My DD's, his DD - great when apart, terrible together, any advice?

[SorryMyLollipop]

Hi I am fairly new to all this, so any advice is very welcome.

My DP and I don't live together but spend a lot of time together. I have my DD's (4 and 6) full time, apart from every other weekend. He has his DD (7) every weekend.

My oldest DD and his DD are both lovely on their own, but don't get on when all of us are together.

His DD is not used to sharing him, especially not with another young girl of a similar age to herself, so obviously jealousy is an issue. She clearly feels very insecure and needs reassurance from him, but he feels that it is important to treat all 3 girls the same when we are all together. Both his DD and my eldest DD can be very emotional and highly strung and the drama when they are together is something else!! Arguing, stropping, screaming, sulking, huffing, crying, telling tales etc, pretty much constantly UNLESS they think we are unavailable or out of earshot etc.

How do we balance fairness, while also reassuring the DC's and managing their jealousy?

I've just spent the weekend with DP and his DD, had a brilliant time, equally my DC's love DP when he comes over during the week by himself.

Really struggling, so, like I said, any advice very welcome.

Thanks for reading.

[purpleroses]

I've had similar issues with my DD and DP's DS - they're 9 now but were 7 when first introduced. I think one thing I've learnt is not to try to engage much with DSS when my DD's about. She needs a lot of reassurance that she's special to me. You need to have common rules around behaviour with kids from different families but I think it's ok to pull back a bit into cheifly parenting your own DCs in terms of doing things for them. I also found with DD that it helped when I actually spelled out for her that I understood that she was jelous and that she didn't need to be.

[Lookingatclouds]

Does his dd get to spend any time with him on her own? Xh has recently had his girlfriend and 2 dd's move in and dd is really struggling with it. She was ued to going there and having her own room, or sharing his room when he got a lodge, and doing loads of things just the two of them.

Now she has no room of her own, the last time she went I had to send her with a blow up mattress (in fact he'd said she coudn't stay overnight until I kicked up a fuss ), and she has no one-to-one time with him whatsoever.

She has really noticed this and feels really upset that he can't find time even for a bike ride with just the two of them. It's heartbreaking, she's asked him for some time on their own and he's told her that she has to share him now .

If there's a jealousy issue, then some time on their own would be my suggestion.

[Kaluki]

Firstly I would say don't try to become one family unit. You are two families. I agree with your DH that all three DDs have to be treated equally and have the same rules but his DD needs to feel like she is important to him as HIS child and more important to him than your DDs. Spending time on her own with her dad will help.
When I got together with DP we thought it would be like being a normal family with 4 kids when we were all together. But we were so so deluded .
Our kids get on OK together (mostly) but at the first sign of trouble it is them against us and we split down the middle with me and my two in one corner and him and his in another. We have learnt to smooth things over by separating them until whatever drama it is has been resolved and most importantly not letting it get between us as a couple.

[SorryMyLollipop]

Thanks everyone, you have been very helpful. We have no plans to blend our families into one unit at this stage.

His DD gets quite a bit of 1to1 time with him, and when we went on holiday together, we made sure that the two of them had some time together alone. We also somehow managed to not let our DDs' issues come between us!

During my weekend with DP and his DD, I think I may have noticed another issue that is affecting the dynamic. His DD has become very (VERY) attached to me and I think that she may be jealous of the attention that I give my 2 DDs when we are all together. She is upset because she won't be seeing me next weekend as she is going away with her Mum, she always wants to spend as much time with me as possible. Not in a hyper-vigilant way to keep an eye on her Dad and me, she is more than fine with me and DP being affectionate/in another room etc.

How do you think we should respond when the girls kick off with each other? They are obviously after reassurance in some way but we don't want to reward them with positive attention for kicking off.