Well this is my dp's interpretation.
Background is this: DP and his ex split when dss was 3. They had a joint residence arrangement that was very much controlled by dp's ex and when I met dp (when dss was 5) he would quite often have dss all or part of the week but never at the weekend unless she needed a babysitter. He managed to rearrange this so that he could have his son every other Saturday but never a whole weekend and then days in the week. We now have him about half the time but never a whole weekend. DSS is now 9. Since his parents split up, he has seen his mum in three different relationships.
DP moved in with me and my two dc two years ago (now 6 and 9). DSS shares a room with my DS. He mostly has a good relationship with my DS, especially DD(9). We had a few teething problems as there was a bit of jealousy of my DS as he is younger and he had to get used to being part of a bigger family as he had been used to everything revolving around him.
His mum had a baby in January and he hasn't quite been the same since. On his last few weekends there have been some issues: disputing family rules, disrupting my ds's birthday, hitting my ds. This week he kicked off because my ds wanted to read his Beast Quest books (sat on his shelf gathering dust) and he wanted to take them back to his mum's for his collection. Yesterday he kicked off at the breakfast table because there was one crumpet left which I cut into quarters to share and he tried to claim this wasn't fair.
DP took him aside to talk to him about what his issue was. He can't really say what it is. He say things about the rules being different at ours but he does have a habit of playing his parents off each other. We do get the impression that he sometimes feels a bit out of it here but at his mum's everything is revolving around the baby. At half term on his day's with his mum he was being dragged to baby groups. He has spoken to me before about how my dc are lucky because they live with me and even though they go to see their dad they always come back.
We have some ideas about how to make him feel a bit more at home here. We have displayed table rules so he doesn't get confused. We are allowing him and dd to sometimes have later nights at the weekend without ds(we thought it might help show him that there are advantages to being the older ones). We are making him a 'den' in the loft where dp works so he can have his own space as we are unable to give him his own room.
What else can we do? Do other parents who have joint residence arrangements have this issue? My own dc who live with me but go to their dad's every other weekend and half the holidays don't seem to have this issue. He does move between houses a lot and I'm not sure this helps.
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Step-parenting
DSS doesn't feel like he belongs....anywhere? :(
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MsColouring · 21/06/2015 16:30
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