SD 7 is super clingy to me and creating issues with DD and DS
My 7 year old SD is extremely clingy to me, she follows me everywhere when I get home, hangs on my neck if I sit down for a moment and wants to be apart of everything I do and touch. At first I thought the behavior would wear off once she became comfortable and used to having me around. She also has a lot of problems interacting with her biological older brother, and my 3 children (DD 9, DS 7 and DS 4). Her mother seems to think she is just a loving child and that the other kids are all mean or jealous of her. Truth is she is very aggressive and pest to them and I think she has some form of social anxiety where any kind of attention is good attention.
We have my SS and SD full time and my children 50/50. The time with my kids has now become tense as they have had their fill of my SD, her behavior and how much she hangs all over me. The problem is my DW feels the SD is the one being singled out and she has even made comments about how her ExBF loved how she hung all over him and that I don't love her as much as he did. He was also very abusive to her and her son...that hurts and it isn't true, I just don't think it is a healthy way to behave. I have made leaps and bounds with my SS 10 who was an angry, aggressive boy. He is now the best listener now and he loves being with me and I really enjoy having him around.
I am tired of fighting about this and her portraying me as the one not loving her daughter. She denies that it isn't normal, that I and all the children including her own son are just being mean. This issue is tearing us apart and I am madly in love with her and I know she loves me very much also.
Sooooo.... stop letting her
Sooooo.... stop letting her hang all over you. This is your issue to solve not your bride's.
As for your bride playing the guilt card regarding how her abusive X loved SD more because he liked her hanging all over him.... time to nip that crap in the bud with DW also. No guilt card crap... ever.
IMHO of course. Take care of you.
Good luck.
Thanks for the fast replies!
Thanks for the fast replies! I think my wife is struggling with feeling like her daughter is getting so much bad feed back from all other family members and is becoming defensive. She has a very strong connection with her daughter and she has acknowledged that it is too much and it also bothers her at times but she feels most of it is normal.
I did call her out on the guilt card and she has apologized but what upset me was that she did it in front of her daughter.
I have been trying to redirect her attention to other things but she quickly returns, she only does this to me, or at least to the extent she does it with me. I can't sit down, lay down, use the restroom without having to remove her. She will sit outside the bathroom door till I am done, I have made it a point that she is not allowed to sleep with us anymore and that was a fight but it has finally set in. I feel I am an affectionate man, I hug and cuddle my and her children both but I do it at what I feel is a healthy amount. The other children including her son are very receptive to my affection but they don't ever overstep the boundaries. There is very little information about the dynamic of the stepfather/daughter relationship where it is a matter of the child being over clingy to the stepfather so I am struggling with defining what is normal and if it is a matter of me meeting her half way and not just expecting her to completely change.
I know the majority of it is my responsibility, I need to be the adult and not just set the boundaries but enforce them. I hate to say it but she is the most persistent person I have ever had to deal with. I don't want to hurt her feelings but at this point I am lacking patience and that is a quality I am known for. Oddly enough she has all but stopped this behavior when her mother is not around. My close friend that is a counselor thinks it could be a matter of her being jealous of the attention her mother gives to me and is doing it not to get a reaction from me but from her mother...that may be a reach.