attitude and little comments. My husband says that she needs to meet him halfway if they are going to work out their problems and of course she refuses to meet a quarter of the way. This is the only topic that my husband and I fight about! He is always defensive when we talk about her and puts the blame on her. She does virtually the same thing. They complain about the other to me and I am always stuck in the middle feeling lost and helpless. I am now at the point where I try to avoid the topic all together and I feel like I have two separate families. I miss my little girl who now spends very little time at home with us and we used to be as close as a mother and daughter can be. Her grades have also dropped and I am worried about the company she is keeping. Any advice would be greatly appreciated because I have no idea what to do. I have talked and talked and talked and nothing ever gets better and councelling is not an option for either of them....they both flat out refuse! PLEASE HELP!

[robowarrior]

Well obviously she is creating her own world behind your back , this is because she doesn't feel you understand her, and she's stuck with the idea 'he isn't my real dad so i have no commitment towards him' This gap of missing a father model is something she tries to seek elsewhere, probably inviting a bunch of diabolical friends into her life who let her stray off the right path, drugs/alcohol/sigarettes/wrong friends, she is in an age where she is susceptible for those things, and please don't go into the 'my daughter isn't like that mode' ,

 

Your new husband is basically right on his stance that she needs to make the move, but your daughter is spiritually way too immature to make such a progressive life decision, the real problem of your daughter is the divorce you took in the past, this has left more emotional wounds then you have thought about, you might have your feelings sorted out about it, but how about your daughter? How did she feel when you two broke apart, where her feelings ever considered? You see you might feel this is the case, but personally i don't think that's how it is, my advice is that you'd take a hard hand in this and settle this problem have a conversation with her stand alone, ask her what her problems are towards the new husband, hear her out, (please don't talk about her grades, that's not the issue right now) , and if she trusts you enough she will tell you what she thinks that is all wrong with the situation she currently is in. Then try to resolve the situation.

 

Its a bit of a dog on a leash situation, if you leave the leash too long, the dog will run into places it shouldn't be, if the leash is too short , the dog will suffocate, you need to keep her in line on the middle, and pull her back when she is going out of bounds.

 

You know emotionally she has distantiated herself from you, and i can assure you that you do not know your daughter, she only exposes her real self to her friends, to you she closes herself this because you don't (in her eyes) have anything valuable to add to her life.

 

Get her away from her bad friends, she can see them once her homework is done (aka pulling her back, but not suffocating.)

 

Ask her questions, interrogate her on what she has been doing with her friends, heck even come by to check what she is doing , not that you should become a victim of the paranoid, but at this moment you have no reason to trust her on what she is doing.

 

Get her into councelling, where she can voice her complaints about you, the family etc, you spend time with her as wel, and get to know her, how she is , and what she is doing, and if she voices the complaints note them.

 

Or better yet, post her complaints in here, along with that of your husband, so we can offer some peacefull solutions as a mediator between the 3 of you.

[doulajen]

My ex-husband walked out of our lives when she was a year old and we have not seen or heard from him since. I remained alone for most of her life while I went back to college. I met my new husband when she was 9. They got along great until just the last couple of years (since she hit puberty). My daughter and I were always very close and there are still fleeting moments when I feel like we are almost there again, but then it disappears. I know most teenage girls are struggling with their identity at this age (i remember it well) and I try not to put too much pressure on her to be anything other than herself. We have already had many calm conversations about why she is not happy with my husband and she always says the same thing, "he is okay but all he does is get mad at me." And this is mostly true. The only time that he really talks to her is to get upset with her because she didn't do something or didn't do it the right way. I have tried to suggest to him that they could do some things together and he agrees but then doesn't follow through. For example, he offered to teach her how to box and said that he would get a heavy bag for her. It has never happened and she did ask him about it for almost 4 months. He now says that he is just too busy. So I can understand why she feels the way she feels. I have mentioned it to him several times and he seems to think that she just isn't interested anymore. I replied that she just thinks that he didn't mean it. I know that if they could at least make a small effort, it would make a huge difference. But neither of them seem to want to try. It is only me that wants things to change.

I have realed in the leash quite a bit as far as where she is allowed to go, with whom and when. She is not happy, of course, but I am not going to just pretend that everything is okay. She thinks that she is an adult and can make her own decisions but she is still a child. I know she feels that she has lost me because it was just the two of us for so long. Things have changed, yes, but we have to make the most of what life deals us. She loves her brothers and is great with them, thankfully. I dreaded that she would hate them for taking up so much of my (her) time. I know things can get better if we can all get on the same page.

Thanks for your input!

[RooferGirl23]

Just beacuse you like someone dont mean that your children will, or vice versa. Some can toloerate eachother, while others, no matter how hard you try, never will.

For example, my guy has 4 kids with his ex wife. when him and her met, she had a daughter from another guy who my guy raised for 13 years. They never liked eachother and to this day (she is now 21) dont speak at all. Some people just dont "click".