Quick background.  My husband has two children (stepdaughter 15 and stepson 13) with his ex-wife and she has two children from a relationship before she met him.  My stepson lives with me and my husband and my stepdaughter lives with her mother.  We get stepdaughter every other weekend. 

Ex-wife’s oldest son (OS) got his license about six months ago and ever since, he and stepdaughter have taken to driving around and stopping by our house randomly.  They also are doing all the pick-up and drop offs for ex-wife when it’s her weekend to have stepson.  The problem is that OS and stepdaughter never knock when they stop by.  They just walk into the house.  They have almost walked in on my husband naked (stepson was at a friend’s), did walk on me wrapping stepdaughters Christmas gifts and have scared the crap out of me several times because I walk into people just standing in my living room when I thought no one else was home.

I want to ask my husband to have his daughter at least knock to let us know someone is there before she walks in.  I’m nervous about it because in the past he has accused me of not understanding what it’s like to have divorced parents (true).  We got into a huge argument when he went behind my back and gave stepdaughter a key to our house several years ago.  My thought process was that she had no need for a key because there has never been a time that she was at our house with no one home (husband always picks her up for his weekend visits).  Also, ex-wife goes through a lot men and they always wind up living with her for a while.  Before OS got his license, these random men would be the ones picking up and dropping off stepson to our home.  I didn’t feel comfortable with a key to our house being accessible to these people we didn’t know.   Husband said it wasn’t fair that stepson had a key (he lived with us and needed one) and stepdaughter didn’t.  It was her house too.   I still don’t think “fair” is a good enough reason but whatever.

Now, I just want to know if I would be as asshole if I asked my husband to talk to stepdaughter about knocking first.  I don’t mean that she has to wait for us to answer the door, but just as a warning that someone is coming into the house.  My husband is very sensitive about anything to do with his kids.  If the consensus is that I’m an asshole, I just won’t bring it up at all and avoid the conflict.

Being a stepparent isn’t always easy, I don’t want to be the “evil” stepmom but I also think that it should be ok to have boundaries.
