to think children shouldn't choose if they have contact with NRP if no welfare concerns?

[HopeYoureHappy]

DP has a contact order regarding his 7 and 9 year old children. Their mum has constantly breached it and uses the reason that it's the childrens choice - for example - DS doesn't want phone contact, he's busy on the iPad, DD has decided she'd rather go to her friends party and she wants me to take her, DS doesn't want to come because you don't have a paddling pool and he thinks he'll get too hot

Sometimes it's both DC that don't come, sometimes just one. Last time DD 'didn't feel likeit' and when DS ddiscussed a planned and paid for day out next week, he asked if DD was coming and DP replied 'no idea, she'll be the one missing out if she chooses not to.' AIBU to think that this is the wrong attitude and that the DC shouldn't be able to choose whether they come for contact any more than they can choose whether or not to go to school? They are always happy here and there's no welfare concerns but they are very much manipulated by their mum who bribes them to stay ('we could've gone to Thorpe park, but you're going to your dad's...) and tells them she'll ne lonely without them.

DP seems resigned to this messing around but they are back in court for review next month and I think he should ask the judge to ensure that DSC mum must adhere to the order and not put the DC in the middle. What do you think?

No brd i'm not confused and I'm not a self appointed arbiter.

But before I lived with my now husband I took the pragmatic view that my role in his DDs life was entirely decorative.

I do appreciate that involvement without control can be frustrating but impotently spinning your wheels only makes it worse.

I'm also old-fashioned enough to find 'partner' for a non-cohabiting relationship a confusing usage. Be as sarcastic as you like about that, I really don't care.

Maybe the fact that OP is pregnant with twins and engaged but moving in together and the wedding are being held up are what is really upsetting her and the contact issue has become a proxy issue? She certainly sounds as though she has a lot on this year.

It's not as if the mother hasn't 'moved on' though. She also has her own DP.

I'd like to know what the responses would be to the OP if she had said something along the lines of:

"DSC don't want to come here anymore because they prefer it with their mum. AIBU to think that that is their choice and to not encourage my DP to see them more because I really don't care whether they have a father-child relationship or not?"

I can answer that if you like.

Under a former name, I posted exactly that a few months ago and was hounded and bullied off the forum.

fideline do you have children?

Did you prevent them from developing a relationship with your DSC until you moved in together? Until then were they merely decorative, and equally pragmatic?

No brd i'm not confused and I'm not a self appointed arbiter.
No? How then do you explain your comments? You are acting as a self-appointed arbiter when you say Well no brd he isn't her partner, he's her boyfriend. - with no factual evidence, legal, or linguistic evidence to support that.

I'm also old-fashioned enough to find 'partner' for a non-cohabiting relationship a confusing usage. Be as sarcastic as you like about that, I really don't care.
Oh, I thought you weren't confused?
It has nothing to do with being "old-fashioned". Do you routinely object to the common usage of the term? I am being sarcastic because you are being deliberately ignorant and offensive.

Maybe the fact that OP is pregnant with twins and engaged but moving in together and the wedding are being held up are what is really upsetting her and the contact issue has become a proxy issue? She certainly sounds as though she has a lot on this year.

Wow. What massive assumptions are underlying this fantasy story?

Are we just making shit up now?

Maybe Fideline lost her job and her dog ran away, and she is so cranky she is using an internet forum to pass random judgements on the depth of strangers' relationships.

Did you prevent them from developing a relationship with your DSC until you moved in together? Until then were they merely decorative, and equally pragmatic?

We all had a relationship but it was social. I didn't interfere or comment on any parenting decision and neither did he. I wouldn't have expected either of us to tamper in the DC's diet much less legal matters. I can't see anything else being rational or workable.

I am being sarcastic because you are being deliberately ignorant and offensive.

Am I? More baffled by the aggression with which people subvert terms and challenge the rest of us to keep up.

Wow. What massive assumptions are underlying this fantasy story?

I thought tht was what someone just said. That there were practical issues holding things up?

I'm trying to put myself in the OP's shoes. The twin pregnancy, frustrated in plans to marry/cohabit situation would be looming largest for me

fideline I'm sorry, I think I've misunderstood.

Are you saying that until you moved in/married your DH, your respective children (now stepsiblings) were nothing more than social acquaintances ?
And that you have successfully blended a resident family together, without first supporting the DCs to develop relationships with one another?

Goodness!

More baffled by the aggression with which people subvert terms and challenge the rest of us to keep up.
Hardly. "DP" is used extensively on MN (as it is in the rest of society) to indicate an established relationship.

I seriously doubt you have been struggling with or objecting to the use of the term "partner" in this way, in any other context. But hey - if this thread has taught you something new, that's a good thing, right?

And thanks, because I have also learned something - in fact, I have gained a favourite new line - "My role in my DSC's life is purely decorative." I love it!

wakey

Well it wasn't exactly tea with the best china in twinset and pearls every sunday at 4pm, no.

Maybe I just have control freak tendencies I had to keep very deliberately in check and draw up clear mental boundaries for myself, but we were very clear that our DC were are own responsibility until the month we married, when we took out step parent PRAs all round.

My role in my DSC's life is purely decorative.

It was a great mantra in the early days.

And yes I take 'DP' as a major clue as to whether people are living together or not. Quite normal in RL.

brdgrl - that's all detailed in the OP's other thread, which was brought up by someone saying that the OP and her partner weren't living together.

