I refuse to move in with girlfriend’s unruly kids
Dear Coleen
I’VE been divorced for four years and I have two teenagers, aged 16 and 18. I’ve been seeing a lovely woman, who is also divorced with two teenagers, aged 17 and 18, for the last year.
We haven’t all moved in yet but we spend a lot of time together. We have a lot of fun and I can see a future with her, except for one thing – her children. I know teenagers can be challenging but my two are lovely, kind, polite kids who I enjoy spending time with.
But hers are rude, phone-addicted and argumentative. I really don’t like them, and neither do my children, and this is causing a lot of tension between my girlfriend and me. I don’t want to lose her but I don’t want to move in with her until her kids grow up and move out.
When I told her this she was very hurt and I felt bad for saying it, but it’s true.
What should I do?
Coleen says
WELL first of all, everyone thinks their own children are all right, so perhaps take your rose-tinted glasses off a bit when it comes to your own kids, and try not to be too judgmental of hers.
She might think yours are awful too and is too polite to say anything. Secondly, remember that parenting a teenager is hard enough but parenting somebody else’s is even harder. It’s hard for kids to adjust to step-parents, which is why they could be playing up.
When my ex-husband came into my life he became the stepdad of two boys and the first two years were undoubtedly the hardest, with everybody trying to find their feet and discovering where the line is.
What you and your girlfriend need to do is sit down and work out a few boundaries. You don’t need to parent her kids, that’s up to her, but you can have ground rules that everybody has to stick to, like no phones at the table or rudeness.
There will still be times when you won’t agree on what those rules are. Ray would often tell the boys off for things that, if I’m honest, I was a bit more laidback about and which probably wouldn’t have concerned me too much.
But rather than say that in front of the kids, I talked to him about it later on when they weren’t around. That way, we looked like a united front and the kids respected the fact we were a team.
Teenagers are particularly hard, so I won’t promise this is going to be easy. But I do think you can make things better by having a frank and honest conversation with your girlfriend.
Her kids are rude, phone addicted and argumentative