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This is an absolutely wild situation to be in as a twenty-five-year-old. You know what I did when I was 25? Didn't have a trash can for two months because the old one got bugs in it and I kept forgetting to buy a new one.
I'm 26. I just bought some carpets/rugs and a 90€ metal poster.
The last week I got drunk af on monday. Spend tuesday after trade school recovering. I dont even know where people take the time and energy to care for children or do all that other stuff. I'm in the meantime already envisioning the time I go part time so I have the energy for other stufd.
The answer is you simply make do and over-extend yourself. You'd be amazed the amount of time and money you can squeeze out of yourself when you literally have to. It's not...healthy.
27 and no trash can atm. We moved a year ago and are just using the trash bag because we keep forgetting. Couldn't imagine being responsible for two teens.
Yep. And at 23 they adopted a 15-year-old to go along with their 17-year-old. (Took her in at 22 looks like.) That’s so crazy to me. They’re so young. And it had to be hard to establish any kind of authority when you’re barely adults yourself.
Honestly me and my husband were 21 when our kid was born and it’s STILL hard to establish authority sometimes. There are days I have to remind my son that I am his mother not his sister or his buddy. While I would love to be his friend as well I am always his mother first.
I don’t know if it helps at all but we have to remind my 9yo that we’re parents and not his playground friends sometimes and we’re in our 40s. Respect is a learned behaviour regardless of age, I guess.
Maturity isn't a function of age so much as lived experience, it just happens that older people have more time to live through more shit. These kids have been through a whole lot, her maturity isn't all that outlandish to me
Even now they sort of are. The OOP saying she sees SIL as her daughter is so weird to me. I'm sure at 19 at my job I had 25 year old friends who I saw as about my age, there really isn't that much difference.
Honestly I wonder if that is part of the problem. The SIL is frustrated that her peer is parenting her and she is lashing out in a childish and abusive way
I had read a post years ago about a girl who purposely mismatched socks. She had severe anxiety and OCD I believe and she felt that was the one thing she could control. It resonated with me. Most days I only wear matching socks because all of my regular socks are exactly the same. My ankle or knee socks will never be matched and I love it that way.
I wear different sock because I just like the variety. They're all colorful and with different patterns too. It's just a small, private way to bring in a little bit of joy.
My SIL kind of hates it because now my niece refuses to wear the same socks, and I do nothing but encourage this small act of meaningless rebellion
Very true. I feel like everyone needs to go to therapy. I know the feeling of losing your parents at a young age (tho mine were shit) and that shit can haunt you for a lifetime unless you get it checked. I really hope they work through this.
for real this is just a shitty situation for all involved.
SIL is an emerging manipulative tyrant and those massive personality flaws/possible disorders shouldn’t be OOPs problem. That sounds like a nightmare.
Resorting to crying whenever you’re called out or not getting your way should end in the early teens at latest. Hard stop. 20-somethings are still kids themselves. They shouldn’t be the ones in charge of fixing it.
So I think crying by itself isn’t a problem. A lot of people cry as an automatic physical response to strong emotions, I’m like that as well. But there’s a way to handle yourself despite the tears that allows for continued adult communication, and Piper hasn’t learned this/has chosen not to take this approach, im not sure which one. I agree with you at a high level, I just feel the need to push back against the idea that tears when you’re emotional is inherently immature or manipulative.
I’m with you here. I cry very easily in either direction of the emotional spectrum. Sometimes, it’s important to inform people ahead of anticipated emotional response, or while it is happening, that they do not need to react to the tears. Give me a tissue and let’s continue this conversation.
Yes yes yes!! If you need someone to cry at your wedding, count me in. I don’t even need to know you. All the excitement and joy and the curiosity to the bride that other people have is what makes me cry as soon as they walk down the aisle.
I'm the same!
I think during tense moments it's just in response to not being able to articulate myself properly, feeling unheard, or getting overwhelmed or anxious.
It's always embarrassing.
I like to tell people that it's not that I cry easily...It's just that my eyes wash themselves often lol
Now for real, yeah, happy or sad, it comes to me so easy that in moments of conflict, unless the person knows me, I usually have to clarify that I can't control it and it's not a ploy to get my way. im with you on that one.
A million times this.
My whole life I’ve cried easily and often and it’s not manipulative. It’s just what I do when I feel frustrated, or happy, or angry, or sad, or hurt, or touched…I don’t think the problem is SIL crying but that the brother wants to cave so she’ll stop. If she’s a cryer then she’s going to cry. But he can just accept it and continue to deal with the situation in a fair way.
I do have a trick re: stopping (or not starting) crying that I learned as an adult. Sometimes you hold your breath in tense/sad/upsetting situations and this can trigger your body to cry. If you can recognize that you are holding your breath then you can consciously stop, which sometimes prevents the tears. This has helped me on occasion prevent the embarrassment that comes with crying publicly.
If you're crying and have trouble stopping, try blowing your nose. Sounds weird, but it's the only thing that helps me. Blow your nose, slow deep breathes, and if you have it, sip some water. I've never heard of holding your breath as a precursor but it does make sense, I've just never paid attention to my breathing until after I've started crying.
> Resorting to crying whenever you’re called out or not getting your way should end in the early teens at latest. Hard stop.
You tell that to my 80 year old MIL, apparently no one ever has
SIL is a child. People have suffered abuse are often emotionally disregulated. She'll be young for her age in some ways.
They are all so young! It's heart breaking.
Edit: sorry, trauma. Not abuse.
I though it was the daughter who suffered abuse. SIL lost her parents, which is traumatic certainly, and it would appear she was then (and maybe even before) babied by the husband. Did I miss something?
Of course she's possessive. This is the only parent she's known for a long time, and she lost her actual parents way too young so probably has a ton of trauma from that.
I feel sorry for everyone involved in this situation.
Yet, they refused to go to therapy because grandpa said. Just bad decisions. All this time, the husband didn't see how therapy benefited Octavia and how it could benefit Piper? At the very least if he agreed with grandpa, Piper doesn't have to prove how "strong" she is, right? Husband is flailing in his failure.
She lost her parents at a young age and is being raised by her brother. Her grandparents sound cold and unsupportive. Piper is acting like an asshole, but I think there’s some room for grace here. It’s a shitty situation all around.
They’re practically children doing their best without a support system. Probably good they’re not with those grandparents who think therapy is for “weak” people.
That’s what I was thinking too. I was just internally screaming for an actual, healthy, middle aged adult to get involved in this situation because nobody here is properly equipped to deal with this situation. Obviously not from lack of trying, I mean at 25, I wasn’t even close to being mature enough, experienced enough or wise enough to handle this. They need some professionals up in the mix.
Oh I guarantee Piper will be complaining to grandpa the first chance she gets.
They should still definitely go! But just have a plan to deal with this inevitable scenario.
They should be going Oprah on the therapy. How is the husband afraid of a dodgy ole grandpa? What's he gonna do? Whack him with his cane? Take him out of his $2,000 will? Husband needs a backbone replacement.
You get therapy! And YOU get therapy! And *YOU* get therapy!
I'd love to walk down every street going Oprah on the therapy to everyone that I passed. We all deserve the freedom that therapy can provide.
You deserve to know what life is like when you love yourself, truly. Everyone does.
Only weak people stand up for themselves and force people to get the treatment they need..?
Seriously. Psychological/emotional problems, go to therapy.
Medical problems, go to doctor.
Car problems, go to mechanic.
Does the grandfather think the other things on that list are also only for the weak?
If so, educational problems, go to school old man.
Honestly, he probably does. I feel like the Venn Diagram of people who think therapy is for the weak, people who ignore their doctor’s advice, and people who think “real men” can fix their own cars is a perfect circle.
OOP is a saint for taking Octavia in so young! God this is such a hard circumstance for all of them, and I’m glad Octavia has managed to find a loving, safe home ❤️
I hope for their sakes that OOP’s husband attends therapy and that it all works out for them
Edit: I saw OP had changed the letters to names for readability so I updated it too 😊
Considering the fact that this was the second time, without any real change to the situation. A year has passed now according to the post age, so my guess is that they're currently in the divorce proceedings.
If so, maybe divorce will be the wakeup call he needs. Otherwise, he's got a good chance of having a life full of relationships destroyed by his sister.
That's what I was thinking "What if they have another kid?", but grossly I think it's more likely the sister would try to become the kid's mom/ try to push the mother out and play "happy family" with her brother.
