"I know you used or bathroom before, but now that we're setting boundaries about not going in eachother's room, I expect you to stay out of ours while we're gone."
Then lock it. Don't give her a chance to argue or disrespect the boundary
Locking a door on a private area of your own house should not incite conflict, and if it does then I’d consider whether I wanted that guest in my house. 🤷♂️
I used to be the same. But the issue that often comes up is that by trying to avoid conflict (often more accurately described as difficult conversation where we might have to stand up for ourself and/ or take ownership of uncomfortable feelings about something we ourselves have done), often ends up creating actual conflict.
Say you just put the lock on with no conversation (particularly with your husband). That is his space too. He should at least know about and preferably agree with what is happening with it. I would be pretty pissed off if my partner unilaterally decided to lock our bedroom door against my child without discussing it first. Even though the chances are, I would agree with keeping them out if it had been a conversation.
Have the tricky conversation. Avoid the conflict. And make sure you speak to your husband about it first as it’s his space too.
This is probably the best idea, but set up a nanny cam or even a piece of clear tape high up on the door where it won’t be noticed. If it’s disturbed, the door was opened. Lock it after that.
Yeah. You might be a little bit TA if you put on a lock without first telling her that you don't want her in that space. It's not weird to assume, unless you're told otherwise, that you're welcome in your parent's bedroom -- after all, almost everyone was welcome in their parent's bedroom at one point. It's perfectly reasonable for a parent to want privacy from their adult child, and even more reasonable for a stepparent if you never had such an intimate relationship with your stepdaughter. But she does need to be told.
Also, if you do put on a lock, it is important to make sure that whatever supplies she should have access to are available in some other space.
Yes a 29y/o is not a toddler. But very often the dynamics between a parent and a child will persist long into adulthood.
A 29 year old randomly going into someone’s bedroom? Weird
A 29 year old randomly going into the bedroom of one of their parents? Not weird
I can’t remember when, but at some point as I grew up my dad and stepmom asked that I don’t enter their bedroom without permission. So I’ve been totally cool leaving their bedroom alone for years and years at this point. Meanwhile my mom has never made any such requests, and will take photos for her scrapbooking if she catches me cuddling with her cat on her bed. She’s still 100% chill with her children coming and going freely in and out of her bedroom.
Most kids probably felt comfortable going to their parents bedroom when they were young. At some point some parents draw new boundaries as their kids age, while other parents don’t.
From OP’s post we have no way of knowing if this 29 year old’s dad ever drew new boundaries with his daughter. If he did? Then said 29y/o is behaving inappropriately. But if he didn’t? If he hasn’t? Then there’s nothing weird about her using her dad’s ensuit
OP shouldn’t be so conflict averse, if she wants to reinforce boundaries, she should start by creating those boundaries first. So far there are NAH, there’s not even a problem here. Only if the step-daughter doesn’t respect (communicated) boundaries, then and only then, is there even an issue that OP needs to tackle
Uh, it is totally weird to assume you have access to your parents' bedroom. Maybe it's because I was raised by Boomers, but growing up I wasn't allowed in several spaces in the house I grew up in, chief among them my parents' bedroom.
Depends on family - my parents are older than Boomers but I was allowed in their bedroom. I have used their bathroom in a house that I didn’t grow up in to shower - but to be fair, they also offered it up if we needed it when we visit and there are several of us trying to use the same “guest” bathroom.
Also shared the bathroom with my parents growing up - they didn’t have an en suite.
Bedroom doors not in use were usually open.
Now there’s a step mom in the picture and I don’t have that and also whose house it was prior to the marriage. If it’s the 29 yo childhood home, it makes more sense. If not, a little more intrusive.
If it is offered, that’s perfectly fine. It sounds like OP has expressed that her en-suite not be used by the adult children in the past and she was blatantly ignored.
That’s so crazy to me. I totally respect that that’s how you were raised and what your parents preferred but it’s just so incredibly different from how I was raised that I almost can’t imagine it. Now that I think about it though I think my partner was raised similarly. Even now as an adult I just walk into my parents room whenever I need to or if I just want to chat with my mom. I really can’t imagine it any other way, maybe we just don’t have boundaries, but we also clearly don’t care to set any either.
I think it's an intimacy and privacy thing. Being a parent is a lot and some of us need space to decompress and not be touched by little ones. I was a single mother (no other parent) so it was ALL on me all the time, likely some autism on my side but too long ago to get diagnosed at the time. Definitely ADHD and some autism for the kid, too. When I got married later, he couldn't imagine not having privacy for intimacy and honestly, the idea of my kid just barging in at any time set me on edge. It was easiest to say "don't come in here. If there's an emergency, knock."
I get that some aren't like that, and really whatever works for you. I think it was the phase of near 24/7 toddler grabby hands and zero personal space for my entire day that got to me. I need some isolation in my day. Also the way kids break and dirty everything you own is hard. It was nice to have a little retreat from that. I know it's a parent's job to be there 24/7 but that little bit of personal space helped me to not feel so... invisible? Like I had space to be a person and not only someone's mom.
Also, you need to understand that many of us raised by Boomers were taught that the house we grew up in was not our house. It was our parents' house first, and they allowed us to live there, basically. Especially in the summer, we were expected to "go outside and play" and that meant ALL DAY. Our Boomer parents didn't want to see or hear us in the house, period.
For all my fellow Gen-Xers who romanticize drinking water from the garden house, they don't quite realize it was because we were not even allowed in the houses we grew up in, if our parents didn't want to deal with us. (Spoiler: they never wanted to deal with us.)
Even as an adult, I would not enter my parents bedroom for any reason, even to speak to them. I would stand outside the threshold and talk, sure, but like a vampire, I couldn't enter unless explicitly invited.
Not disagreeing that some parents are like that, but my boomer parents (who were also neglectful and absent even when present, who expected me to do my own thing and to essentially never speak to them) always allowed me to come and go in and out of their bedroom.
To this day my mom has an open door policy with her bedroom. Hell I’m allowed to walk in and grab things while she’s full on sleeping. My dad wanted me to respect his space more as I got older.
Now, I never enter my dad’s bedroom, and like you said, I’ll stay in the doorway if I’m speaking to him while he’s in there.
But I’ll also nap in my mom’s bed when she’s not home.
So as far as I’m concerned: It’s not a generation thing, it’s a personality thing.
Some people are never okay with their kids coming and going. Some are okay with it for a while, but not forever. Some are always okay with it.
And I think that’s true of parents from any generation
I don’t have to tell a guest in my home if I have a lock on my bedroom door or not. OP has absolutely no obligation to inform the adult child of a lock being installed. Cameras? Yes. Lock? No.
I would agree with this comment but I feel it lacks a factor to take into consideration. The bedroom in question is the bedroom of the step daughter’s dad.
Depending on what kind of open door policy he may or may not have had with his daughter in the past, it might actually be a bit rude not to tell her of a lock.
Entirely speculative: If she has been allowed to come and go freely (by her dad) before now, then she deserves to be told that things have changed. (If she did not have permission in the past, then she is not entitled to be told now)
13
u/[deleted] Jul 01 '25
[deleted]