My 15 year old Son refuses to let me adopt my stepkids

Imagine being dead for only six years and your kids are already calling someone else mum. This is bizarre to me.

Adopting them will not change how you feel about your step kids, but will change how your son feels about you. You should have asked him how he felt before telling the other children.

You are not going to be able to fix it with your son if you adopt your step children while he is against the idea of you taking on legal parental responsibility .

I don't know if you brought any assets from your first marriage into the second one and have co mingled them, but even though he is only 15,c he might be worried about his future, if that thought has been put into his mind by his father.

You haven't made it clear why he objects other than his feelings of rejection, regret and being replaced . What makes he feel that way? Is he going to get less help with college fees etc as a result? . Get some legal advice about your options to help address those reasons ( i.e show him how he is not being replaced and and how the impact of the adoption of 3 other children can be managed so doesn't impact him significantly in the future ) then discuss with your son when you have clear rational strategy to explain to him.. .

Given their ages, I can’t understand why you want to adopt them now? What’s the point?

He is already sharing his mother and has done for many years while only staying with her 50% of the time. My DS would be devastated in this situation, it wouldn’t have got this far without him kicking off big time, my DS would protest to them ever visiting never mind living there. I think your DS has already been extremely accommodating to his step siblings. He sounds like a very patient young man.

This goes far beyond failing to have asked your son about the adoption first....its evidently a deep rooted and ongoing feeling he has that you have prioritised the stepchildren - which you yourself acknowledge in part by your revealing comments about how much time and attention they need. As lovely as your efforts and intentions have been towards the stepchildren, you have really failed your own son here. If he is feeling unloved, unwanted and at the back of the queue for your time, attention, love and esteem, then you have really got mothering very, very wrong. I know this is harsh, but you need a big big wake up call. I think you need to put the stepchildten and their emotional needs on the backburner for now and focus fully on your son - he is at such a vulnerable age.

What kind of mental logic are you on? He is her son and you're suggesting that the stepkids take priority?

Yes I said that and now teen has turned out okay to outside eyes.

However it does happen in RL - that was my point.

People do so stuff like this and do not see it.

You really should have spoken to him first.
It sounds as if you have not understood much about what he has been thinking and feeling for the last 6 years.
You need to prioritise him now or you risk damaging the relationship permanently

You need to speak to your son @pirdgz

alone, spend time with him so that he can talk properly to you and you to him.

leave the adoption for now. Perhaps if your SDC are still quite young and therefore vulnerable if anything happens to their dad, you could look into a formal care agreement, an expression of wishes etc from your DH.

my relationship with my DS dad was awful. It’s no secret that I hated my time with him.

my son however absolutely knows that he’s my absolute everything. He’s 20 now, but at 15 he did go through a really rough patch with us, he wanted more freedom than he was old enough for, more than I was comfortable giving him, and we clashed on occasions.

we Had a long conversation where he was honest and I was honest. I had to loosen the grip a bit and he had to live up to that trust.

we never looked back. He’s the same wonderful person he was before 15. He also started boxing/gym and going to college and getting out of the frankly daft and immature mindset of the secondary school really helped.

make time for him and show him he’s still your world. He’ll come through this.

you admitted that your focus was on his step siblings, now is the time to shift that focus back. They’re stable, they have their home, their dad and wider family.

this is a critical age for your son. It’s an emergency situation as far as the relationship is concerned. Drop everything for him and show him he’s still loved

Prioritisation is an odd thing. We all need to be top of the list sometimes. Sometimes it’s you, (very important actually) sometimes it’s your H, or the step dc. Right now it’s him.

this is not to say to “let him call the shots” this is to show him you hear him, you see him, he matters. Then rebalance

Family therapy. STAT.

Your example involves a very young child

anyway…. This is from a bored Op not
a parent, not in a relationship,
just bored

"How do I fix this with my son and make him understand how much I love him without hurting my stepkids."

What @saraclara said above. Your emphasis is totally wrong. You won't be able to 'make him understand' - you need to SHOW him how much you love him, which is by listening to his concerns and the hurt he has accumulated over the years. I am also astonished that you didn't socialise this idea with your son first. You should have edited yourself with respect to discussing your first marriage around your son too. Obviously, that would have an impact on his self-worth.

So very many things here you need to reflect on before you even consider proceeding with this idea.

I really hope you take the advice another poster mentioned above and get some family therapy with your son to process everything.

There is no reason whatsoever for haste here.

I'd tell him you'll never stop being his mother. He is always a part of your family and very much wanted in your home. But that doesn't mean he's more important than your step children. You will be adopting them, it's not his choice to make, just like it wouldn't be his choice if you had another baby.