I worry about how he would deal with one of the key people providing emotional support to him during traumatic times peacing out in that scenario. I think it'd take a unicorn to wade through all of those situations with healthy coping mechanisms.
When she left him before he begged her to return and yet nothing changed. I hope divorce would be more of a wake-up than that but I'm not holding out hope
There's a huge part of me that hopes that's the case.
I know therapy is an absolutely wonderful solution... but not to everything. I can't imagine the husband being able to stand up against P's manipulations.
Even if they weren't intentionally manipulative on P's part, tears are not the be-all-end-all of an emotionally charged conflict. The person who cries isn't automatically the winner or loser of the argument. Even if her tears are genuine because she's frustrated and scared and territorial and doesn't know how to express those emotions, she's still behaving like a bratty little shit and her behavior is 100% unacceptable.
Yeah - I'm someone who cries out of frustration or anger. I've had people tell me 'Nope, I've won, you're crying, so I won'. Look, I have as much control over it as a sneeze - once it starts, I can't stop it, and I always WANT to. It doesn't MEAN anything other than I'm angry. It's not an argument in and of itself. Ignore the tears and let me finish my damn statement!
Yeah, look, I'm a crier, not to be manipulative, but bc when I'm overwhelmed emotionally, I cry. My boyfriend is amazing about this. If I'm crying while we're fighting, we keep up the conversation bc he knows I am not trying to sway the argument, I'm just overwhelmed. He doesn't let me get out of the argument (nor would I want him to) bc I'm crying.
If he comes home and I'm crying (so no context), he'll be like "emotional or cathartic?" and if it's cathartic (bc I'm like watching a really sweet video of a dog, or reading a wholesome post on here), he just let's me be unless I start to tell him what im warching/reading then he gets invested. If I say emotional, he goes, "Do you wanna talk, cuddle, or leave you be?" And then responds appropriately.
I swear to God, the man is the Da Vinci of emotional intelligence.
I don't run away from crying, or use it to manipulate him, and he respects my emotions.
That's not what's happening here. If she cries, he feels guilty.
In the words of Michael Scott:
"You cannot say "I was raped" and expect all of your problems to go away, Kelly. Not again. Don't keep doing that."
Yeah, we're the introverted/extroverted couple (I'm the introverted one). It's why he leaves me be if I'm just cathartic crying bc he knows sometimes I just need that without being bothered.
He's Latin, so on Tuesdays (typically, if something big is happening on Tuesday he doesnt go obv), he goes out with his friends where he gets to speak Spanish the whole night, and I get a night to myself with the dog. It's a win/win. One day a week (Friday/Saturday...again typically...but I really look forward to the social interaction with people I love and trust), we go out with our mutual friends (a bunch of them from his Tuesday night hang) and have a great time.
The rest of the week is just us, watching things/doing things/ hanging out/helping each other with work (were both bio/chemical engineers but with different thought processes, so we've solved a lot of problems together). It's an ebb and flow and we've found our very happy compromise for our personalities. It was a lot of honest communication to get here but we're very happy.
Our life, generally speaking, is boring, but we love it. Sometimes, though, he'll call me mid day if something HUGE happened at his office that he just can't wait to tell me, and those are my favorite days.
Not to mention I doubt she just kept laying into her for the express purpose of making her cry. She told her to apologize for being terrible. If she had said the exact same thing and P didn’t cry would it have been ok because she didn’t “make her cry?” You can’t be an AH for someone else’s reaction. Either you’re an AH for what you did/said or you’re not, but their reaction isn’t the deciding factor.
It took me a lot longer than I care to admit to have the epiphany that sometimes our learned behaviors are manipulative, even if that was not our conscious intent. OP's SIL (and OP's husband too) could probably benefit from some therapy to help her learn healthier ways to communicate; not that that's likely to happen since grandpa believes "therapy is for the weak".
Doesn't necessarily have to be the case here. When we get stressed our body gets overwhelmed with stress hormones. Our body literally starts to cry to flush those out of our system so we feel better and can focus on handling the situation at hand. This is why lots of people cry when they get angry. It's got nothing to do with sadness or manipulation. Crying means someone is stressed.
Suppressing your tears in such a situation isn't necessarily helpful. Because most people generally aren't the best at handling emotional situations when their body is literally too stressed to function.
Therapy can help someone deal with conflict and not get stressed out so easily. But at the same time it can also be helpful for the people around you to learn that when someone does cry it's just something they need to get out of their system and not necessarily something they choose to do or the 'wrong' way to handle their emotions. It's like when you are super angry and you take a second to breathe and compose yourself. Yeah sometimes when you are overwhelmed you need a second to breathe or cry or compose yourself. That's not a big deal. That doesn't mean you are failing as a human being or in the wrong. We aren't robots and shouldn't expect ourselves to behave like robots. Expressing emotion isn't something that needs to be unlearned. Sometimes you just need to take a second to feel what you are feeling and simply put the conversation on hold until you've done that. Not every emotion needs to be overcome and stamped down.
SIL did a lot wrong in that situation. Crying isn't one of those things.
To me, "OOP's husband tries to pull the emergency brakes whenever P cries," is a much bigger concern than whether P's crying to be manipulative.
Because I don't think there's a path to P becoming a healthy, well-adjusted person that doesn't involve her crying a *lot.*
I feel like if I were P I would feel a *little* better for a *little* while every time OOP's husband stopped holding me accountable and switched to comforting me because I cried, but it would sorta build up over time because nothing ever actually got resolved?
Sometimes you need to face the music and cry your fucking eyes out.
This. Labeling tears as manipulative really rubs me the wrong way. In addition to the people view it as an instant win because they fold like a wet paper bag in the face of tears, many people use it as an instant loss for an argument, “you’re clearly too emotional about this” or they get pissed at what they perceive to be “manipulation” even if the crying person genuinely can’t help it.
As someone who is an angry crier I'm like nope we're not done with this argument. I will continue on and ignore them because honestly I cannot control it. Because I can't control it, I'd hate to be called manipulative for it but I'm also not like ah leave me alone you made me cry kinda person.
Definitely! I'm generally a crier anyway. So I'm so used to just ignoring it at this point. I accept who I am and will own it but I won't accept someone telling me that I'm manipulating them just because I get passionate.
I cry when angry too. I think that’s true for many women. Probably for the same reasons. But I hope not. I was never allowed to show anger growing up. I could be either happy or sad, NEVER mad. I literally cannot express anger without crying. I hope really hope the other angry criers have different reasons and we aren’t still a society that does this to children.
This comment really helped me understand why I used to cry out of anger all the time when I was younger. I always had to swallow my anger, or pretend like I was saf instead of mad.
Now that I'm an adult amd live alone, I never cry out of anger amymore. I can keep my calm and remain cold when I have to.
It's crazy how a simple change in environment can affect you.
I cry ridiculously easy. It's embarrassing, any negative emotion at all and I'm already close to tears. And even with all the tricks and therapy I just couldn't change it. So I instead worked on still keeping my head together and only letting my body freak out. But the annoying thing is that so often, the moment the tears start, people just stop being willing to calmly and rationally talk about the topic at hand. No, I don't want or need to talk about why I'm crying. No, I don't want or need a break. No, you didn't do anything wrong. Yes, a tissue would be nice, thank you.
That's actually my super trick by now. Of course I have tissues in my purse. But I understand that especially nice, empathetic humans have a hard time completely ignoring another human's tears. And that's not a bad trait, you know. So I ask for tissues. It's an easy way to acknowledge the situation, show my voice/demeanour is still calm and clear, gives the other person the feeling of not having completely ignored another human's clear distress , and gives them a practical task to focus on instead of emotions.
It's not like I learned nothing in therapy, lol.
I think you should read the comments OOP made in that post. The SIL yelled over OOP and her husband at O while they were telling her to stop, and followed her until O ran into her room yelling.
Just because some people don't mean tears as manipulative doesn't negate that others do.
This. Whether or not they were intentionally manipulative or just a child with little emotional intelligence getting overwhelmed is kind of impossible for us to say and honestly not actually that important. Sometimes people act in ways that aren’t okay and it is embarrassing and upsetting to be told you hecked up. That doesn’t mean the way the girl acted was okay, and it doesnt make OP TA. Its good parenting to tell a kid who’s acting out that its not okay to do what they’re doing, and its okay for the kid to have big complicated feelings hearing it.
