well that's a load of crap. some one comes into her home, without warning or permission, goes through her personal possessions, helped themselves to what ever they wanted and invited strangers to do the same and somehow the SM bears blame?

I'm calling B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T bullshit mama!

This columnist is off base with the response.  No way in the world I would tolerate this behavior from my bios let alone step kids.  The shame and blame of the stepmother is outrageous.  No way these kids are entitled to come into the house and lie about it let alone bring other people into the house.  It's really ok to go thru SM's underwear/pjs and then wear them. Incredible.

WTH. Is this satire? That 'columnist' sounds like a disgruntled skid. *dash1*

This columnist is an idiot. 

so ridiculous!!!!

What absolute garbage, and way to blame the victim. You have to wonder if the so-called expert deliberately gave inflammatory advice to drive traffic

"Girls, your stepmother, I love her, but she is wired kinda tight..."

This is sadly just more proof of the delusion of those who deify spawn and demonize a parent's life partner when that partner is not the person that parent polluted their gene pool with.  Which in this case the toxicity of the dad's spawning with the BM was a gene pool polluting event is proven by the toxic spawn.  He and BM created this shit puddle of a generation and exacerbated the problem by failing as not only gene donors but also as parents.

This is not the girls childhood or family home.  It is the home of their father and his wife and these entitled sneaking thieving spawn have violated the sanctity of that home, disrespected their father and his wife, and are righfully purged from that home with zero independent access.  Even if this is a structure that these girls grew up in, wether in total or in part.

Good riddance the these shit SD's.  They have not earned a place in that home or even as family to either adult in that marriage.  If my brother or I had behaved as these shit spawn have behaved towards our father's bride our bodies would never be found.  And that would be the lightest of the consequences our father would have applied.

That his bride is also our mother is irrelevant. Even if she were our SM, the consequences would have been the same.

This is definately a hill to die on and I applaud the SM for putting cameras everywhere and purging the toxic stepspawn from her home without direct hairy eyeball supervision.  These are adults.  They are not minors.  She needs to call the cops, share the footage, and put them in jail.  Yes, even if that stains their entire futures with a record.

Don't fuck with  or disrespect dad and dad's bride!!!!!

Yep - this is the WORST, least educated on step issues, mono-focused, stupid advice I've heard in a lonnnngg time. Gone are the days where we defend the adult SKIDs and automatically BLAME the stepparent for the direct assault made on the stepparent. I ran into a situation last month where I was directly assaulted (verbally) by adult stepkids- NO reason, I had done nothing but be nice even when I really felt it was undeserved. And of course NO recourse, no apology for the poor treatment of me, another human being because I am the stepparent. I couldnt imagine writing about this mistreatment and abuse and then to be told by a columnist that it's somehow MY fault. How enraging?! How incredibly crazy is our society to think that it comes down always to the stepparent. THINGS NEED TO CHANGE NOW. THIS IS EXACTLY WHY, THE PENDELUM NEEDS TO SWING TO THE MIDDLE, TOO many examples of outright abuse and the stepparent being burned. NO MORE. We should OUT this every single time. 

I hope someone breaks into the columnist's home, drinks her liquor, wears her undies, and leaves a mess for her to clean up. 

I commented as well.  I only saw one comment that was team "The skid is not a guest".  I am definately team "defend the castle against the invaders".

I'm still stewing on this. Dad is clearly a balless wonder. These semi feral SDs have been been pissing all over SM's territory for a while, and have become enboldened because daddee is too weak to stop it.

What they did - stealing, trespass, unauthorized guests, and underage drinking - would not fly in an intact family, so why is SM the bad guy? Oh yeah, because she dared to handle the situation instead of pasting on a smile and eating that excrement. I hope she plants a b!tch boot right up her spineless spouse's arse.

If the response was indeed written by Dan Bois, whose name is on the byline, then it is no surprise.

Bois wrote his own book awhile ago called, "How to Be a Family" about traveling the world for a year with his wife and two daughters. In one example, he talked about living in New Zealand and how his daughters were chased out of a neighbor's yard for using (her) trampoline. The girls complained to Bois because they thought the neighbor was "mean" and the kids thought they had a right to unrestricted use of the trampoline, which Bois passively agreed with.

'Nuff said.

A hack writer and his hatchet piece to continue the negative stereotype and vilify stepmothers. Nothing like broadcasting your bigotry. 

The thing I find most interesting is his year abroad with his family was purportedly to expand their exposure to diverse people, since he allegedly didn't have that in the suburban DC area where they were living. Right. All they had to do was ride the Metro to Anacostia neighborhood in DC and they would have experienced an entirely different culture. But of course that wouldn't make for a good book would it? 

