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Why is LW making problems for themself?
Dear Care and Feeding,
I remarried a few years ago. Before I remarried, my daughters (“Annie” and “Abby”) were already well acquainted with my husband and his daughter (“Charlie”). The girls are all 11 years old. My husband and Charlie have moved in, and the girls are now super close, to the point where my husband and I are getting concerned.
My twins’ biological father is not really in their lives and Charlie’s biological mother is dead, so none of the girls have any other households. My twins and Charlie have taken to calling themselves triplets. They do everything together—right now Annie and Abby share a larger room and Charlie has a smaller room to herself, but often they will spend all of their time in the twins’ room. Charlie will even sometimes stay overnight there. I think about what I was like at that age; I didn’t have a twin but I remember how much I valued my privacy.
They also get upset whenever something gets pointed out about how they aren’t related or about how they look different. They are physically very different from each other. The twins are shorter and paler, they have different hair color and texture, and eye color. These are things that kids in school point out, or sometimes one of the kids themselves points it out and another (usually Abby) gets upset. Abby seems to be the one who is most invested in their threesome, though Annie and Charlie take it seriously, too. My husband and I are worried—this doesn’t seem normal or healthy.
—Three’s a Crowd?
Dear Crowd,
Maybe I’m missing something here, but I don’t see anything wrong with what you’re describing. In fact, you seem to have hit the jackpot—stepsiblings who don’t just tolerate each other, but who have completely embraced one another as true family. What exactly are you concerned about? If your worry is that they’re leaning so hard into this Three Musketeers vibe that it’s bound to implode on itself (cue tween drama), then I can understand that. But it’s been a few years, and they seem just as close as ever. You can keep an eye on things, but I wouldn’t go looking for trouble, as they say.
Is your concern that they’re becoming codependent on each other and might never want to be apart, say for college? If that’s the case, I’d suggest you and your husband start a tradition of daughter date nights—every month one of you takes a kid on a solo adventure; that means you’d each be one-on-one with each daughter twice a year. It would be an opportunity to forge individual relationships with each girl and talk to them about their interests, dreams, and plans without the other two around. I think it would give you a pretty clear sense of the kind of women your daughters are becoming. It’s also important to remember that high school is right around the corner. You’re likely going to see a lot more differentiation between your daughters as they enter this wider world.
Each of your girls has experienced loss and trauma in their past, but your blended family has brought them new relationships that they treasure. Tell them that the next time someone questions their siblinghood, they can reply that chosen sisters (or whatever term they prefer) are just as real as biological ones. Because that’s the truth.
—Allison
Link
I remarried a few years ago. Before I remarried, my daughters (“Annie” and “Abby”) were already well acquainted with my husband and his daughter (“Charlie”). The girls are all 11 years old. My husband and Charlie have moved in, and the girls are now super close, to the point where my husband and I are getting concerned.
My twins’ biological father is not really in their lives and Charlie’s biological mother is dead, so none of the girls have any other households. My twins and Charlie have taken to calling themselves triplets. They do everything together—right now Annie and Abby share a larger room and Charlie has a smaller room to herself, but often they will spend all of their time in the twins’ room. Charlie will even sometimes stay overnight there. I think about what I was like at that age; I didn’t have a twin but I remember how much I valued my privacy.
They also get upset whenever something gets pointed out about how they aren’t related or about how they look different. They are physically very different from each other. The twins are shorter and paler, they have different hair color and texture, and eye color. These are things that kids in school point out, or sometimes one of the kids themselves points it out and another (usually Abby) gets upset. Abby seems to be the one who is most invested in their threesome, though Annie and Charlie take it seriously, too. My husband and I are worried—this doesn’t seem normal or healthy.
—Three’s a Crowd?
Dear Crowd,
Maybe I’m missing something here, but I don’t see anything wrong with what you’re describing. In fact, you seem to have hit the jackpot—stepsiblings who don’t just tolerate each other, but who have completely embraced one another as true family. What exactly are you concerned about? If your worry is that they’re leaning so hard into this Three Musketeers vibe that it’s bound to implode on itself (cue tween drama), then I can understand that. But it’s been a few years, and they seem just as close as ever. You can keep an eye on things, but I wouldn’t go looking for trouble, as they say.
Is your concern that they’re becoming codependent on each other and might never want to be apart, say for college? If that’s the case, I’d suggest you and your husband start a tradition of daughter date nights—every month one of you takes a kid on a solo adventure; that means you’d each be one-on-one with each daughter twice a year. It would be an opportunity to forge individual relationships with each girl and talk to them about their interests, dreams, and plans without the other two around. I think it would give you a pretty clear sense of the kind of women your daughters are becoming. It’s also important to remember that high school is right around the corner. You’re likely going to see a lot more differentiation between your daughters as they enter this wider world.
Each of your girls has experienced loss and trauma in their past, but your blended family has brought them new relationships that they treasure. Tell them that the next time someone questions their siblinghood, they can reply that chosen sisters (or whatever term they prefer) are just as real as biological ones. Because that’s the truth.
—Allison
Link
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Your daughters and stepdaughter aren’t You: The Reboot. If they’ve hit it off, rejoice: they have one another’s support (and at a supremely vulnerable age: middle school is red in tooth and claw!)
(As for One Of These Things Being Not Like The Others, meet twin sisters Lucy and Maria Aylmer of Gloucester, England:
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(And no, we weren’t Evangelical or Mormon; the Sixties in Middle American suburbia were just that way.)
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I was just thinking of such sets of twins!
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*
copies this down for a story idea
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I think providing some support for Abby might be warranted, here. People are jerks, unfortunately, they're gonna comment about sisters, especially triplets, who look different. But if she feels confident that her parents love and support her, that nobody is going to separate her from her step-sister, she will be more able to handle the jerk comments. She may have some underlying anxiety or attachment issue about the absence of her biological father, which is being expressed as protectiveness of her relationship with Charlie.