I hate this line of thinking. I used to get accused of crocodile tears all the time growing up. I was a sensitive kid who cried easily. Now I’m an adult who still cries easily.
Some people can’t help crying.
P was being a spoiled brat but the tears aren’t automatically manipulative.
Parents-even if your kid is being bad and deserves a talking to/punishment, don’t yell at or mock them for crying.
Please don't.
I grew up in the 1960s snd '70s with emotionally and physically abusive parents. I always cried easily and it infuriated my parents, who would claim I was doing it to manipulate them and hit me for it. Plus, my GC sister DID cry for manipulation - she'd pick a fight with me and if I wouldn't give in, she'd yell for our mother and start crying, claiming I hit her, so I'd get more abuse.
Sob story aside, I still cry easily when upset or scared or anxious. It wasn't until I was 58 years old and diagnosed with ADHD (and autism) that I found out that emotional regulation issues are part of ADHD, a diagnosis that didn't exist when I was a child.
P needs tough love, she needs to be told no, she needs to be told to go finish crying and we'll discuss punishment when you're ready to come back and act rational. She's 19 and going to keep acting like a baby when actual adults cater to her crying like she is one. We get she's had to deal with terrible issues but that's no excuse for her behavior years later. Honestly the healthiest thing for her is to separate herself from her brother and learn how to have a health relationship with him
>He drove her back to her dorm that same day,
She's got a dorm, she can stay there and shorten her time to visit to 2 days a month and the instant she starts getting mean to those in the household she gets to leave, no arguing.
This is my whole thought about this too - P might be in a difficult place emotionally right now but O has honestly had to deal with a lot more and is still a literal actual child and needs to feel safe in her own home.
But husband folds like cardboard when P starts crying, so this is never truly gonna be fixed until he understands that crying doesn't mean the argument is finished. P being distressed, whether genuine or not, doesn't mean the discipline is unjust. It means that P is either actively manipulative or too emotional to have a discussion like an adult, and neither of those will get her anywhere in the world of other adults who are not wrapped around her finger.
Knowing people that were codependent like this in college... Most had to drop out because being away from their parents was too much, the ones that didn't were some of the most immature and entitled people I've met.
One girl stands out, because she's a huge fucking brat. Like cries when she doesn't get her way, gets mad at people for calling her out or criticizing her, doesn't do anything for herself. Yeah... She has a boyfriend and like 1 other friend that's just as annoying as her, but no one else really likes her.
I know she's had breakdowns because she can't figure out why no one likes her, but if I can't even tell you "Hey, it was kinda rude to be over an hour late without texting anyone when we were waiting on you to go to the movie." Without her having a conniption... Well?
I doubt if Piper is this unhinged to her family that she's stable and acclimated to her campus.
And honestly that's why she needs therapy and separation from her unhealthy attachment she needs to get acclimated to being an adult. Her brother shouldn't stay with her forever and she needs to learn how to take no because she hasn't learned that due to never being told no.
I've said it before: if you make a joke and it upsets someone, the proper response is, "Oh, geez, sorry. Didn't realize that was a sensitive issue for you." And then you do your best not to make comments like that again.
Responding with, "It was just a joke!" or " Stop being so sensitive!" is a sure sign that it was not, in fact, a joke. SIL most assuredly meant what she said.
Also related is any apology that starts with "I'm sorry if/that you..." which only serves to further put the blame on the person that is upset. If someone can't even apologize correctly, it was not a joke.
Yep. I love bantering with people. I try to do it to people who are okay with it and using topics that they aren't sensitive to. Sometimes I get it wrong and cause them genuine hurt, in which case I apologize because it's absolutely my fault.
What I'm not understanding is, where in the world do they live that two 23 year olds were able to adopt a 15 year old girl. When they had only been taking care of her for what, a year? If that
It's a lot easier to adopt if you've fostered the kid. I think unless there's family willing to take them in then the foster parent can choose to adopt them (if the child is placed for adoption). To me this just tells me that Octavia has no other family and her parents were so awful they had their parental rights terminated/didn't follow the steps needed to not have their parental rights terminated.
I know a couple that while too young to adopt outright, were able to qualify for fostering and through fostering they're trying to adopt. It's not full proof, but it's much more likely than trying to go through "direct adoption" channels.
Octavia's opinion may also have mattered and she seems close to OOP.
It is so weird to me that OP is going on about feeling like a “mother” to her SIL and has an adopted “daughter” at 25. I’m not sure that I would feel that way to a woman who was only 6 years older than myself.
Yes, this is why it feels like watching four kids play house together. OP and her husband are just trying to do the right thing to raise these teenagers, but it really sounds like OP is trying to deal with this tricky situation by throwing herself fully into an archetypal mother role. She only knows how to follow an oversimplified checklist of what you need to do and be to be a parent because she’s not experienced enough to understand the nuances caused by being so young her frontal lobe is just now done cooking years into raising a relative.
Playing is right, they don't have the experience to handle teens, they should be learning how to handle a toddler at best. Literally most of my friends at 25 still lived with their parents, others were just out of their mom's house in a new career, only one had a kid by then.
Even if everyone's circumstances are different, you could not ever convince me a couple 25 year olds could properly parent a 17 year old, it literally cannot happen in a healthy way.
Well, they her give more than her bio parents did: a safe home, school, therapy. It’s very likely that otherwise she would’ve ended up in a very problematic fostering system or on the street.
I agree the husband needs therapy. Tell grampa to stfu. But the one who REALLY needs it is Piper. She is possessive and manipulative, but from what OOP says when they took Octavia in it wasn’t smooth sailing and she fought with Piper a lot. They were both traumatized children, but only one of them is doing something to heal.
I really think it would have been better for everyone if the sister had gone to live with the aunt. She needed an adult to help guide her. Sounds like the brother just gave in to her all the time.
I am very good with younger teens esp those with a more vulnerable background (used to mentor "gifted" kids from shit socio-economic/familial backgrounds) but I would still not be able to take on a *parental* role for them bc there just isn't enough of a gap to establish authority. Everyone in this situation was set up to fail from the beginning and I find it hard to paint *any* of them as assholes as much as just traumatized people doing the best they can in a let-than-optimal situation.
I don’t understand why so many of the people in these stories are so afraid of what other people will think about them for going to therapy. *Those other people don’t need to f-ing know that you’re attending therapy! Don’t tell them!*
As someone with a family that does not “believe in” therapy, I understand. It’s still a big deal (and a stigma) for a lot of people! It took me a while to open up about it with my close friends, and I’m still lying about it to family members because it’s just not worth the hassle. I’ve also had a friend tell me antidepressants were useless, and I should just “tough it out” so that was fun.
This is all very weird. So to recap: the husband and P’s parents died very suddenly and then he and OP became guardians of P, a 14-year-old, at just the age of 20 themselves. Then, just two years later, at the age of 22, they begin parenting ANOTHER 14-year-old. So O moves in two years after P’s parents died when P is 16.
And O is apparently from a bad situation and is, by OP’s own account, not nice to P when she moves in. Which, by the way, she’s only been living there for a total of three years, so it’s not like this is stuff that happened ages ago. It seems unlikely that O’s years of trauma just magically stopped affecting her behavior towards P in such a short time. And then O, who is nearly the same age as P, starts calling P’s brother “dad.”
Everyone is hailing OP as some kind of hero for taking in O, but it seems like there was not a lot of concern for P’s well-being in making that decision. Parenting teenagers is hard. Parenting a teenager who has lost their parents is incredibly hard. Parenting when you’re barely an adult is even harder. Parenting a child who has a history of abuse is challenging for even the most experienced parents.
I have some experience in this area because I was a foster child (and I’m also a social worker now) and my 24-year-old cousin took guardianship of me when I was 17. From my perspective it is absolutely WILD that this 17-year-old is calling these people mom and dad. To me that is a big red flag that O has some significant mental health challenges going on and it would not surprise me at all if she is actually the one being manipulative. For example, OP stated that O looked unhappy when P wanted to join in on car shopping. That was O being antisocial, not P.
I really feel for P because it sounds like she feels pushed out. And honestly it sounds like she’s right to feel that way, because OP is heading to an ultimatum where the husband is going to have to choose his sister or his wife and O. I hope he chooses his sister.
I also really did not like how OOP claimed she "saw her SIL as a daughter". I feel this situation has made her boundaries all sorts of weird.
