AIBU to refuse to cut short our holiday for childcare?

I think we have to conclude she was, or it wouldn't have been "we" who had to turn "phones" off.

So assuming you stayed and finished holiday @UnhealthierWhy

sp who had the kids yesterday and today

To an 8 year old

Mummy has to work so she puts me in childcare during the school holidays and Daddy can’t look after me then because they are the days that are Mummy's days.

I have a 7 year old who understands that sometimes dad is off doing things with his 14 year old sister. My 3 year old not so much, but an 8 year old who hasn’t yet grasped that he has siblings who also deserve all things he gets to enjoy? Like time with Dad and trips to Disney for example?
Still not convinced it’s defensible to flush the rest of the family’s holiday down the toilet because
a) an 8 year old doesn’t understand sharing and taking turns
b) some random woman doesn’t want to take leave from work
c) said random woman might blame said 8 year olds father rather just dealing with her own issue like a grown up

All perfectly reasonable from an adults’ perspective.
But to an 8 year old?
Mummy has to work and daddy can’t look after you because he’s in Disneyland with his new babies.

I do treat what someone posts as true, unless it's obviously not. Otherwise what's the point?

The Ex moved 3 hours away, hence the current custody arrangement.

OP said they are saving to move closer to her, so that DH can see the children more.

It might be that OP fell pregnant very soon after starting TTC. Or it might have been a happy accident. Or many other things that we don't know...

It might of course all be lies 🤷‍♀️

An emergency. Yes.

A lack of being organised by the RP during their contact time. No. It’s not an emergency.

She just took money for childcare and did t book it. Pocketed the money and OP (who is not the children’s mum or dad) looked after them.

The children aren’t going to suffer if their own mother has to take some leave from work to look after them 🙄
Their father isn’t escaping, he’s on holiday. He’s not available. This thread wouldn’t exist if it was a life and death situation, nobody would argue then that the family shouldn’t be on the next flight home (I hope!)
The younger kids experiences should not be sacrificed on the altar of this woman’s convenience or preferences.

A comprehension issue rather than a literacy one, then.

Daddy would not have been looking after them – because the two weeks he was not looking after them in were the two weeks they would have been being looked after by their mother if she hadn't messed up childcare. Oh, sorry, oops, she wouldn't have been looking after them; she would have been putting them in childcare. But to blame the father for not looking after them when he would not have been looking after them anyway seems unlikely to be something the kids would do.

And your "the summer they hardly saw their dad": horsefeathers. Why would they remember it as any different from any other six weeks during which they saw him and their stepmother for the usual amount of time? He is taking them on holiday this month during the time they would be spending with him; he has not taken them on holiday during the time they would be spending with their mother if they were going to be with her rather than with the childcare people, her mother, and apparently everyone except the partner who mattered so much to her she smashed her marriage for him.

Give over. The elder children are getting no worse deal than they always do: with their mother for most of their time, since their father has them for ten days and nights a month (ie more than "every other weekend", which doesn't seem to be thought to amount to child neglect). There is no reason whatever for them to feel ill-done-by because (since there was no emergency) their father failed to come running, not home but to their home, to save them from their mother's incompetence. They will only know about it at all if their mother uses it to poison their minds against their father.

So you think her children should suffer because of her personal choices?
They have a perfectly good father who you think should be able to use their mother’s behaviour as a way to escape parenting his children with her? Is she a bad mother? And if she is, shouldn’t he try to be a better father, rather than an absent one?
What’s the end result there, 2 sad kids with 2 crappy parents.

My apologies. Making love soulfully to some man who wasn’t her partner then, if you prefer.
I do judge her. She’s not exactly admirable in her behaviour, is she? Her kids will be fine, she will be forced to clear up her own mess. It will be a drag for her but so what? Their younger siblings are also important in all this.

Presumably she's still got the money for the child care she "forgot" to book. She can use that to book another child minder.

