Dear Prudence,
My husband and I are big believers in the benefits of the Great Outdoors and want to transfer that passion to the next generation. We don’t have kids, but we have taken our nieces and nephews camping, hiking, hunting, and even sailing over the years. We pay for everything, as our siblings don’t have big budgets for trips like these.
The problem is that my brother got a divorce three years ago and promptly married “Susan.” Susan has a 12-year-old daughter, “Tiffany.” I have never met a more sullen or spoiled girl. Tiffany is always glued to her phone and is constantly rude. She tells her own mother regularly to “shut the hell up” and receives zero consequences. My sister caught Tiffany bullying her two younger girls to the point of tears and now refuses to let them be around Tiffany anymore. My brother’s two other children are teenagers and have bluntly said they don’t want to visit because their stepmother lets Tiffany get away with murder.
My husband and I are geographically closest to my brother and have been sucked into all this drama. It has been particularly hard on our teenage nephew because he had problems in school, and his father isn’t present, but my husband and I are. My brother has accused us of winding up his kids so they avoid him. Susan has straight-up told me that we are making Tiffany feel unwelcome and excluded from our family. I have tried and tried to build a bond with Tiffany, even going out of my way to take her and a few friends to a carnival. The response when I told them that I didn’t have more money for rides was Tiffany calling me cheap and bragging to her friends that she didn’t have to listen to me. As usual, Susan did zip.
This summer, we have plans to take my brother’s kids out of state to a national park and camp. But Susan is back up on her soapbox about Tiffany not getting the same experiences. When my husband pointed out that Tiffany basically hates anything to do with nature and would hate camping in the woods, the response was that we should just change the trip! My husband didn’t rant about this until we got home, but he told me that if I don’t tell my brother and his wife off, he is and he isn’t going to mince words. My former sister-in-law has already given her blessings for the trip, so there isn’t much of a threat of my brother caving and canceling it, but I still have to deal with my brother and the antics of his new family. What do I do here?
—Aunt in Oregon