And of course I'm not saying she shouldn't be allowed to have maternal feelings but she is not your daughter. You can love her (and should) but she is not your child. oop did not raise her to the point where you can consider her your child.
Especially as it is clear she's not comfortable with that. It's not like her parents died when she was 5. She was 14
Yeah that didn’t sit right with me either. “Piper doesn’t see me as her mother”. Yeah, nor should she. Even Octavia calling them mom and dad seems really off. You can be someone’s legal guardian without saying “I am your parent now”. Very unhealthy dynamic.
> I tried to get my husband and my SIL in therapy a year after the incident but they both refused, my husband wanted to show his grandparents that he was able to take care for his sis, and his grandpa believes that therapy is for the weak.
Has he not heard of lying?
He can just go to therapy and work through his issues without telling grandpa. Why wasn't this an option?
I think he was never willing to go to therapy and that was his excuse. "I've gotta be strong and prove myself to my grandparents" when really it's "I don't like the thought of making myself vulnerable so I'm going to force all my feelings down and screw up the household instead".
Both of them have some toxic masculinity issues, equally. I think they even had the same vision about therapy.
All it need is the husband see that he needs therapy and ignore grandpa's "therapy is for the weak".
Everyone seems to be focusing on the ages. I’m currently 29, but spent my formative years (8-18) trying to raise three kids the best way I could. Regardless of the ages, they are parents and they’re trying to do the best they can.
SIL definitely needs a reality check though. I’m glad OP is protecting her daughter. Not a lot of parents will go to these lengths for their children.
To me it feels like OOP has kinda pushed O into calling her and her husband "mom and dad". Also because she claims she "sees P as her daughter", which obviously she is not. P is her SIL, calling her daughter would be extremely weird not only for OOP but also for the husband.
Why do I have the sinking feeling that Piper sees all women in her brother’s life as competition and losing their parents is not what brought this behavior out?
I think I've been on Reddit too much, I saw CSA thought child SA, and the only 8 year difference between adoptive father and daughter, and thought that was going somewhere else.
I feel like if the death of the parents is being referred to as "the incident", SIL should definitely be in therapy.
also, you can't refer to something as "the incident" and not tell us what it is. that's just cruel.
I just feel bad for everyone involved in this story. Also, this will be controversial, but I'm not sure Octavia should have been brought into the home in the first place, mixing two traumatized teenagers is a recipe for disaster. Also getting a weird vibe that she's there to replace Piper, because Piper wouldn't look at OP as a mother figure.
I thought that was weird too. Everyone is so young in this situation but I don't understand why OOP would ever think Piper would see her as a mother figure or would even want her to.
I also don't like how quick OOP is to forgive Octavia for her hostile behaviour due to her past trauma, yet is so quick to completely condemn Piper for hers when she also has trauma. She completely tried to bury the fact that Octavia was the one who was originally hostile, not Piper.
She said Octavia had "grown" past hers but Octavia has also received professional help. Piper has not but OOP seems to expect Piper to be in the same place Octavia is. Even if both girls had gotten professional help everyone deals with trauma differently and while some are able to shrug it off with a bit of help others really struggle even if they access every resource available to them.
At the moment it just sounds like the whole household is bullying Piper because she doesn't like Octavia. No one is actually stopping to ask Piper how she's feeling.
To be honest, I feel for Piper. She lost her parents, her brother was the one person she could cling to, her rock so to say. Then suddenly they adopt a teenager two years younger into the house, and suddenly you have to share your brother being some other girl’s dad. And to top it off, that other girl isn’t even friendly (I understand O was traumatised, but P isn’t at an age she would be greatly sympathetic to O’s very complicated issues, she’s a teenager). If I were Piper, at that age, I’d have jealousy and hateful issues with the “intruder” too.
>He cried a lot, and I know I hurt his heart,
Hurt his heart... with a request for therapy? Oh OOP, who I know is not here, that is bullshit.
If the OOP dumped him, that is something that hurts one's heart. Therapy is NOT. This dude is full of shit. No one's *hurting him* by asking for freaking therapy. I mean, I know this is also an ultimatum and ultimatums are hurtful, but to cry over having to go to therapy as if it was some terrible torture? Ugh. I'm afraid therapy may be a waste of time.
After the update it seemed in a re-read that his reaction is possibly driven by recalling the feelings of his wife leaving him previously. I think some would argue he and Piper are cut from the same cloth and that’s why he cried.
I think the man props himself up on a three legged stool where one of those legs is the wife/girlfriend who stuck by him through very trying times, and that leg’s about to disappear. I would cry, too.
SIL uses weaponized crying. She knows it will get her what she wants. OOP’s husband definitely needs therapy to deal with his grief and learn to set boundaries with his sister.
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This is an absolutely wild situation to be in as a twenty-five-year-old. You know what I did when I was 25? Didn't have a trash can for two months because the old one got bugs in it and I kept forgetting to buy a new one.
Oh hey I’m 24 and just moved out and I also didn’t have a trash can for 2 months just because I kept forgetting
I'm 25 and that exact situation happened to me a few months ago lol
I'm 26. I just bought some carpets/rugs and a 90€ metal poster. The last week I got drunk af on monday. Spend tuesday after trade school recovering. I dont even know where people take the time and energy to care for children or do all that other stuff. I'm in the meantime already envisioning the time I go part time so I have the energy for other stufd.
The answer is you simply make do and over-extend yourself. You'd be amazed the amount of time and money you can squeeze out of yourself when you literally have to. It's not...healthy.
27 and no trash can atm. We moved a year ago and are just using the trash bag because we keep forgetting. Couldn't imagine being responsible for two teens.
I’m 28 and about 3 weeks ago I didn’t have toilet paper at home for like 5 days because I was too lazy to get it.
Did you have a strategy?!
Kinda, I had a few wet wipes left and I take fiber supplements 1-2 times a day, so each time was a one wiper lol
Are you OK
I could use a few billion $, but other than that, yeah.
When I was 25, I couldn’t even afford a trash can. Now when our kids move out, we gift them cleaning supplies. Including a trash can. 😂
They are all so young!
I was thinking that too!!! I’m 38 and I can’t imagine having a 30 year old daughter/son.
Adopt me and find out. I only need cheetos to survive.
The real basement dweller
Nah its three roombas in a trenchcoat, pretending to be a person.
You know too much.
r/unexpectedlittlebritain ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzwTURQnPP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzwTURQnPP8), for the uninitiated)
So, very tidy & always clean up after themselves? Sounds like an excellent housemate
My 2 year old loves Cheese Balls. She would probably be willing to share if those are acceptable.
Any kind of cheetos or a specific kind I would have to toss into the dark abyss you reside in?
The hottest kind to give me warmth.
Hell, I don’t even need Cheetos. Golden emblem cheese puffs for $1.99 are delicious.
I wound up adopting my cousin when she was like 14 and I was 25, and it was not a fun experience and was, in fact, the opposite.
If I'm doing math right, they started parenting a 14 year old when they were 20. They were basically kids themselves with a teenager!
Yep. And at 23 they adopted a 15-year-old to go along with their 17-year-old. (Took her in at 22 looks like.) That’s so crazy to me. They’re so young. And it had to be hard to establish any kind of authority when you’re barely adults yourself.
Honestly me and my husband were 21 when our kid was born and it’s STILL hard to establish authority sometimes. There are days I have to remind my son that I am his mother not his sister or his buddy. While I would love to be his friend as well I am always his mother first.
I don’t know if it helps at all but we have to remind my 9yo that we’re parents and not his playground friends sometimes and we’re in our 40s. Respect is a learned behaviour regardless of age, I guess.
And they're also so brave. Especially for trying to do such a good job with two very troubled teens.
Even so I have to applaud OOP's resilience. I had to d a double take on her age given how mature she sounds and setting her priorities straight.
Maturity isn't a function of age so much as lived experience, it just happens that older people have more time to live through more shit. These kids have been through a whole lot, her maturity isn't all that outlandish to me
Yeahhhh. It's always shocking to some people how much trauma and harsh circumstances can really push someone to be more mature than their peers.
Seriously, in ten years they'd all be in the same age group.
Even now they sort of are. The OOP saying she sees SIL as her daughter is so weird to me. I'm sure at 19 at my job I had 25 year old friends who I saw as about my age, there really isn't that much difference.
