lack of privacy and personal space driving me crazy
I moved in with my partner and his 5 year old child after some persuading 10 months ago. It has been stressful at times and hard to adjust to living with a little kid as I have never wanted them in my life and dont enjoy spending time with them. but i love my partner and i dont have a personal problem with his child.
I am seriously losing patience with her lack of understanding of privacy and personal space. She will open the door and let herself into our room whether im in there or not, rifle through drawers, pick things up and leave them in other places, leave her toys on the floor, pick up 'personal' items and ask what they are etc. If I tell her I am busy working/need to concentrate and to go play elsewhere she will still come in every few minutes to bother me and if i lock the door she will knock on the door and ask why its locked. I will come out of the shower in a towel and she will be in my room and it takes a while to kick her out.
I find this intolerable, i'm never fully comfortable in the house as I dont have anywhere i can go if i want to concentrate, be left alone or escape from the constant presense of an irritating child. My partner is not as bothered about it as I am and I think she pushes her luck more with me as im not an authority figure for her and cant yell at her or punish her.
I have brought it up with him and he does listen and try to talk to her about boundaries, knocking before coming in, not touching my stuff etc. But ultimately we are not in agreement about the bedroom being kid free and we are from very different cultures and backgrounds in this respect. He assumed that me agreeing to live with them meant agreeing to a complete lack of privacy and personal space which is not my idea of a requirement in living with kids.
I cant fully blame his daughter either as she is getting mixed messages about boundaries. if im not there they might take a nap in the bed and then she sees our bed as another of her spaces she is welcome to play in. we talk about privacy and not going through someone elses things but he'll barge into her room to get something out of her closet.
We're moving house next month and i really want to start fresh and set boundaries, but how can i get him to agree to stick to a child free room when hes happy with the situation as it is?
Put your foot down!
Ultimately, your relationship will not last if all of these things continue. You must tell him what are "deal breakers". If you are not willing to allow his child to dig in your stuff will he end the relationship?
You can teach her YOUR
You can teach her YOUR boundaries. You just be firm and consistent about them. Seeing DH won't back you up, you do it. If he doesn't like your methods, then he can take care of it, but until he does, you have every right as an adult to teach them to her.
She's going to be the worst room mate at college if she doens't get taught now.
At five you use "my turn" , "you have to wait until I'm ready" "my room, your room" "that's my stuff and you are not allowed to....." etc....... Over and over and over again. Just so you know, you do have to teach your own kids the same rules.. Its just seems to that divorced guilty parenting overrides any common sense parenting.
I moved in with my partner
I moved in with my partner and his 5 year old child after some persuading
This is part of the problem, you didn't really want to move in, it wasn't the right time, yet. But you were "persuaded" and did it anyway. Some resentment is bound to set in, due to one thing or another, because you were not ready for this.
i was reluctant because i
i was reluctant because i didnt know if i could live with kids and it felt too soon. But we were in a long distance situation and it was getting hard and a job opportunity came up where he was so we decided to give it a try for a bit. I do enjoy living with him, but some adjustments do need to be made as children are the worst housemates.
I would deal with SD directly
I would deal with SD directly. Tell her she is not to go through your things. If her father allows it while you’re gone tell them both at the dinner table that that behavior is not allowed. If they don’t stop, you need to lock your room. I would just be naked in my room and if she walks in on me she is in the wrong.
I've been in a very similar
I've been in a very similar situation for several years, and if your partner is anything like mine, it will not get better. I have tried everything I could to get him to keep his kid out of our room, but he won't. Even when I was having real panic attacks about the fact that I had no place to escape from his son, he would not keep him out of our room. The worst is it's my house, so I can't just move out or leave. I have to get them out, and that is much harder, legally.
You can try addressing your stepdaughter directly. It may work a little. It may not. Your partner may resent you for it. This is what I had to start doing with my stepson, and my husband thinks I'm a horrible monster. The kid receives mixed messages (dad tells him "come in here. You're welcome in every inch of this house." I tell him, "You are not allowed in my room, and if you go in there, you're in trouble with me.") He is taught to ignore me. He said to his dad the other day, "icanteven needs to mind her own business." when I told him not to put his feet on the walls in the hallway. He was climbing the walls in my house!! I painted those walls only one month ago!! His dad agreed that I needed to mind my own business. In my home. That I paid for. You can imagine.
In your case, since you moved in with them, I would move out again. I would not move to a new house with them. It does not help situations like this in my experience. A disney dad who wants his kid to have the run of the place will always let his kid have the run of the place.
that sounds awful! i hope it
that sounds awful! i hope it gets better for you.
I should point out that he is far from a pushover disney dad. Hes actually very firm with her about bratty or bad behaviour and shes much more tolerable than most small kids in chile because of it.
He does try to teach her about giving me space as well and if i really need some alone time he will do his best to keep her out of my way. we're getting a lot better about having respectful conversations about it.
I think a lot of it is cultural difference - i was always given privacy and personal space even as a small child and my parents kept their room off limits without me ever being upset by it, and i've never spent much time around little kids. He grew up in a big family, single mother, sharing rooms well into adolescence, no privacy.
Its not that he refuses to back me up, i think its realising how necessary this is for me to be comfortable and how to set clear rules and boundaries.