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Relationship Counseling: My future husband's children are disrespectful to him
Dear Dr. Ellen: Over a year ago a met a man who is truly wonderful.
He is kind and gentle and a real family man. Over the course of the
last year he has gotten his divorce and he talks about marriage all
the time. The problem is his two children. When they are alone with
me they are very nice but when we are together they become monsters.
He has a boy 14 and a girl 11.
They talk badly to their father and the boy berates and belittles
him every opportunity he gets. He tells his father to mind his own
business and is just plain nasty. An example of this is that the
boy has gotten a couple of F's in school and it is very obvious to
me that he is not studying. The boy has a cell phone and he was
talking to his friend for about an hour and his father got angry
and told him to get off the phone. He did not and answered him very
badly so that his friend heard him. My boyfriend got angry and took
the phone away from him and it fell and broke. The boy called his
grandmother, (my boyfriend's mother) and told her that his father
broke his cell phone and she went out the next day and bought him a
new phone and changed the plan so that he now had more minutes in
which to waste time with talking to his friends. Call me crazy but
I raised two kids and that is not the way I would have reacted. She
undermines her son every chance she gets. Then when the kids are
nasty with her she gets on his back because there is no discipline.
He is caught in an untenable situation. I get very angry because
it's almost like he feels that it's all right for these people to
be nasty to him, all of them, the son, the daughter and the
grandmother.
My concern is that if we get together in the future I know I will
not be able to tolerate the way the kids speak to their father. I
would not allow anyone to speak to me that way and get away with
it. The other part is that these kids are always with the father
because he has custody. - Yolanda
Dear Yolanda: You are getting a package deal here. It's not like
these children are 17 and 18 and are ready to leave home. This is
going to be a long term problem that is not going to go away. Your
boyfriend may be allowing his children to speak and act that way
to him because he doesn't instinctively know how to be a good
parent and demand the respect that he deserves from his children.
There does not seem to be any boundaries or consistencies in this
family. His mother had no right to do what she did and it's hard
to believe that your boyfriend allowed his son to keep the new
phone. The proper response was to have his son give the phone back
to his grandmother and then privately tell her that he will not
have his authority undermined by her. My guess is that she is very
involved with the children's upbringing and has a great deal of
influence over their lives. If his own mother doesn't respect his
role as a father and keeps undermining him, then how can he
possibly expect his children to feel any differently?
My advice to you is to let your boyfriend know that you could never
consider marriage because it would be too painful watching his
children disrespecting him. Suggest that you both take a parenting
class or begin reading books on discipline. If these children are
acting like this at 14 and 11, I can only imagine what they will be
like at 17 and 14. They will destroy your marriage.
I don't think that there is anything you can say or do to change
the relationship he has with his kids. HE has to do that. His
motivation may be the fear of losing you if he doesn't command the
respect a father should have. His relationship with them has to be
based on mutual respect and cooperation. If this continues, you
too, will lose the respect and admiration you have for this man as
well. - Dr. Ellen
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