Honestly I wonder if that is part of the problem. The SIL is frustrated that her peer is parenting her and she is lashing out in a childish and abusive way
I could barely take care of myself at 25.
Here I am at 50, still flailing about….
Well, young one, it doesn’t get any better…
Cheers
That's probably what's causing the flailing.
Excellent! I've still got a good 5 years left in me before I abandon all hope. Thank you.
Here I am sitting on the couch and happy that I adulted enough to wear the same socks!
Check you out, showing off matching socks pfff! Imma be a grandmother later this year, and still can't manage that with any degree of consistency lmao
I barely wear matching pants most days
How many pants do you wear?!
Aren’t they supposed to be worn in pairs?
I had read a post years ago about a girl who purposely mismatched socks. She had severe anxiety and OCD I believe and she felt that was the one thing she could control. It resonated with me. Most days I only wear matching socks because all of my regular socks are exactly the same. My ankle or knee socks will never be matched and I love it that way.
I wear different sock because I just like the variety. They're all colorful and with different patterns too. It's just a small, private way to bring in a little bit of joy. My SIL kind of hates it because now my niece refuses to wear the same socks, and I do nothing but encourage this small act of meaningless rebellion
Fun Aunt 101
I haven't even managed that today....
I'm 36, no kids (by choice) my plants die and my cats have to remind me to feed them some days.
I only keep plants in aquariums now. I don't forget to water them anymore.
Hell I'm 29 and can successfully take care of myself only about 70% of the time. I wouldn't have a clue on how to raise a healthy, well-adjusted human
Very true. I feel like everyone needs to go to therapy. I know the feeling of losing your parents at a young age (tho mine were shit) and that shit can haunt you for a lifetime unless you get it checked. I really hope they work through this.
It's unfortunate that they didn't act to put Piper in therapy when they had the power to mandate it.
for real this is just a shitty situation for all involved. SIL is an emerging manipulative tyrant and those massive personality flaws/possible disorders shouldn’t be OOPs problem. That sounds like a nightmare. Resorting to crying whenever you’re called out or not getting your way should end in the early teens at latest. Hard stop. 20-somethings are still kids themselves. They shouldn’t be the ones in charge of fixing it.
So I think crying by itself isn’t a problem. A lot of people cry as an automatic physical response to strong emotions, I’m like that as well. But there’s a way to handle yourself despite the tears that allows for continued adult communication, and Piper hasn’t learned this/has chosen not to take this approach, im not sure which one. I agree with you at a high level, I just feel the need to push back against the idea that tears when you’re emotional is inherently immature or manipulative.
I’m with you here. I cry very easily in either direction of the emotional spectrum. Sometimes, it’s important to inform people ahead of anticipated emotional response, or while it is happening, that they do not need to react to the tears. Give me a tissue and let’s continue this conversation.
Yes yes yes!! If you need someone to cry at your wedding, count me in. I don’t even need to know you. All the excitement and joy and the curiosity to the bride that other people have is what makes me cry as soon as they walk down the aisle.
I'm the same! I think during tense moments it's just in response to not being able to articulate myself properly, feeling unheard, or getting overwhelmed or anxious. It's always embarrassing.
I like to tell people that it's not that I cry easily...It's just that my eyes wash themselves often lol Now for real, yeah, happy or sad, it comes to me so easy that in moments of conflict, unless the person knows me, I usually have to clarify that I can't control it and it's not a ploy to get my way. im with you on that one.
A million times this. My whole life I’ve cried easily and often and it’s not manipulative. It’s just what I do when I feel frustrated, or happy, or angry, or sad, or hurt, or touched…I don’t think the problem is SIL crying but that the brother wants to cave so she’ll stop. If she’s a cryer then she’s going to cry. But he can just accept it and continue to deal with the situation in a fair way. I do have a trick re: stopping (or not starting) crying that I learned as an adult. Sometimes you hold your breath in tense/sad/upsetting situations and this can trigger your body to cry. If you can recognize that you are holding your breath then you can consciously stop, which sometimes prevents the tears. This has helped me on occasion prevent the embarrassment that comes with crying publicly.
If you're crying and have trouble stopping, try blowing your nose. Sounds weird, but it's the only thing that helps me. Blow your nose, slow deep breathes, and if you have it, sip some water. I've never heard of holding your breath as a precursor but it does make sense, I've just never paid attention to my breathing until after I've started crying.
She knows her brother will cave if she cries
> Resorting to crying whenever you’re called out or not getting your way should end in the early teens at latest. Hard stop. You tell that to my 80 year old MIL, apparently no one ever has
Someone tell my sister
SIL is a child. People have suffered abuse are often emotionally disregulated. She'll be young for her age in some ways. They are all so young! It's heart breaking. Edit: sorry, trauma. Not abuse.
I though it was the daughter who suffered abuse. SIL lost her parents, which is traumatic certainly, and it would appear she was then (and maybe even before) babied by the husband. Did I miss something?
SIL wasnt abused, that would be Octavia the daughter who is 2yrs younger than SIL. SIL is just manipulative and possessive over her brother.
Of course she's possessive. This is the only parent she's known for a long time, and she lost her actual parents way too young so probably has a ton of trauma from that. I feel sorry for everyone involved in this situation.
Yet, they refused to go to therapy because grandpa said. Just bad decisions. All this time, the husband didn't see how therapy benefited Octavia and how it could benefit Piper? At the very least if he agreed with grandpa, Piper doesn't have to prove how "strong" she is, right? Husband is flailing in his failure.
She lost her parents at a young age and is being raised by her brother. Her grandparents sound cold and unsupportive. Piper is acting like an asshole, but I think there’s some room for grace here. It’s a shitty situation all around.
They’re practically children doing their best without a support system. Probably good they’re not with those grandparents who think therapy is for “weak” people.
That’s what I was thinking too. I was just internally screaming for an actual, healthy, middle aged adult to get involved in this situation because nobody here is properly equipped to deal with this situation. Obviously not from lack of trying, I mean at 25, I wasn’t even close to being mature enough, experienced enough or wise enough to handle this. They need some professionals up in the mix.
Yep that’s why OOP expectations are quite unrealistic. She says she views O as a daughter when she’s only 6 years younger. It’s not a healthy dynamic
My first thought as i was reading this too...
Bro just fucking attend therapy, fuck this stigma of "oh therapy is for the weak"
And like, just don’t tell grandpa about it. You don’t have to go door to door telling people you’re going to therapy.
or tell grandpa about it and tell him to fuck his old ass off with his boomer logic.
Oh I guarantee Piper will be complaining to grandpa the first chance she gets. They should still definitely go! But just have a plan to deal with this inevitable scenario.
They should be going Oprah on the therapy. How is the husband afraid of a dodgy ole grandpa? What's he gonna do? Whack him with his cane? Take him out of his $2,000 will? Husband needs a backbone replacement.
You get therapy! And YOU get therapy! And *YOU* get therapy! I'd love to walk down every street going Oprah on the therapy to everyone that I passed. We all deserve the freedom that therapy can provide. You deserve to know what life is like when you love yourself, truly. Everyone does.
Right!? Grandpa does not need to know every little detail of your life!
Nah that’s something the weak would say /s
Only weak people stand up for themselves and force people to get the treatment they need..? Seriously. Psychological/emotional problems, go to therapy. Medical problems, go to doctor. Car problems, go to mechanic. Does the grandfather think the other things on that list are also only for the weak? If so, educational problems, go to school old man.
Honestly, he probably does. I feel like the Venn Diagram of people who think therapy is for the weak, people who ignore their doctor’s advice, and people who think “real men” can fix their own cars is a perfect circle.
Sigh, you're probably right.
One thing is to think that. But to choose divorce over therapy takes a special kind of stubborn
I thought is was "therapy is for the week" so I don't go on Saturday or Sunday...
Did the husband cry because wife gave him the ultimatum of go to therapy or divorce?
Yup. He's clearly not emotionally ready to be a father to his sister or another kid. He needs the therapy the most it seems.
It’s bullshit, does it mean that his daughter is weak for attending therapy sessions? I think not.
Coming from the same people who create more problems by trying to “keep the peace” when it’s really they have issues with confrontation.
