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 me uneasy. One day, while grabbing laundry from his room, I found a strange pile of 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 sentimental side before. When I asked my husband, he dismissed it, saying maybe our son just liked keeping family 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 or asked strange questions about our life before he arrived. She didn\u2019t feel unsafe, just uneasy. When I confronted my stepson, 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 a few weekends while we figure things out. Now my husband is upset, my daughter is quiet, and my stepson won\u2019t 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":2,"featured_media":8867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":714,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8868,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866\/revisions\/8868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}