'AITA for telling my sister her Brady Bunch fantasy isn't helping her kids or her future stepkids?'
"AITA for telling my sister her Brady Bunch fantasy isn't helping her kids or her future stepkids?"
SwimmingPeace8375
My sister was widowed 4 years ago, her fiancé 5 years ago. They have been together for 2 years and living together for 8 months and their wedding is in July. They have kids from their late spouses.
My sister's two are 9 and 7. Her fiancé's three are 10, 8 and 7. My sister and her fiancé have talked a lot about being the perfect blended family and they already sought out advice on doing a stepparent adoption of each other's children and asking about changing the last names of the children so they all have the hyphenated family name.
They are doing this when both admit freely the kids do not get along, the stepparents in the house are disrespected by their stepchildren on a daily basis, the relationship between bio parent and child has become contentious.
Just the other week we were at my nephew's (brother's child) 6th birthday party and it became a free for all with the kids yelling at each other and them yelling at the adults (sister and her fiancé).
They were so loud a couple of neighbors checked to see if things were okay, f bombs were being dropped left and right, and it escalated until my nephew (9) told his mom he hated her and he hoped she'd have the worst wedding day ever.
My sister's 8 year old future stepdaughter told her dad that she wished it had been him who died instead of her mom. Those were two very stand out things said among many other anger filled, hurt filled things. My sister and her fiancé decided to bring up the adoption and name changes to the kids the very next night. Which went disastrously bad.
My niece (7) called her paternal aunt and the aunt went off on my sister for daring to try and erase her brother from the kids' names and birth certificates and she told my sister that her late husband would be so disgusted by her and would never forgive her in a million years for this.
She told her she hoped she had a miserable life with her new husband and looked forward to losing her kids in 10 years time. My sister told me about this afterward and she was upset.
She was talking about the dream she had and how nothing was working the way she wanted it to. I told her that the Brady Bunch fantasy (and she mentioned the show before as an ideal) wasn't helping her kids or her future stepkids.
She said she just wanted all five kids to have two parents. I told her they already have that. They just each lost a parent. But they still have two technically and that didn't change.
I said adding a third will be dependent on each child and right now they aren't earning that by ignoring the kids thoughts and feelings. She told me I didn't understand and calling her dream a fantasy wasn't being supportive.
I told her she came to me and I listened and how she always told me to be honest with her and this was no different. She said I was insulting her wish to be happy and for her kids to be happy and that's why I sucked. AITA?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
Violetunderwater
NTA you did what you could. There are actual steps that Sister and Fiancé could take that might actually help their kids get to know one another and get along. It would also help with a transition after a hard time. She is just upset that things are not working the way she and her fiancé are choosing to do things.
The OP responded here:
SwimmingPeace8375
Yes, but the issue is she doesn't want to change what they're doing. They already call all the kids siblings and brothers and sisters. They already say they're "the parents of all five kids" and call him dad to hers and he calls her mom to his. Stuff like that they want to keep at but the kids are angry hearing.
rememberimapersontoo
it might be a long shot but there are thousands of posts on this sub from kids in the position of your nieces and nephews. maybe you should look through, collect a couple, and share them with your sister.
The reality is that she isn’t gonna have contact with her kids after they’re 18 unless she starts to see things from their perspective. Maybe reading some other ppls experiences of how harmful this type of behaviour from a parent is, could help.
Consistent-Leopard71
NTA at all. The Brady Bunch was FICTION! For the love of God it's a 54 year old sitcom; not a guidebook for blended families. Familial relationships can't be forced. It sounds like everyone involved could use therapy and this wedding should be postponed.
DozenBia
NTA. There is nothing worse than forced blended 'families' by the parents. Your sister and her husband may love each other, and they put this over their kids wellbeing. None of these kids will talk to their parent as soon as they can at this pace.
ConsciousExcitement9
Yep. The kids need to be the ones to steer the relationship with the stepparent. And then the kids need to figure out their own relationships. The people that let the step kids come to them (while letting the kids know they are there if needed) generally have better relationships with step kids than stepparents that try and force the kid to accept them.
And it doesn’t happen overnight. My sister’s step kids call her mom, but it took 2 years of dating, 4 years of marriage, and 2 more kids before that started. And these kids already had a very broken and screwed up non-relationship with their own mom.
They made the decision on their own without either my sister or her husband forcing it. I would not be surprised if eventually they asked my sister to adopt them, but it would come from them, not my sister or their dad. The OP’s sister and her husband are screwed if they think their way is going to work and be all peachy.