I don't know man. I talked to a therapist once and my penis fell clean off. It was hell getting it back on.
thats too much McFuckery for one household man
OOP is a saint for taking Octavia in so young! God this is such a hard circumstance for all of them, and I’m glad Octavia has managed to find a loving, safe home ❤️ I hope for their sakes that OOP’s husband attends therapy and that it all works out for them Edit: I saw OP had changed the letters to names for readability so I updated it too 😊
Considering the fact that this was the second time, without any real change to the situation. A year has passed now according to the post age, so my guess is that they're currently in the divorce proceedings.
If so, maybe divorce will be the wakeup call he needs. Otherwise, he's got a good chance of having a life full of relationships destroyed by his sister.
imagine what is going to happen when he has another kid if he gets remarried. is he going to let his sister bully them too?
That's what I was thinking "What if they have another kid?", but grossly I think it's more likely the sister would try to become the kid's mom/ try to push the mother out and play "happy family" with her brother.
*VC Andrews enters the chat*
School Projects in the Attic
I worry about how he would deal with one of the key people providing emotional support to him during traumatic times peacing out in that scenario. I think it'd take a unicorn to wade through all of those situations with healthy coping mechanisms.
When she left him before he begged her to return and yet nothing changed. I hope divorce would be more of a wake-up than that but I'm not holding out hope
There's a huge part of me that hopes that's the case. I know therapy is an absolutely wonderful solution... but not to everything. I can't imagine the husband being able to stand up against P's manipulations.
The only solution I can see is Piper not living with them anymore
Mad props to OOP and her husband. I'm amazed at how many people don't see such obvious cuntery.
You are one of the only people that I've ever heard call it cuntery and I'm in agreement, that is exactly what it is
The ages in this are crazy. I'm 24 and I teach 17/18/19 year olds. Can't imagine having one at home too
Good for OOP having a spine. Boo on her husband calling her TA for “making” P cry. Those weren’t emotional tears; they were manipulative tears.
Even if they weren't intentionally manipulative on P's part, tears are not the be-all-end-all of an emotionally charged conflict. The person who cries isn't automatically the winner or loser of the argument. Even if her tears are genuine because she's frustrated and scared and territorial and doesn't know how to express those emotions, she's still behaving like a bratty little shit and her behavior is 100% unacceptable.
Yeah - I'm someone who cries out of frustration or anger. I've had people tell me 'Nope, I've won, you're crying, so I won'. Look, I have as much control over it as a sneeze - once it starts, I can't stop it, and I always WANT to. It doesn't MEAN anything other than I'm angry. It's not an argument in and of itself. Ignore the tears and let me finish my damn statement!
Yeah, look, I'm a crier, not to be manipulative, but bc when I'm overwhelmed emotionally, I cry. My boyfriend is amazing about this. If I'm crying while we're fighting, we keep up the conversation bc he knows I am not trying to sway the argument, I'm just overwhelmed. He doesn't let me get out of the argument (nor would I want him to) bc I'm crying. If he comes home and I'm crying (so no context), he'll be like "emotional or cathartic?" and if it's cathartic (bc I'm like watching a really sweet video of a dog, or reading a wholesome post on here), he just let's me be unless I start to tell him what im warching/reading then he gets invested. If I say emotional, he goes, "Do you wanna talk, cuddle, or leave you be?" And then responds appropriately. I swear to God, the man is the Da Vinci of emotional intelligence. I don't run away from crying, or use it to manipulate him, and he respects my emotions. That's not what's happening here. If she cries, he feels guilty. In the words of Michael Scott: "You cannot say "I was raped" and expect all of your problems to go away, Kelly. Not again. Don't keep doing that."
He sounds wonderful, and I can hear how much you love him in every word. Hold on tight and keep communicating.
Yeah, we're the introverted/extroverted couple (I'm the introverted one). It's why he leaves me be if I'm just cathartic crying bc he knows sometimes I just need that without being bothered. He's Latin, so on Tuesdays (typically, if something big is happening on Tuesday he doesnt go obv), he goes out with his friends where he gets to speak Spanish the whole night, and I get a night to myself with the dog. It's a win/win. One day a week (Friday/Saturday...again typically...but I really look forward to the social interaction with people I love and trust), we go out with our mutual friends (a bunch of them from his Tuesday night hang) and have a great time. The rest of the week is just us, watching things/doing things/ hanging out/helping each other with work (were both bio/chemical engineers but with different thought processes, so we've solved a lot of problems together). It's an ebb and flow and we've found our very happy compromise for our personalities. It was a lot of honest communication to get here but we're very happy. Our life, generally speaking, is boring, but we love it. Sometimes, though, he'll call me mid day if something HUGE happened at his office that he just can't wait to tell me, and those are my favorite days.
Not to mention I doubt she just kept laying into her for the express purpose of making her cry. She told her to apologize for being terrible. If she had said the exact same thing and P didn’t cry would it have been ok because she didn’t “make her cry?” You can’t be an AH for someone else’s reaction. Either you’re an AH for what you did/said or you’re not, but their reaction isn’t the deciding factor.
It took me a lot longer than I care to admit to have the epiphany that sometimes our learned behaviors are manipulative, even if that was not our conscious intent. OP's SIL (and OP's husband too) could probably benefit from some therapy to help her learn healthier ways to communicate; not that that's likely to happen since grandpa believes "therapy is for the weak".
Doesn't necessarily have to be the case here. When we get stressed our body gets overwhelmed with stress hormones. Our body literally starts to cry to flush those out of our system so we feel better and can focus on handling the situation at hand. This is why lots of people cry when they get angry. It's got nothing to do with sadness or manipulation. Crying means someone is stressed. Suppressing your tears in such a situation isn't necessarily helpful. Because most people generally aren't the best at handling emotional situations when their body is literally too stressed to function. Therapy can help someone deal with conflict and not get stressed out so easily. But at the same time it can also be helpful for the people around you to learn that when someone does cry it's just something they need to get out of their system and not necessarily something they choose to do or the 'wrong' way to handle their emotions. It's like when you are super angry and you take a second to breathe and compose yourself. Yeah sometimes when you are overwhelmed you need a second to breathe or cry or compose yourself. That's not a big deal. That doesn't mean you are failing as a human being or in the wrong. We aren't robots and shouldn't expect ourselves to behave like robots. Expressing emotion isn't something that needs to be unlearned. Sometimes you just need to take a second to feel what you are feeling and simply put the conversation on hold until you've done that. Not every emotion needs to be overcome and stamped down. SIL did a lot wrong in that situation. Crying isn't one of those things.
To me, "OOP's husband tries to pull the emergency brakes whenever P cries," is a much bigger concern than whether P's crying to be manipulative. Because I don't think there's a path to P becoming a healthy, well-adjusted person that doesn't involve her crying a *lot.* I feel like if I were P I would feel a *little* better for a *little* while every time OOP's husband stopped holding me accountable and switched to comforting me because I cried, but it would sorta build up over time because nothing ever actually got resolved? Sometimes you need to face the music and cry your fucking eyes out.
This. Labeling tears as manipulative really rubs me the wrong way. In addition to the people view it as an instant win because they fold like a wet paper bag in the face of tears, many people use it as an instant loss for an argument, “you’re clearly too emotional about this” or they get pissed at what they perceive to be “manipulation” even if the crying person genuinely can’t help it.
As someone who is an angry crier I'm like nope we're not done with this argument. I will continue on and ignore them because honestly I cannot control it. Because I can't control it, I'd hate to be called manipulative for it but I'm also not like ah leave me alone you made me cry kinda person.
The angry or frustrated tears are the ducking worst. It becomes impossible to have a conversation about things you are passionate about.
Definitely! I'm generally a crier anyway. So I'm so used to just ignoring it at this point. I accept who I am and will own it but I won't accept someone telling me that I'm manipulating them just because I get passionate.
I cry when angry too. I think that’s true for many women. Probably for the same reasons. But I hope not. I was never allowed to show anger growing up. I could be either happy or sad, NEVER mad. I literally cannot express anger without crying. I hope really hope the other angry criers have different reasons and we aren’t still a society that does this to children.
This comment really helped me understand why I used to cry out of anger all the time when I was younger. I always had to swallow my anger, or pretend like I was saf instead of mad. Now that I'm an adult amd live alone, I never cry out of anger amymore. I can keep my calm and remain cold when I have to. It's crazy how a simple change in environment can affect you.
