Juggling school, chores, personal responsibilities, and your social life while also caring for your sibling is quite a lot for a teenager who is still figuring themselves out.
However, that’s exactly what Reddit user Existing_Attempt_972 is expected to do.
In a post on the platform’s forum ‘Two Hot Takes,’ the 17-year-old explained that her father and stepmother have tasked her with looking after her 15-year-old stepsister.
Even though she detested it, the teen somehow managed it. Until she was asked to take the younger one on her long-awaited graduation trip.
Blended families can have challenges as people establish new relationships, rules, and boundaries
Image credits: Ann Bugaichuk / pexels (not the actual photo)
And this teenager isn’t happy with how things are going in hers
Image credits: RDNE Stock project / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Julia M Cameron / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Existing_Attempt_972
It might be that the girl’s father overcompensated by favoring his stepdaughter
We managed to get in touch with Existing_Attempt_972 and she explained to us that in the beginning, her stepsister didn’t seem troublesome. “I can’t say I tried to bond with her because I was just thrust into being an automatic sibling,” the author of the Reddit post told Bored Panda. “We never lived together before they got married. So I went from it being just my dad to two other people.”
“I did help her with homework and even watched a few movies with her. Then she was being forced to be in my space and I got turned off.”
Michael Oberschneider, Psy.D., and founder of Ashburn Psychological and Psychiatric Services, says it is important for parents to maintain one-on-one time with their kids so that they still feel wanted and loved in the same way they did before the blend.
“The key is to not assume that because you love one another, the children are going to come together like one big happy family,” Oberschneider explains. “There’s going to be a phase of adjustment, but with good communication, space, and sensitivity, the blend should move along quickly.”
However, judging from the teen’s emotional post, it sounds like she might not have enough support.
Also, nanny duties may have complicated the situation even more. When forced to mature quickly, kids skip developmental stages, says Sophie Chung, M.D., CEO of Qunomedical, a digital health platform based in Berlin, Germany that connects doctors and patients worldwide.
Our developmental stages are what form our personality and set a basis for our later lives. When these are skipped or rushed through, our sense of self changes.
Image credits: ALINA MATVEYCHEVA / pexels (not the actual photo)
As Dr. Chung highlights, asking your child to help around the house by, for example, doing the dishes or vacuuming is OK, as is asking a teen to fix their sibling a bowl of cereal before school. The trouble comes when a child is expected to be the sole provider of cleanliness, food, or ensuring their sibling is awake on time, fed, and sent to school every day. This is when chores become full responsibility and a child is faced with a lot more pressure than they should be.
You can ask your child to watch their sibling for a set period of time whilst you’re busy without creating a habit out of it, but the Redditor may have been pushed too far.
“I don’t like being responsible for her,” the author of the post added. “I had to become a parent to someone who I didn’t even know and had no relationship with. Most of the time, I try to pretend I’m sick so I don’t have to be around her. It was either I take her or I don’t go out so I really stopped hanging out with friends when she was around.”
Moving forward, the Redditor hopes that her dad starts to see where she’s coming from, and that the two of them can come to a mutual understanding. “If not, I don’t think I’ll have a problem going no-contact because I’ve been treated as a babysitter and not my dad’s daughter. I don’t really care to get to know Lily or or her mother,” she added.
As her story went viral, the teen joined the discussion in the comments
People have had a lot of reactions and advice to share after getting familiar with her experience
