Here’s the situation.
I’ve been a step-dad to my stepdaughter for three years, since she was 7 ½ years old.
During this time I’ve taken an active role in parenting her, and over time we’ve become quite close. Her mother, my fiancée, is very happy that her daughter has a stable, protective and loving male role model in her life, and I feel wonderful and blessed that I can provide these things for her.
Occasionally (less and less as she grows older), when my daughter goes to bed, her mother or I will sometimes lay down beside her for ten or fifteen minutes to cuddle her. “Cuddling” is snuggling close and quietly talking to her about her day and what’s on her mind. I sometimes gently stroke her forehead by her hairline and this helps her fall asleep. It’s very nurturing for her and she really likes it. I do, too.
I work at home on my computer and I’m very busy much of the time, so it’s a nice treat for both of us to connect. It helps us feel closer, especially on days when there have been behavioural problems and she feels particularly alienated by us.
About a month ago my daughter and I travelled out of town to my Mother and Father-in-Law’s house to look after their dog while they were away on business. I thought it would be a good opportunity for my fiancée to get some time to herself, and for my daughter and I to spend some quality time together.
My daughter is quite used to sleeping at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, as she has been really close to them all of her life. She normally sleeps in a room downstairs in the basement with the dog.
They left me a note stating that I could sleep in their bed, which was fine by me, since it was the most comfortable place to sleep in the house.
When it was my daughter’s bedtime, she asked me if she could sleep with me.
To give you some background information, her mother and I had talked about this before. Since our daughter has never had a father (her birth father was never in her life), my fiancée has always thought that it would be perfectly ok (and healthy) for our daughter to sleep in the same bed as me, if the circumstance ever arose. Since she never had this opportunity as a baby or young girl, it would be beneficial for her to sleep with her me – it would provide her with a sense of safety and security that she had never experienced.
On this occasion, I thought it would be perfectly fine. Since her mother and had I talked about it before, I didn’t think too much of it.
She read for an hour or so while I worked on the computer. Sometime around midnight I went to bed. She was in her nightie and I wore long underwear and a t-shirt. The dog was at the foot of the bed and the cat came in a little while later too and slept with us.
I gave her a kiss on the forehead and told her I loved her, even though I was pretty sure she was sleeping by then.
The only contact we had all night was her elbow in my head and sometime later a knee in my back when she was hogging the bed. I gently turned her over and pushed her over to the other side.
In the morning we both woke up at the same time to the sound of the dog’s claws clicking around on the floor and him trying to get up on the bed. He was telling us it was breakfast time.
We had an awesome day together and it was a great bonding experience for both of us.
The next night when it was her bed-time, I asked her if she was going to sleep downstairs or upstairs again, and she said “upstairs” if it was ok with me. I said that would be fine. Like the night before, she went to bed to read again. This time I read beside her for a while. When I saw that she was yawning and getting sleepy, I gave her a hug, kissed her goodnight and turned off the light.
I got up and went to work on the computer again for an hour or two.
So we slept together the second night, too. The night was uneventful, other than when I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, the dog barked loudly. I had a better sleep than the night before.
We returned home the next day and I told my wife that my daughter and I had slept together in Grandma and Grandpa’s bed. She told me that she thought we might do that, and she happy that we had some really good quality-time over the weekend.
And that was the end of it. Or so I thought.
I drove my daughter out of town to stay at the grand parents’ house again while my fiancée and I went out for New Year’s Eve. When we returned home and my fiancée called my mother-in-law, somehow the topic came up that I slept with my daughter in her bed. Grandma was not pleased about this, saying that while she doesn’t think anything “went on”, she is adamant that it is NOT good from a developmental point of view for her granddaughter at age 10 ½ to be sleeping with her dad. She claimed that a child of her age “needs her autonomy.”
My fiancée was absolutely floored. She didn’t believe her mom’s claimed reasoning and made it clear that she trusts me 100% and that it was perfectly ok with her that we slept together. She was pretty angry with her mom and cut the conversation short.
When she told me about this, I couldn’t believe that this was being made into such a big deal. I was more than a little concerned that she hadn’t stressed out my daughter about a perfectly benign event, either. I haven’t talked to my mother-in-law yet, because I’m waiting to do it in person when I pick up my daughter tomorrow. I’m hoping that she hasn’t told her “daughters at your age shouldn’t be sleeping with their parents” (or dads, specifically).
I tried to look at this from her point of view. If I were a granddad and my daughter’s 10 ½ year old daughter was sleeping in my bed with her step-dad, it might actually worry me. Yes, those thoughts would probably cross my mind. After all, you want to do your best to protect your family.
I don’t, quite frankly, buy the “needs her autonomy and is not good from a developmental point of view” line at all. Sure, I understand and agree that you shouldn’t sleep with your kids EVERY night beyond a certain age (maybe five or six? I haven’t really looked into it), but to give that reasoning for two successive nights doesn’t make sense to me.
I have gone through the range of motions from having empathy with my mother-in-law to being angry.
It pisses me off that step-dads have such a bad rap. I sometimes feel that I can’t be close to my stepdaughter in perfectly normal and healthy ways for fear that someone is going to misinterpret my actions.
Sometimes she gloms onto me and won’t let go and I either ignore her or at times have to firmly tell her “that’s enough…” and gently push her away. She went through a “kissy” phase with both me and her mom, when she wanted to kiss us on the lips more than once at a time. We both (again, gently) told her that once or twice is ok, but more than that is too much. Occasionally she wants more physical contact than either of us want to give her, and we use the same gentle approach. It’s never been a real issue, and her mom and I both think it is a normal part of growing up.
If I had known that my mother-in-law (I’m not sure what my father-in-law thinks, since I haven’t talked about it to him yet) would have a problem with me sleeping with my daughter in their bed, I would NEVER have allowed it in the first place. I am respectful of other people’s points of view when I am in their home. It did cross my mind, but I thought it would be ok with them because I had assumed that they were pretty aware of family and mental health kinds of things. We typically agree on most points, so this came completely out of left field for me.
I strongly do not believe that I did anything that was harmful to the wellbeing of my child.
I am hoping that the members of this community will weigh in on this and provide some opinions or share your experiences in this matter. If you can direct me to any professional resources regarding this subject, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thank you.
-NB