You keep using very judgemental terms like screwing and shagging. It doesn’t matter what poor behaviour the adults have done, the children aren’t a punishment. They’re a responsibility. The mother can behave appallingly if she wishes but it doesn’t diminish the father’s responsibility to take care of his older children and they shouldn’t suffer because of their parents choices.

I have read them all, in fact I’ve read the entire thread since the start. The kids have had other holidays etc etc, the dad takes them away seperately and together. But kids brains don’t work like that do they. It might be “fair” to the adults’ minds but at the moment all they know if mummy is struggling and daddy won’t look after them because he’s on holiday with his new family. Whether the adults are in the right or wrong, the kids will remember this.

You do know you can read all the OP's posts by clicking on the "see all" at the bottom of any one of them, don't you? Because I am having to assume you don't, and thus haven't read the all the OP's posts, since you seem unaware of their content.

Didn’t the mother know she was having children when they came out of her body? Didn’t she know she’d sometimes have to make sacrifices and sometimes things would be a bit inconvenient?
Didn’t she know that wasn’t her children’s partner she was shagging? Didn’t she know that screwing up her relationship with their father would mean things weren’t as easily managed as before?
Why is it only on OP to do all the knowing and sacrificing?

🤣🤣🤣

I can afford holidays with my kids and if I couldn’t it would be somewhere I could! Because we’re talking about the parents of the kids and the partners who knew what they were getting into that’s why! I’d sell my soul before I booked holidays leaving out my young children that didn’t live with me! Especially at their ages.

Also ridiculous to take a 2 and 4 year old to Disney in the school holidays, they’re not even school age. They probably won’t even remember the holiday.
The older children will absolutely remember the summer they hardly saw their dad and he couldn’t help look after them because he was on holiday with his shiny new family.

FFS OP is not being “punished”. Children are not a punishment for adult relationships.

The consequence of being in a relationship with a man who has other children is that they will always be his responsibility. He will sometimes have to make sacrifices for those children, because they’re his children, and if you chose a relationship with this man then you chose to deal with the consequences, as an adult who willingly went into the relationship knowing he has other children.

It is being suggested that as well as having looked after her stepchildren because their mother made a mess of childcare arrangements, OP should also be punished by having to cut short her holiday with her own children in order to suit the convenience of this woman who is apparently unable to arrange childcare during the days she has her children. So yes, the OP clearly ought to be punished for being a stepmother. – Evil, evil, shades of Snow White and Cinderella; you'd think women in the twenty-first century might have grown out of children's stories from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but apparently not.

Oh, and be castigated all over this thread for the crime of, well, having had children, and existing, as far as I can make out. Burn the witch! They'll be saying she ought to be made to dance herself to death wearing red-hot iron shoes, any time now.

(No, I am not a stepmother.)

Whilst the man who is one of the originators of the situation has been mentioned about three times except as having, with his partner (that's the cuckolding ex), taken two children to Spain on holiday in May. And only by me and one other person (maybe two?) as perhaps, just perhaps, being on the spot and possibly, just possibly, able to look after his two stepchildren for a couple of days.

So I thought I would remind the righteous of his existence and culpability.

And I don't think the children's mother is unable to look after them; I think she is choosing not to want to, which is a slightly different matter. Supposing her ex were working on an oil-rig, she would be unable to summon him home to fill in for her deficiencies; but she feels fine about pestering him while he is on holiday, because how dare he look after his other children during the time she has the ones that are hers? There is no emergency, just poor planning on the mother's part.

Well nether the step-mother and step-father are the first port of call to take responsibility for the OP’s husband own children. He is. And he should parent his own children if their mother is unable to.

BTW responsibility for children/step-children shouldn’t be treated as a punishment for adult relationships.

Er, why should the stepmother be the one who has to suffer if the mother is too flakey to sort out childcare for her children even when she is given the money to do it?

Why isn't their other other parent, their stepfather, being expected to step up to look after them? After all, if he hadn't screwed the father's wife in the first place none of this would be happening, chances are. He ought to bear at least some of the responsibility.