There are a couple of relationship deal-breakers for kids. Though every family situation is unique, it was remarkable how many times I heard stories like this one: Brooke’s parents got divorced when she was 2 months old. Her father remarried when she was 9, and at first she didn’t have any problem with her stepmother, whom she never lived with. “It was always playtime,” she remembers of her visits to their house.
But all of the warm feelings they were developing changed in an instant when her stepmother felt that she had to protect her new husband from his daughter. “I forgot my dad’s birthday one year, and when I finally called him, she screamed at me.
That instance had a huge impact on me and that was probably fifteen years ago.” Since that moment, their relationship has taken a nosedive. No kid wants to feel that her father needs to be defended from her, especially early on, when a relative stranger to the family is doing the defending. It’s the kiss of death for many stepmother-stepchild relationships.
Just as Dad shouldn’t get in the middle of your relationship with his kids, in the eyes of the child, you have to stay out of her relationship with her father and respect it. They have known each other longer than you and your husband have been together. Your man needs to handle his own relationships with his kids.
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