If he feels he needs to move out because of this then you respect his decision. But you absolutely will always love him and he is more than welcome to change his mind for any reason and there will be no hard feelings.

Yes he's a little man with big feelings. And you need to support that and let him know he is valued. But it is very important for him to not grow up thinking he is MORE important than anyone else and that by threatening to leave, sulking, silent treatment, he can make women do what he wants them to.

His 15th birthday was on the 21st normally we do a nice family dinner, but he said his dad was hosting and told me to come alone without my husband or stepkids. I got angry and snapped at him...

So... you for you a nice family dinner is your new husband and stepkids. He wanted his father and you... and you snapped at him because...
Does he consider your new husband and his kids his own family?

I hope so to but one of DD2 friends at much younger age had parents who took in then adopted deceased family members kids. Saw her taken aside time and again - a very young primary age kids - and told she had to make allowanced and put these new kids first as they'd lost their parents and she wasn't allowed to be anything but happy.

Saw her waiting still young after swimming lessons quite late for a parent to show up - and a group day out where DD2 and another girl shared their lunch with her as her sister also there lunch had been picked up but her's had been forgotten.

The girls quite resilient character and is now a teen doing okay parents divorse and she has no relationship with dad and I think it was worse when she was young and perhaps they were dealing with grief and adoption processes. From the outside it looked like she was completely sideline in her own family and it looked heart breaking.

I'd stop and try and focus on realtionship with DS for a bit then slowly build up the idea again if really needed - but that may need outside support.

Poor boy is nobody's priority.

This is not to be underestimated - it happened to my sister when our aunt died unexpectedly and cousin my sister's age moved in with us.

Obviously cousin needed an enormous amount of support and we were expected to understand. It was no problem for me because I was older, but sister the same age as cousin really suffered emotionally and felt replaced - as much in friendship groups and staff at school and wider family as by parents.

My sister ended up with a severe eating disorder and various psychological issues. Our cousin thrived after a stormy few years.

Obviously everyone meant well and nobody meant to hurt her or had a clue what they were doing, but she really was a mess for fifteen years or so, including being institutionalised.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions is an old saying that still has some truth to it...

Why do you need to adopt these kids? I presume they’re at least teenagers, not little ones. It will make zero difference to your relationship with them. Your own son comes first. I’d acknowledge this and shelve your plans.

You should have spoken to your ds before you spoke to the step children. And allowed him a few weeks processing time. Did you do this? Because if you did and he changed his mind, it’s one thing. However, it sounds as if you maybe didn’t. That doesn’t make him your whole world. That makes him back of the queue.

No way would I proceed. I would just tell your step dcs you didn’t realise how hard the process is. And you love them just the same.

Don’t get sucked in posters!!!

I think that the first person you should have discussed this with, before your husband or step children, is your son - he's apparently your 'whole world' and yet he was the last person in your family to be consulted. That speaks volumes

Doesn't it?
Poor boy. Not even consulted, merely informed.

Can you not see how destabilising it was for him to have a whole new family move in , not 1 but 3 children . By your own admission you gave them a lot of attention meaning he wouldn’t have had your time . You need to listen to him or lose him . Slagging your ex partner and marriage within ear shot of your son was unforgivable.

Why adopt them? You’re not their mum, she died and you are not a replacement, nor are they your sons ‘siblings’.

I cannot understand for the life of me how you can say he’s your absolute world and then make a decision, go behind his back to ask someone else’s children about adopting them, without mentioning it at all to ‘your world’.

You need to prioritise your son and it sounds as though you haven’t done that for a long time.

You moved three other kids into his home when he was very young, for the past six years you’ve given extra care to these three, which inevitably will have meant less focus on your own son. These three get to spend more time with you (100%) than he does (50%). And now you are adopting them. And after years of your son hearing you slate his father.

They don’t need you to adopt them, that’s a choice. It’s devastating that their mother is dead, but she’s still their mother.

It does sound as though your son might be better off living with his dad. Not as a punishment to you, but so that he can have the attention from one parent that he’s obviously craving and can never get from you because you’ve taken on the other three.

Hmmm. I can really see how your DS feels and I think speaking with your step kids before him was a HUGE mis step. As pp have said, he only gets you 50% of the time and your are openly (he’s overheard) negative about his dad and (in his mind) the family that is/was you, his dad and him. In contrast the step kids get you 100% of the time and you love thier dad.

The pp I quoted is wrong. All of these legal issues are very very easily overcome in your and your DH’s Wills. He needs to ensure you’re formally appointed as guardian in his Will if he dies. You will then have legal parental responsibility for his children if anything happens to him. The inheritance issue is also very easily covered in a decent Will. There’s no need to adopt from this perspective of worrying about what happens if he dies.