To be absolutely furious about this and drop DSS off at her house anyway?

[CottonCandy11]

It's me, DH, our son and my DSS who is 9. He's a lovely kid this is nothing to do with him personally but his mother.

He was due to go back to his mum's last night after being with us the previous 3 nights. She rang in the day and asked if he could stay another night as she had been invited out to something.

My husband asked me as he had to start work very early this morning (travelling down south so had to set off at 4am).

I said yes on the very strict proviso she comes to get him at 8am as I have a day out planned.

My son is 4 and I've planned a mother / son day out. Booked tickets for something and am really looking forward to just spending some fun downtime with him on our own. He's been poorly recently too and just got better last week so it's a nice treat for him (and me!).

Anyway, DH has just rang me saying she's messaged him saying sorry she won't be here for 8 as she ended up staying out so won't be home yet until about 11.

I'm so angry. I know her partner is at home (they have a baby so he's been in with their DC) and I know DSS has a key if he's still asleep. I'm seriously minded to go and drop him off with her partner. She'll be furious but I literally couldn't give a shit about what she thinks now, she cares about no one else whatsoever. It's always been the same, hers are the only plans that matter.

But I'm not missing my day with my son, I've been looking forward to it and I'm not having him and me miss out because she wanted to go on a piss up last night and didn't get home.

I would like to add that most of the time, children of your stepson's age will, already and then from different perspectives as they get older, work out what all of their (step)parents are like, and it's better to let that happen organically as much as possible. Rise above all of them and be the one person YOU know HE can definitely rely on. Your younger child will be fine and will also work things out about you all as he gets older too.

And if in the future your stepson would like to move homes or have more contact hours, and/or your partner would like to seek more contact or custody, then his mother's inability to e.g. take care of him the morning after going out, if it's regular not a taxi/train snafu type of thing, will count against her in that.

Think strategically, with the welfare of the children central to that.

If you don't like the idea of this child being a full part of your family, though, then you've made the wrong relationship choice. This plays out regularly on here. It's still not fair on either child, though, so that is your problem to solve now you are in it. But I am not making any assumptions about you in that regard. I'm giving support from a looking-back perspective. "My stepmother's always been great", "my mother always treated me and my half-brother the same (even when his mother was being a right PITB)", and a wonderful relationship with both of them as adults and between them (and with your partner obviously) is what you are aiming for here.

@Marotte the OP doesn't have to be the person her step-son definitely relies on. His own father is clearly there for that. His own father told the OP not to look after the boy an extra night because he has a measure of his ex and her type of parenting. His ex's current partner seems to as well.

@Marotte You're not actually being that supportive, you're actually being quite judgmental towards anything less than step parents being willing to totally sacrifice themselves and focus completely on their step children.

You can't have been here long. Slagging off people you don't know on the basis of one person's opinion is basically what Mumsnet is for.

Rise above all of them and be the one person YOU know HE can definitely rely on. Your younger child will be fine and will also work things out about you all as he gets older too
I believe the fancy term for this sort of logic is "cognitive dissonance".
Be all singing all dancing earth mother for the DSS, show the other adults how it's done, but never mind your own child, he will be fine whatever happens.
Ok then.

Given the way the thread has gone, I do want to emphasise to the OP that in my opinion her stepson's mother IS either struggling badly/has a difficult baby/difficult relationship etc. or she is a cheeky F, or a bit of both, and she IS the person with core responsibility for what is happening here, and I have no information about how well stepson's Dad is doing in the scenario.

I am simply offering advice, and not criticism, to the OP and original question from a position of many years experience in one such family set up.

I clicked YABU by mistake earlier too, because my pages weren't loading properly and clicking on Reply actually clicked on the survey which had sort of overlaid it. YANBU OP. But the question is how to move forward with it.

On the one hand, you are not being at all unreasonable to be very annoyed at the way this women behaves and views your role in the co-parenting set-up and arguably, dropping him off at the family unit where he spends most of his time, with his stepfather (who has childcare experience because they have a baby) isn't unreasonable. With caveats others have given.
The boy's stepfather's house isn't his main residence @Marotte
His parents ostensibly share 50/50 - although DSS more frequently spends 4/7 nights with his dad.

On the other hand, there is a clearly a very strange set-up at your stepson's main residence
OP has addressed this point already.
There's isn't.

and there are a lot of risks there to how this little boy feels and will develop at the very least, and whether he will feel able to come to you or even to ask to live with you if he needs to later.
Wowsers. Catastrophising AND making OP responsible for how the boy's actual parents communicate with him & each other!

