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.

How would you demand his father stays off work when he's three hours away by the time you find out there's a problem?

It wouldn't feel anything if you were unaware of the politics. His step mum dropped him off at him with his step dad.

You see

I don't think choosing to stick with her original plans for the day is putting her own biological child first - not in a meaningful sense.

Yes, a clever person could devise a theoretical scenario in which having the older child with them would involve the four-year-old missing out on a mega treat, or not having a coat, or going without lunch, but in the situation which is plausible in this case, I doubt that it would cause a problem having a nine-year-old come along too.

The four-year-old would most likely enjoy having his brother with them, because he likes him and older siblings are fun. Surely, he hasn't developed a sense of how nice it is to have mum to himself . Of course there could be a mega-expensive event with no spare places, which had been planned, so the whole plan would need to be cancelled and four- year-old would be distraught, but it is unlikely that that sort of trip would be organised for the benefit of one so young.
I think that the only thing that is unreasonable about the original post is feeling fury and wanting to make this situation into a sort of battle of wills with the other side. As a side issue, the set up between ex and her partner sounds worrying: I'm sure the implication was that he was at home caring for the baby, not with work commitments. So it's odd that the ex would not like to ask him to supervise the nine-year-old as well .

Yes, and I'm strongly feeling that, for the sake of their future, closeness between half - siblings is very positive .

@Diverseopinions having been on many days out where it's been me and DS on our own while DH and DSD are off doing age appropriate things for her (similar age gap as OPs situation) I'm going to respectfully disagree.
I really wish we had gone on his special birthday day out, aimed at his age group, without DSD as then DS would not have spent a fair chunk of his birthday asking where his Daddy was and why they had gone away.
I can absolutely understand why OP wanted this one day to just be about her and her son having a nice time together.

You see

Thanks for giving an insight from the perspective of knowing about it. I do get your point.

@Diverseopinions thank you for not ripping me apart and telling me my son has no right to birthday days out. MN can be a strange place.

@Diverseopinions It's not at all unlikely that it was a ticketed event they were going to, it doesn't have to have been expensive for it to have been difficult to add another child on.

And as Yousee has pointed out, the older child going can have negative effects on the younger - in that one of the parents is off with the other child. In the case of my 9 year old step son, with me on my own, the day would be largely centred around dealing with him and his behaviour. So yes, it would effect the quality of the day out for my 4 year old. OP had organised the day to be a treat for HIM.

And all this is ignoring the fact that OP simply wanted the day out with her son for herself, as well. She wanted to spend quality time with him, not time spent juggling her attention with a 9 year old. That is fair enough in itself.

aSofaNearYou.

I think you're right, the wish to be with the younger one is very reasonable.

I think the caveat probably relates to the communication with the other adults involved, with the view to keeping things smooth and friendly.

Have you even read the opening post? The DF left to travel to work 4 hours before the agreed pick up time. How would he feel anything; his SM delivered him to his home at the agreed time rather than his actual mum picking him up.

I think this thread wins the award for most projection, hysteria and wiful misunderstanding from posters

Yes, and I'm strongly feeling that, for the sake of their future, closeness between half - siblings is very positive .

Well the half-siblings live with each other 4 days out of 7 @Diverseopinions so there is plenty of bonding opportunity for the boys, without the 9 year old being forced to attend a day out designed to entertain 4 year old.

I think some people just seize on any perceived opportunity to voice their disapproval about step-parenting as a concept and to demonstrate what a kind caring person they are by telling us how their heart breaks for the poor little boy (only the 9yo though... the 4yo is assumed to be surprisingly resilient so it would seem).

Not really. I had a key when I was 9 in case there wasn’t anyone in when I got home from school. For me it was a sign of how much my parents trusted me not to loose it or misbehave when alone at home.

Did you read the one a few days ago about the child free wedding in the arse end of Scotland, where the OP's childcare fell through, she had a broken leg, it was the weekend of a train strike and a flight to the nearest city went via Dublin and cost £1k? Still people told the OP she was unreasonable not to attend!
This one is a decent runner up though!
I dread to think how it would have happened had that OP been a stepmother too

She didn’t have a broken leg!

i remember that one.

A substantial number of us just thought she couldn’t be arsed. It was a heatwave, she’d just got back from France and was going to Turkey in a couple of days after the wedding. She threw in the leg pain when it didn’t all go her way.

Oh yes - she went on and on about how her 9 and 6 year old couldn’t possibly be separated for the night

a 9 year old coming home to an empty house? I have a 9 year old. Even if I thought she was the most sensible person on the planet, I wouldn’t want her to come home to an empty house! Do you have children?

No one wants their child to come home to an empty house, but sometimes it is necessary. Can we not start that narrow-minded judgy crap again, please.

oh for goodness sakes

There’s “be kind” and then there’s “don’t have an opinion”

a 9 year old coming home from school alone is not good. Fact. And never “necessary”. I am a single parent with no support network.

Well the boy's parents left the kid for their partners to sort out. And the partners are occupied with their own little ones, and would prefer not to deal with him at the moment. Sadly that kid is just in the way. And he knows it. They all know it. It's obviously clear to anyone paying attention. The boy is never going to come first. You can dismiss that idea out of your head right now. His best hope is to live full-time with the op and his dad. While the drunken, irresponsible bio mother does her own thing with the new guy and their new kid.

@KnockedInn, the child's father didn't leave his son to his partner to sort out. He agreed to him staying over with his partner's agreement on the basis that his mother would collect him the following morning, which is a perfectly normal arrangement

I'm aware. But in the case of his ex's character, he knows full well her word is crap. He would have been handling it had he told her NO and never bothered his wife with the request in the first place. By taking that chance of something going wrong, and then leaving, he left the potential mess, his ex would make, to be cleaned up by his wife.

The reason I broke up with my last partner was because I won't be dictated to by his kid's Mum.
The way Stepmothers are treated on MN is appalling.
My own Stepmother was amazing, I'd have loved to have a relationship like that with his kids, but the weird jealousy of the first wife put paid to that. I dumped him. He went back to being her little lackey Everyone loses. (Yes the kids too, cos Daddy had his income halved again and can't afford the nice treats any more...)

I’m sure if the DH had said an outright no then he’d have been accused of not grabbing the chance to spend more time with his son, shame on the OP for being so open about her resentment of DSS/his mother that DH didn’t dare ask her for the favour, blah blah.

On here there is literally zero way to handle any scenario involving DSCs that won’t end up with at least a proportion of people posting nonconstructive guff like “my heat breaks for those poor kids”.

Personal prejudice doesn’t let individual family dynamics or actual facts get in the way of a chance to project their own unrelated issues onto an OP.