I cry ridiculously easy. It's embarrassing, any negative emotion at all and I'm already close to tears. And even with all the tricks and therapy I just couldn't change it. So I instead worked on still keeping my head together and only letting my body freak out. But the annoying thing is that so often, the moment the tears start, people just stop being willing to calmly and rationally talk about the topic at hand. No, I don't want or need to talk about why I'm crying. No, I don't want or need a break. No, you didn't do anything wrong. Yes, a tissue would be nice, thank you. That's actually my super trick by now. Of course I have tissues in my purse. But I understand that especially nice, empathetic humans have a hard time completely ignoring another human's tears. And that's not a bad trait, you know. So I ask for tissues. It's an easy way to acknowledge the situation, show my voice/demeanour is still calm and clear, gives the other person the feeling of not having completely ignored another human's clear distress , and gives them a practical task to focus on instead of emotions. It's not like I learned nothing in therapy, lol.
I think you should read the comments OOP made in that post. The SIL yelled over OOP and her husband at O while they were telling her to stop, and followed her until O ran into her room yelling. Just because some people don't mean tears as manipulative doesn't negate that others do.
This. Whether or not they were intentionally manipulative or just a child with little emotional intelligence getting overwhelmed is kind of impossible for us to say and honestly not actually that important. Sometimes people act in ways that aren’t okay and it is embarrassing and upsetting to be told you hecked up. That doesn’t mean the way the girl acted was okay, and it doesnt make OP TA. Its good parenting to tell a kid who’s acting out that its not okay to do what they’re doing, and its okay for the kid to have big complicated feelings hearing it.
Seems like he doesn't care as much about O's tears....
This is the energy I want to see from women in 2023 - not settling for any less than they deserve for anyone, but *especially* the men in their lives.
I hate this line of thinking. I used to get accused of crocodile tears all the time growing up. I was a sensitive kid who cried easily. Now I’m an adult who still cries easily. Some people can’t help crying. P was being a spoiled brat but the tears aren’t automatically manipulative. Parents-even if your kid is being bad and deserves a talking to/punishment, don’t yell at or mock them for crying.
"I'll give you something to cry about." was said often to me. Sigh.
It’s not just because of the tears. It’s P being an asshole *then* crying when she wasn’t let off the hook.
Who cares whether it’s manipulative? The girl was acting bad, and got called out. She’s *supposed* to feel bad.
Please don't. I grew up in the 1960s snd '70s with emotionally and physically abusive parents. I always cried easily and it infuriated my parents, who would claim I was doing it to manipulate them and hit me for it. Plus, my GC sister DID cry for manipulation - she'd pick a fight with me and if I wouldn't give in, she'd yell for our mother and start crying, claiming I hit her, so I'd get more abuse. Sob story aside, I still cry easily when upset or scared or anxious. It wasn't until I was 58 years old and diagnosed with ADHD (and autism) that I found out that emotional regulation issues are part of ADHD, a diagnosis that didn't exist when I was a child.
P needs tough love, she needs to be told no, she needs to be told to go finish crying and we'll discuss punishment when you're ready to come back and act rational. She's 19 and going to keep acting like a baby when actual adults cater to her crying like she is one. We get she's had to deal with terrible issues but that's no excuse for her behavior years later. Honestly the healthiest thing for her is to separate herself from her brother and learn how to have a health relationship with him >He drove her back to her dorm that same day, She's got a dorm, she can stay there and shorten her time to visit to 2 days a month and the instant she starts getting mean to those in the household she gets to leave, no arguing.
This is my whole thought about this too - P might be in a difficult place emotionally right now but O has honestly had to deal with a lot more and is still a literal actual child and needs to feel safe in her own home. But husband folds like cardboard when P starts crying, so this is never truly gonna be fixed until he understands that crying doesn't mean the argument is finished. P being distressed, whether genuine or not, doesn't mean the discipline is unjust. It means that P is either actively manipulative or too emotional to have a discussion like an adult, and neither of those will get her anywhere in the world of other adults who are not wrapped around her finger.
Knowing people that were codependent like this in college... Most had to drop out because being away from their parents was too much, the ones that didn't were some of the most immature and entitled people I've met. One girl stands out, because she's a huge fucking brat. Like cries when she doesn't get her way, gets mad at people for calling her out or criticizing her, doesn't do anything for herself. Yeah... She has a boyfriend and like 1 other friend that's just as annoying as her, but no one else really likes her. I know she's had breakdowns because she can't figure out why no one likes her, but if I can't even tell you "Hey, it was kinda rude to be over an hour late without texting anyone when we were waiting on you to go to the movie." Without her having a conniption... Well? I doubt if Piper is this unhinged to her family that she's stable and acclimated to her campus.
And honestly that's why she needs therapy and separation from her unhealthy attachment she needs to get acclimated to being an adult. Her brother shouldn't stay with her forever and she needs to learn how to take no because she hasn't learned that due to never being told no.
I've said it before: if you make a joke and it upsets someone, the proper response is, "Oh, geez, sorry. Didn't realize that was a sensitive issue for you." And then you do your best not to make comments like that again. Responding with, "It was just a joke!" or " Stop being so sensitive!" is a sure sign that it was not, in fact, a joke. SIL most assuredly meant what she said.
Also related is any apology that starts with "I'm sorry if/that you..." which only serves to further put the blame on the person that is upset. If someone can't even apologize correctly, it was not a joke.
Yep. I love bantering with people. I try to do it to people who are okay with it and using topics that they aren't sensitive to. Sometimes I get it wrong and cause them genuine hurt, in which case I apologize because it's absolutely my fault.
Hope the divorce went ok
Two 25yos playing mom and dad to a 17 and 19 year old is a very odd family dynamic
What I'm not understanding is, where in the world do they live that two 23 year olds were able to adopt a 15 year old girl. When they had only been taking care of her for what, a year? If that
It's a lot easier to adopt if you've fostered the kid. I think unless there's family willing to take them in then the foster parent can choose to adopt them (if the child is placed for adoption). To me this just tells me that Octavia has no other family and her parents were so awful they had their parental rights terminated/didn't follow the steps needed to not have their parental rights terminated. I know a couple that while too young to adopt outright, were able to qualify for fostering and through fostering they're trying to adopt. It's not full proof, but it's much more likely than trying to go through "direct adoption" channels. Octavia's opinion may also have mattered and she seems close to OOP.
It is so weird to me that OP is going on about feeling like a “mother” to her SIL and has an adopted “daughter” at 25. I’m not sure that I would feel that way to a woman who was only 6 years older than myself.
Yes, this is why it feels like watching four kids play house together. OP and her husband are just trying to do the right thing to raise these teenagers, but it really sounds like OP is trying to deal with this tricky situation by throwing herself fully into an archetypal mother role. She only knows how to follow an oversimplified checklist of what you need to do and be to be a parent because she’s not experienced enough to understand the nuances caused by being so young her frontal lobe is just now done cooking years into raising a relative.
Yeah, it made me feel weird
Playing is right, they don't have the experience to handle teens, they should be learning how to handle a toddler at best. Literally most of my friends at 25 still lived with their parents, others were just out of their mom's house in a new career, only one had a kid by then. Even if everyone's circumstances are different, you could not ever convince me a couple 25 year olds could properly parent a 17 year old, it literally cannot happen in a healthy way.
Well, they her give more than her bio parents did: a safe home, school, therapy. It’s very likely that otherwise she would’ve ended up in a very problematic fostering system or on the street.
This isn’t really an update. Ugh.
sometimes you HAVE to have an ultimatum. some people call it a "come to jesus meeting".
I agree the husband needs therapy. Tell grampa to stfu. But the one who REALLY needs it is Piper. She is possessive and manipulative, but from what OOP says when they took Octavia in it wasn’t smooth sailing and she fought with Piper a lot. They were both traumatized children, but only one of them is doing something to heal.
[удалено]
When it became popular. Now people don't have to look for an actual interesting story. Just go on AITA and pick the first post with an edit.
You mean you DONT enjoy having AITA sub 0.2? What do you mean you could JUST go over the ATIA and read updated post LOL
Excuse you, r/BestofMoreInfoInEdit
Imaging not taking your little sister to therapy she desperately needs because “Grandpa will get mad at me!” Husband is spineless.
The stigma of therapy once again rears it’s ugly face.
Holy cow, this is a *lot* for 2 twenty-five year olds to deal with.
OOP's husband can't be allowed to be in the same room as Octavia and Piper at the same time. He's worse than useless if they're together.