He is part of your family all the time, not only on contact hours, because you have chosen to be with and have another child with his father.
OP knows this, not sure why you felt it needed pointed out.

So I would recommend taking him on this day out,
Why? Apart from the fact that it's a bit late as the day out has been & gone - what part of being dragged along to an entertainment for 4 year olds is going to make this boy feel more secure than ... just going home to mum's as he was expecting?

always making him feel part of your family rather than a sort of quasi-visitor who is neither the one thing or the other,
I expect OP has never considered this. The heartless, ignorant oaf she is!

and not batting an eyelid about it in front of the children.
She didn't

Let your partner deal with issues with contact etc. away from the children.
She does

(If you have partner issues yourself too, that's a separate topic. None of this is your stepson's fault. It's the fault of one or more adults in his life.)
What issues? What fault?
Why all the lecturing & posturing, as if OP doesn't know how to manage her own family relationships?

And yet here you are.

Yeah, I've been here long enough to know better really.

@Marotte you are aware you can read all the OP's posts on this thread?

Maybe you should have at least done that before writing your opinion.

This 😂 come on, we all know she will have been raging, give us the tea!!!

He's the child's actual parent and there hasn't been much said about him actually but if she is frequently trying to palm the child off, why isn't he offering to have him more? Plenty of evidence to suggest 50/50 isn't a great arrangement for children.

Possibly because broadly speaking this arrangement is what works best for everyone, including the child who may be completely unaware of these issues and WANT to live with his mum half the time?

Regardless, it's really odd to dismiss criticism of the ex with "oh there's a possibility she could be struggling", whilst seeking out ways of sarcastically criticising someone that's done nothing wrong of note. It's odd to suggest he's to blame for her actions because he hasn't sought full custody.

Not really, the ex is the one getting ripped apart on the internet while barely a word is said about his other parent. If she's that dreadful and she's constantly asking for help, a discussion should be had.

Not really, the ex is the one getting ripped apart on the internet while barely a word is said about his other parent. If she's that dreadful and she's constantly asking for help, a discussion should be had.

Because she's done something wrong in this instance and he hasn't!

And doing something wrong does not automatically mean you shouldn't have your kids living with you. She has displayed CF behaviour. That doesn't mean her son shouldn't live with her.

OP says she's always doing it.

OP says she's always doing it.

Yes, I know, my point remains the same.

If people - so the OP, the child's father and her own DP- refuse to help her then she won't have a choice but to step up and look after her own child.

It seems the men involved in the situation - the child's father and her own DP - have already cottoned on to the mother's behaviour, it's just taken a while for it to sink in with the OP.

I too think you handled this situation just right, OP.

I also think you deserve massive respect for refusing to engage with this nonsense any further - and for scuppering the breathless "Any update, OP???" posters in their tracks!

I'm glad you enjoyed your day out with your boy.i

Of course he is in the middle..of a (seemingly) selfish mother and a SM, who wants him back at his mum's house. Of course, all the time in all of this, everybody forgets about the men in the two relationships. I've been there and wouldn't pay to be a SM again. Luckily I am 51, so these days it is unlikely to happen anyway.

???

His SM has him, cheerfully, 4 days out of 7.
It was time (a day overdue in fact) for him to be back at his mum's.
That's not about OP "wanting him back at his mum's" it's about sticking - as much as possible, given his mother's constant pushback on collection times - to the scheduled contact agreement.

His mum's selfishness & persistent flakiness isn't OP's responsibility, & it doesn't create a situation where DSS is "in the middle of" anything between them.

The 2 men haven't been forgotten about - they've been discussed extensively on this long thread. Neither of them did anything wrong in this scenario either

“Of course he is in the middle..of a (seemingly) selfish mother and a SM, who wants him back at his mum's house on the odd day she has something else planned, but is happy to have him over and above the official 50/50 Of course, all the time in all of this, everybody forgets about the men in the two relationships one of whom is happy to have him for extra nights, but expects to be able to go to work on non-contact days, and we don’t really know about the attitude of the stepfather

Fixed the omissions for you

What is your problem? He's done absolutely nothing wrong here and yet you are sarcastically dismissing him whilst defending the one person who HAS done something to let their child down until your dying breath.

I sometimes wonder if the people inventing excuses in defence of the guilty party are creating more of a merail than a derail.

They are defending the guilty party because that's how they would behaviour if they could get away with it.

Step kids are almost always in the middle of new relationships.

The OP has done nothing wrong,I must add but inherently, there will be a tug of feelings and priorities where step kids are concerned. Isn't that inevitable?