Step Lair

BB is very big on her “privacy”, to the extent that she has the kids lie about things to protect it. e.g. BB took SD to stay with some mutual friends a few weeks ago. This friend is a hairdresser and cut SD’s hair. (This is the lady who did my hair for my wedding.) We went and visited the same friends last weekend, and found out that BB had been there, but she had made SD lie about where her hair had been cut, and even that they had visited these mutual friends!

The stupid thing is she knew we would find out when we visited ourselves and she didn’t ask the friend to cover their visit up, so there was really no reason to make SD lie about it – we were going to find out anyway!

I have lots more examples but this one just shows how this is.

Now DH and I think all this cloak-and-dagger stuff for no reason and making SD lie about things is wrong. We don’t really care what BB does but we do care that she has skids lie about it.

We took SD aside last night to have a little chat.. it went like this “We know you went to visit our mutual friends a few weeks ago and we know who cut your hair. We know that you have been telling us fibs and things that were not the truth. You’re not in trouble, because we understand why it happened and we understand that your mother wants her privacy, however we don’t like lying and we don’t think it’s a good idea and we don’t want you to lie to us.

So, we have come up with a system so we can respect your Mother’s privacy and you don’t have to lie to us. Let’s work out a signal for you to give us when we ask a question and you aren’t supposed to tell us the answer. How about pulling on your ear, or making a zip-lip sign? (We then made some funny faces and worked out together than pulling on ears would be the special “sign”)

OK let’s do some practice!” Then we ran through a couple of scenarios of as asking questions and her giving the “sign” and us changing the topic to something else, so she felt comfortable knowing what to do.

She seemed very relieved that it was all out in the open and that she had a way now to respond to the situation. The poor kid was so stressed when we were away staying with these friends she ate very little and was quite withdrawn, worried that we would find out her “secret”.

Now I’m wondering if we tell BB this is what we have done and object to her having the children lying to us. On the one had it would be good to have this documented in an email to her, but our concern is that she will just make the kids lie “harder” to cover her tracks.

Our mutual friend will be raising the issue with BB, so I’m not sure if us raising it as well will just . It might be better coming from her friend. We have no contact or interaction with her at all apart from very few and far between emails because she is so hostile.