Ugh. Some vile posters. Fideline, what is your problem exactly? Isn't mumsnet a place where women come to have their lives 'made easier'? So what if it's AIBU? Here is an OP who loves her fiance, is expecting his children's half-siblings and wants nothing but harmony and contact for him. Who are you to berate and harangue her? Why the hectoring?

Greedy the sooner potential stepmums realise the only successful way into the role is 'softly softly', the easier their lives will be.

The slagging off of stepchildren's mums etc that routinely goes on around here, the strident over-involvement of 'stepmums' too soon (even before the simple commitment of living together) gives the children no secure message and makes stepmums as a whole look awful.

Just my opinion.

Maybe I just have control freak tendencies I had to keep very deliberately in check and draw up clear mental boundaries for myself, but we were very clear that our DC were are own responsibility until the month we married, when we took out step parent PRAs all round.

Forgive me for prying, but how did you ensure your respective DCs didn't get "attached" to one another? I can understand the desire to maintain your own distance, but that's hard to transfer to DCs, isn't it ?
The OP has said that her DD adores her stepSibs, despite not sharing a single home with them, something I can completely relate to. It hadn't occurred to me that I should discourage the relationship between potential stepsibs until the relationship was confirmed.

How do your DCs all get on now?

And there is an agenda.

brd has immediately scurried off to the stepparenting board and wildly misquoted what I have said on this thread, as this;

New bingo space though!
Your role in your stepkids' lives is purely decorative"

Honestly, this may be my favourite thing that anyone has EVER suggested about being a stepmum. I am thinking of getting it as a tattoo.

Of course what I actually said (purely about myself before I even became a stepmother) was But before I lived with my now husband I took the pragmatic view that my role in his DDs life was entirely decorative. but it won't stop the puerile whooping and crowing and misrepresntation.

Ocassionally someone needs to point out there is more than one approach to step-parenting and the prevailing view on the MN SP forum isn't the only one available.

Fideline - you clearly have very tight personal boundaries about marriage/stepchildren/responsibility. But they are just that: personal, not universal.

My DP and I have been together for 12 years, I have been heavily involved in my DSSs' upbringing and we have a very close ongoing relationship. There is nothing magical about marriage that makes one a better or more legitimate stepmother.

brdgrl - that's all detailed in the OP's other thread, which was brought up by someone saying that the OP and her partner weren't living together.
Thumbwitch, sorry, what are you referring to? I'm up to speed, I think - oh - I see, do you mean the stuff about her wedding and pregnancy? I know those bits are in her other thread, which I read, but I think it is an invention of fiction to start attributing her concern on this thread as some sort of 'proxy' or misdirection from what is "really upsetting her"...there is nothing in either thread to suggest that, and I think it is unfair to start making up motives for posters based on nothing but speculation and their details from other threads. Moreover (and I could be wrong!), I think fideline's phrasing ("She certainly sounds as though she has a lot on this year"), in context of her other remarks, was meant as a snarky comment on the OP and was not on.

*Forgive me for prying, but how did you ensure your respective DCs didn't get "attached" to one another? I can understand the desire to maintain your own distance, but that's hard to transfer to DCs, isn't it ?
The OP has said that her DD adores her stepSibs, despite not sharing a single home with them, something I can completely relate to. It hadn't occurred to me that I should discourage the relationship between potential stepsibs until the relationship was confirmed.

How do your DCs all get on now?*

It's okay, I don't mind answering. We were aware we needed to make up our minds if we were serious or not and not let it drag on for years and years.

Even more so as DSDs mother had died and my DC had lost their relationship with their dad due to DV so they had all had enough loss and trauma already. We wanted to give them complete certainty and security.

So once we were sure we got married (less than 18 months). We share residence of DSD with her maternal GM (been the case since she lost her mum). The DC are like they were always together. It is all better than I dared hope, though I was holding my breath for a few months

It's a fair point Bonsoir and as I say I may have been heavily influenced by my sense of responsibility to three traumatised DC. It's hard to unravel now.

brd has immediately scurried off to the stepparenting board
Not really, I have been posting all day on both threads, and this one came up. No scurrying involved.

and wildly misquoted what I have said on this thread, as this;

No, you have misunderstood and are now, in fact, misrepresenting my words. I did not quote you or attempt to pass it off as a quote (in fact, I took pains, as you will see in the excerpt you include from my post, to say "suggest" rather than "said", as it was not a direct quote) - although I certainly did not alter the substance of your remarks.
I used quotation marks around the statement (which, again, I did not attribute to you!), because the thread in question consists of invented things people might say which are, yes, based on things that people actually say, but are in every case, paraphrases or amalgamations.
RTFT. You were not quoted. You were the inspiration, if you will, behind an openly fictive line of dialogue.
You should be flattered, really.

Honestly, this may be my favourite thing that anyone has EVER suggested about being a stepmum. I am thinking of getting it as a tattoo.

Except that nobody had suggested it about being a stepmum

Honestly, the idea that as soon as you are dating someone with DC you are 'stepparent' is one of the most barmy and damaging notions around. And it is widespread on MN.

Ocassionally someone needs to point out there is more than one approach to step-parenting
Interesting you should say so, as this is pretty much all the stepmums on the stepparenting board have ever asked to have understood.

And as you have just posted on this thread solely to criticize someone for doing it in the way that you personally don't approve of. How does that action square with this statement: Ocassionally someone needs to point out there is more than one approach to step-parenting.