My stepson, 17, stays with us on weekends, but recently my 14-year-old daughter begged me to stop him from coming over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She wouldn\u2019t explain why, which made me uneasy. One day, while grabbing laundry from his room, I found a strange pile of<\/p>\n\n\n\n
socks near his bed. Underneath, there was a family photo, an old school picture of my daughter, and a card she had made for her dad years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t know what to think. None of the items were harmful, but it felt odd since they weren\u2019t his things and he\u2019d never shown<\/p>\n\n\n\n
sentimental side before. When I asked my husband, he dismissed it, saying maybe our son just liked keeping family<\/p>\n\n\n\n
memories close. Still, the secretive way he collected those items unsettled me, especially given my daughter\u2019s discomfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I gently asked my daughter again, and she said he hadn\u2019t done anything specific, but sometimes stared too long<\/p>\n\n\n\n
or asked strange questions about our life before he arrived. She didn\u2019t feel unsafe, just uneasy. When I confronted my stepson,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
he shut down and later texted me that he feels like an outsider in our home, lonely and unsure how to fit in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Realizing he wasn\u2019t creepy but just struggling to belong, I asked my husband if his son could stay with his mother for<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a few weekends while we figure things out. Now my husband is upset, my daughter is quiet, and my stepson won\u2019t<\/p>\n\n\n\n
answer my texts. I\u2019m unsure if I did the right thing or made things worse\u2014and I\u2019d really appreciate your advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My stepson, 17, stays with us on weekends, but recently my 14-year-old daughter begged me to stop him from coming over. She wouldn\u2019t explain why, which made… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nformed24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nformed24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nformed24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nformed24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nformed24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nformed24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2625,"href":"https:\/\/nformed24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions\/2625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nformed24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nformed24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nformed24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nformed24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}