If he wants to experience diversity, perhaps he should spend a year following the trials and tribulations of a stepmother/parent and write something based in reality. 

Was certifiely nuts. Bipoler.  Yes she stole.  But what can you do. Throw her on the streets.  Put her in a shelter.  Not only was she nuts but smart enough to learn how to play the system.  Telling the DRs all the right things. She was in the hospital for some reason. So I gave her like $5. In case she needed something.. She left the hospital walked to 7-11 and bought a beer .  
'You can't make this stuff up.  
'You do what you have to do.  

I know nuclear families that make their BK's stay in a hotel when they come back home to visit rather than allowing them to stay in their family home. Each family is different and parents can absolutely decide to keep feral adult children out of their homes.

No one should have to put up with a lying, stealing brat. Once a thief they will probably always be a thief.

That was originally a Slate piece. I was horrified when I read it. WTF?  The "advice" was, on Slate, countered very well overall in the Slate comments - MOST of those commenters were on the side of the SM by a wide margin. In fact, there's been a few letters/advice recently about SMs (never SDads of course!)...one about a SM refusing to buy a kid who's dad claimed sensitive eating disorder but the SM was substituting food and the kid didn't notice (from my experience with an ARFID kid they would know either by just looking at it or the milisecond it entered their mouth) and another about a SM who didn't want to include the steps in HER will, with good reason. The writer of course without good reason upheld the kids and parents. However, the Slate comments again, were pretty balanced.

Full disclosure - I might be affected by PMS hormones today, or just tired at the end of the year and needing a holiday, but I just feel a lot of sadness. It's always the step parent that's the villain, but do the society stop to think that a lot of these step parents have never signed up to this role, and as far as they knew they were marrying/dating a person whose kids lived with the other parent full time, often no contact due to the parent's who kept them vindictiveness, until one day social services descend onto the step parent and their partner with the kids that have been removed from their other parent due to gross neglect, drug use and what have you, basically dumping the kids on them. My patient was one of those former kids, now a young adult. While pleasant with me and (seemingly) considerate and kind with his partner, he had so much vitriol towards his step mother, whose house he lived in as his own from the age of 8. 
There were no particular crimes he accused her of, other than not making his lunch box as full of nice stuff as her own kids', which I find hard to believe, and considering that he came from the background of extreme deprivation where he and sister had to resort to stealing food from shops to survive for years while at BM's, he should have been happy to get a normal (not "fancy") lunch from a woman who never signed up for 2 feral kids in the first place. He conveniently doesn't entertain the idea that he must have presented as a little animal when he first came into her care, as I can't imagine he was taught anything in the environment he lived in with permanently drug affected mother. 
 
He's angry that step mother has asked him to get a job and move out as soon as he's 18 - and he's a perfectly capable young man, doing apprenticeship, working, saving money, but for whatever reason he felt he should be entitled to hang around for years to come. He's angry with his BM, but also his step mother who raised him, when she didn't have to. He makes stupid mistakes, like speeding significantly over the limit to get a birthday gift to her, loses his licence for a few months and blames her for that. He can't be god's gift at work either, cause he was let go a couple of times for "No apparent reason", according to him, which makes little sense, since he's a good worker and gets re-employed easily, so it must be his entitled and argumentative nature. 
 

I'm also kinda sad realising that lots of tosh I believed for years due to lots of "trauma informed training" at work just isn't true, and just a lot of self-righteousness and a good money making scheme for consulting/training organisations, who tell you that as long as you provide enough boundaries and nurture, you'll end up having an amazing relationship with the most damaged kids. I'm realising that while I can like my step kids, I'll probably never love them. Sad, but when I think of my old dog who died, I used to miss him when I'd go away for a weekend or on holidays, and I still miss him after he passed away. I get a very warm feeling I'm my heart when I remember him, even the mischief he'd get into sometimes. I never stopped loving him, even when I was annoyed with him. I expected that if I can love a pet, a partner, a friend, I'd surely be able to love children, who might not have been dealt the best cards in their young lives. But I don't. I think the most I can learn to do is like them, but even that is hard, because they're in a violent/destructive mood most of the time, even if it's never directed at me or my possessions. 
 

Ah, as I say to my patients, it's important to accept other people's limitations before we decide where to with the relationship. I just usually use this about birth family adult relationships - parents, siblings. Once we accept that this is the best they'll ever be, this is the best they'll be able to give us, comes grief - grief of letting go of a perfect or even just a good enough parent, sibling, adult child, realising we will never have that. But what comes after grief is liberation - knowing that now you're free, because you no longer have to bang your head against the wall to be loved, respected and treated the way you deserve. You don't have to try and please them or keep fixing that relationship. Let it go. I think I'm just going through the grief stage now.