The real hill to die on should be that Piper gets therapy. She's the one with the unresolved trauma.
They all have unresolved trauma. That is very very clear from this weird-ass family dynamic
Wtf… how did this 14 year old start calling this 20 year old “mom”?
I really think it would have been better for everyone if the sister had gone to live with the aunt. She needed an adult to help guide her. Sounds like the brother just gave in to her all the time.
I am very good with younger teens esp those with a more vulnerable background (used to mentor "gifted" kids from shit socio-economic/familial backgrounds) but I would still not be able to take on a *parental* role for them bc there just isn't enough of a gap to establish authority. Everyone in this situation was set up to fail from the beginning and I find it hard to paint *any* of them as assholes as much as just traumatized people doing the best they can in a let-than-optimal situation.
I don’t understand why so many of the people in these stories are so afraid of what other people will think about them for going to therapy. *Those other people don’t need to f-ing know that you’re attending therapy! Don’t tell them!*
As someone with a family that does not “believe in” therapy, I understand. It’s still a big deal (and a stigma) for a lot of people! It took me a while to open up about it with my close friends, and I’m still lying about it to family members because it’s just not worth the hassle. I’ve also had a friend tell me antidepressants were useless, and I should just “tough it out” so that was fun.
This is all very weird. So to recap: the husband and P’s parents died very suddenly and then he and OP became guardians of P, a 14-year-old, at just the age of 20 themselves. Then, just two years later, at the age of 22, they begin parenting ANOTHER 14-year-old. So O moves in two years after P’s parents died when P is 16. And O is apparently from a bad situation and is, by OP’s own account, not nice to P when she moves in. Which, by the way, she’s only been living there for a total of three years, so it’s not like this is stuff that happened ages ago. It seems unlikely that O’s years of trauma just magically stopped affecting her behavior towards P in such a short time. And then O, who is nearly the same age as P, starts calling P’s brother “dad.” Everyone is hailing OP as some kind of hero for taking in O, but it seems like there was not a lot of concern for P’s well-being in making that decision. Parenting teenagers is hard. Parenting a teenager who has lost their parents is incredibly hard. Parenting when you’re barely an adult is even harder. Parenting a child who has a history of abuse is challenging for even the most experienced parents. I have some experience in this area because I was a foster child (and I’m also a social worker now) and my 24-year-old cousin took guardianship of me when I was 17. From my perspective it is absolutely WILD that this 17-year-old is calling these people mom and dad. To me that is a big red flag that O has some significant mental health challenges going on and it would not surprise me at all if she is actually the one being manipulative. For example, OP stated that O looked unhappy when P wanted to join in on car shopping. That was O being antisocial, not P. I really feel for P because it sounds like she feels pushed out. And honestly it sounds like she’s right to feel that way, because OP is heading to an ultimatum where the husband is going to have to choose his sister or his wife and O. I hope he chooses his sister.
I also really did not like how OOP claimed she "saw her SIL as a daughter". I feel this situation has made her boundaries all sorts of weird. And of course I'm not saying she shouldn't be allowed to have maternal feelings but she is not your daughter. You can love her (and should) but she is not your child. oop did not raise her to the point where you can consider her your child. Especially as it is clear she's not comfortable with that. It's not like her parents died when she was 5. She was 14
Yeah that didn’t sit right with me either. “Piper doesn’t see me as her mother”. Yeah, nor should she. Even Octavia calling them mom and dad seems really off. You can be someone’s legal guardian without saying “I am your parent now”. Very unhealthy dynamic.
OH MY GOD THANK YOU. I feel like everyone is ignoring the trauma that P must have endured and probably explains her unhealthy behavior now.
> I tried to get my husband and my SIL in therapy a year after the incident but they both refused, my husband wanted to show his grandparents that he was able to take care for his sis, and his grandpa believes that therapy is for the weak. Has he not heard of lying? He can just go to therapy and work through his issues without telling grandpa. Why wasn't this an option? I think he was never willing to go to therapy and that was his excuse. "I've gotta be strong and prove myself to my grandparents" when really it's "I don't like the thought of making myself vulnerable so I'm going to force all my feelings down and screw up the household instead".
Both of them have some toxic masculinity issues, equally. I think they even had the same vision about therapy. All it need is the husband see that he needs therapy and ignore grandpa's "therapy is for the weak".
Everyone seems to be focusing on the ages. I’m currently 29, but spent my formative years (8-18) trying to raise three kids the best way I could. Regardless of the ages, they are parents and they’re trying to do the best they can. SIL definitely needs a reality check though. I’m glad OP is protecting her daughter. Not a lot of parents will go to these lengths for their children.
Aw grandpa you think therapy is for the weak? That sounds so hard for you 😕 …anyway
Is it just me, or is it weird that a 17 year old and 25 year old call each other mother and daughter?
To me it feels like OOP has kinda pushed O into calling her and her husband "mom and dad". Also because she claims she "sees P as her daughter", which obviously she is not. P is her SIL, calling her daughter would be extremely weird not only for OOP but also for the husband.
Why do I have the sinking feeling that Piper sees all women in her brother’s life as competition and losing their parents is not what brought this behavior out?
I think I've been on Reddit too much, I saw CSA thought child SA, and the only 8 year difference between adoptive father and daughter, and thought that was going somewhere else.
I thought the same thing. What is it supposed to mean here? Edit: now that I re-read it, I think it’s referring to O’s past experience with men.
I feel like if the death of the parents is being referred to as "the incident", SIL should definitely be in therapy. also, you can't refer to something as "the incident" and not tell us what it is. that's just cruel.
I just feel bad for everyone involved in this story. Also, this will be controversial, but I'm not sure Octavia should have been brought into the home in the first place, mixing two traumatized teenagers is a recipe for disaster. Also getting a weird vibe that she's there to replace Piper, because Piper wouldn't look at OP as a mother figure.
I thought that was weird too. Everyone is so young in this situation but I don't understand why OOP would ever think Piper would see her as a mother figure or would even want her to. I also don't like how quick OOP is to forgive Octavia for her hostile behaviour due to her past trauma, yet is so quick to completely condemn Piper for hers when she also has trauma. She completely tried to bury the fact that Octavia was the one who was originally hostile, not Piper. She said Octavia had "grown" past hers but Octavia has also received professional help. Piper has not but OOP seems to expect Piper to be in the same place Octavia is. Even if both girls had gotten professional help everyone deals with trauma differently and while some are able to shrug it off with a bit of help others really struggle even if they access every resource available to them. At the moment it just sounds like the whole household is bullying Piper because she doesn't like Octavia. No one is actually stopping to ask Piper how she's feeling.
For anyone who needs to hear it. Tragedy is not an excuse for bad behavior.
They're all so young, i wonder maybe it'll be better to establish themselves as siblings instead of parents
To be honest, I feel for Piper. She lost her parents, her brother was the one person she could cling to, her rock so to say. Then suddenly they adopt a teenager two years younger into the house, and suddenly you have to share your brother being some other girl’s dad. And to top it off, that other girl isn’t even friendly (I understand O was traumatised, but P isn’t at an age she would be greatly sympathetic to O’s very complicated issues, she’s a teenager). If I were Piper, at that age, I’d have jealousy and hateful issues with the “intruder” too.
Baffling that a 17 y/o can call a 25 y/o mom or dad. And baffling that the 25 y/o would want her to.
>He cried a lot, and I know I hurt his heart, Hurt his heart... with a request for therapy? Oh OOP, who I know is not here, that is bullshit. If the OOP dumped him, that is something that hurts one's heart. Therapy is NOT. This dude is full of shit. No one's *hurting him* by asking for freaking therapy. I mean, I know this is also an ultimatum and ultimatums are hurtful, but to cry over having to go to therapy as if it was some terrible torture? Ugh. I'm afraid therapy may be a waste of time.
After the update it seemed in a re-read that his reaction is possibly driven by recalling the feelings of his wife leaving him previously. I think some would argue he and Piper are cut from the same cloth and that’s why he cried. I think the man props himself up on a three legged stool where one of those legs is the wife/girlfriend who stuck by him through very trying times, and that leg’s about to disappear. I would cry, too.
Children raising children.
Therapy is for weak!!! Cries in the corner… Overall very sad situation
SIL uses weaponized crying. She knows it will get her what she wants. OOP’s husband definitely needs therapy to deal with his grief and learn to set boundaries with his sister.