To secretly hate that DD5 is getting too close to her stepmother?

[bakewellcherry]

I know I’m being unreasonable, but hear me out. Exdh picks the kids up on Friday evening, and he takes them to school on Monday. During the week they live with me. The dcs love going to their dads, especially DD5 to the point where sometimes she doesn’t want to come home. Exdhs lives with his partner of 18 months. She’s really sweet, and takes care of my dcs. They love her too. I’m happy they get on with her and like her, but I also feel sad that DD5 constantly talks about how much she misses exdhs partner during the week, she said that SM told her she will see her again on Friday so seems like DD5 was upset when they had to leave, so SM said this to comfort her?

I just feel like I’m this boring shouty get your bloody uniform on, chores and homework kind of mum, and SM is this young (7 years younger) fun, nice day outs, no telling off person.

Don’t know what I want from writing this post, just feel like a crap mum tbh. Just scared DD is going to get closer to SM as she gets older.

"You know, the WORK."

I don't necessarily agree with this. Me and my OH have SS every weekend from Friday from school to Sunday night. We also have him every single bank holiday, and half of the school holidays.

His mum has him Sunday evening to Tuesday morning and her dad has him Weds/Thurs.

My OH and I work full time (I work a part time job as well), we are also having a baby in October but we do not hesitate to make sure we are pulling our weight. Incidentally SS' mum works part time.

We haven't been on a 'date night' in so long, I realised this week we have spent a total of about 45 minutes together where we weren't getting ready for work/getting in from work/eating/showering/sleeping.

When it gets to the weekend we could ask someone to have SS for a couple of hours/evening/over night but I hate feeling like we spend so little time with him already and then we are farming him out to other people when it's our 'family time.' Ergo we get 0 down time. By the time SS is in bed on a Friday I am desperate to fall into bed myself. I can barely stay awake past 8:30 on a weekend right now. I'm sorry but I feel we do our fair share of 'the WORK.'

Bad agreement of shared time there.

A family member of mine was given that "option" by his ex - he declined, thank you! why should he get to do all the hard yards with them at school, and she get all the "fun" time at the weekend? Fuck off!
They do 50/50 instead - far better, they get alternate weekends and half the week. That way BOTH parents cop the fallout of getting ready for school and they BOTH get some down time at the weekend, both with and without the kids.

I think you should really re-think your situation.

agree with PP. share the weekends and let exH have them some days during the week instead.

it's a totally different parenting experience to do the Mon-Fri school run, work commute, household crazy dance or having the children during the weekend when you actually can spend some proper quality time with them.

I do have to agree with xsamix86 about every weekend with young DCs being "easy" - we did actually have DSCs from the Thursday night so had an insight into school runs, PE kits, enforcing bedtimes, washing school uniforms etc. Weekdays we were busy with work and catching up with some of the chores we didn't do on a weekend because we wanted to spend that time with the DSCs. Likewise we didn't feel comfortable getting babysitters for the weekend and going out without DSC. We never got a lazy lie in as DSCs would be up and doing by 7am. We never got to spend any days as a couple apart from 1 week a year and a couple of days over Christmas when the DSCs were away with their mum because annual leave was spent looking after the DSCs. It's tiring and not the easy option at all imo.

One thing to remember is if the op changes the present agreement to more a 50/ 50 arrangement with sharing the week and every other weekend it could also effect her maintance payments.
Ok it might be possible for her to work more but equally she might rely on what she gets now.

Weekends are easy & fun whereas everyday life with bedtimes & homework & getting up with the alarm etc not so much. It’ll only get more like this as time goes on.

Every weekend is very unusual. Most blended families I know do EOW or if 50:50 then either a straight week each alternating or a mix up on rotation like 4 days which works out Parent 1 Friday- night Tuesday night, Parent 2 Weds night Sunday night, Parent 1 Mon night Thurs night, Parent 2 Friday night -Tuesday night. So EOW plus..

If you don’t sort it out she’ll always be the fun one unfortunately..on a positive note though at least she’s nice, could be a lot worse 🤷🏻‍♀️

Maybe OP has to work on W/E?.Have to agree though this is not a great arrangement for her ,maybe time to sort something new out?

I'm surprised by all the posters saying that the OP should reduce the children's time with their father to every other weekend. That's four days a month! How would that be in their best interests? It doesn't sound at all as though they want to see less of him. The change would only be for the mother's benefit.

@valanice only if he doesn't pick up some week time to balance it out. Why can't he do wow and mon-wed for example? Run it together when it's his weekend?

I'm interested why so many people see it as taking away time from the father rather than just rebalancing time so he gets them more in the week and she gets some of the weekend time?

@Valanice1989

I’m inclined to agree, I’m also not seeing anything about what is in the child’s best interests either.

I thought that the motto on this forum was that the ‘kids come first’

The child appears to be happy with the current way of things so I’m not understanding what is going on here at all.

This thread has opened my eyes.

I must have missed where the op said she had an issue with the way the care was arranged. Maybe she works weekends? Maybe oh works evenings. And I must be missing something as we have great weeks, after school clubs, evening meals together, reading books, park after school, weekends are hard work and drag on. Yabu yep maybe when she's older she will want to live with her dad and not you, maybe she will hate the ow when she's older, maybe they will split, anything could happen but let's be honest you child has someone else in her life who looks after her, makes her happy and is kind, you could have someone who didn't want her around, you should be delighted.

But @weaningwoes, in practical terms that would still mean the children would see less of their dad, because they'd be at school for half of the few days they spend with him. They already see less of him than they do of their mother - why restrict their time with him further?

And more importantly, it sounds like the children are happy the way things are. Why disrupt that?

I’ve read every reply, and no ones suggested reducing days just to 2 weekends a month. Just that contact should be spread more equally over the weekdays plus weekends.

It doesnt sound like they see less of their dad at all. 2 full days will mean at least 24hrs of quality awake time. Mum gets perhaps 5 evenings of 4 hours before bedtime so that is only 20 hrs (less if she wants to work full time the same as the dad) No opportunities for days out? Doesnt sound very fair to me.

following for an update op. my thoughta are no wonder your dd feels close to her step mum. doesn't seem like you'll be getting any time to do anything fun or nice together. and of course it's in your childrens best interests to have a good relationship with their mum. just because they're happy with the current arrangement doesn't mean they wouldn't be happier with a new one where they have time to spend it with their mum

Exactly @yesteaandwineplease and @bailey999. Glad I'm not the only one who can do maths, was beginning to feel like I was going mad for a minute!

My used to have every Friday night and the full weekend every fortnight. I hated that I never had a Saturday morning chill with my kid so changed it. That no pressure quality time is vital

My ex, that was meant to say