How much parenting do you allow your partner do?

[Klunt]

My husband isn’t the biological father of my eldest and I can’t help myself from getting so defensive when he disciplines her. He’s been in her life since she’s was 4, she’s now 9 and calls him daddy. He is every bit her dad as her real dad isn’t involved.

He is a lot more strict than I am, due to how he was parented. I’ve told him I don’t want our kids to be parented the way he was parented and he agrees but he sometimes slips back into what he knows and we end up arguing. We’ve had a huge argument this morning. I’ve had a lovely surprise planned for my daughter today and now she’s upstairs crying because he’s told her off for not tidying her room exactly when he asked her to. I think he’s being an arse called him out on it and he’s stormed off to work.

Aibu to think that actually I do get the final day in how my child is parented and that I’ve asked him plenty of times to leave things like discipline to me. I would rather them focus on just having a nice relationship.

My DH is not the parent of my children but he is entitled to discipline them if he sees fit as they live in his house too. I am also entitled to discipline my 10 year old step son.

I couldn't be in a relationship where I was forbidden to do something even though it is my house too.

Your not being unreasonable OP. She's your daughter, he's your partner.

I left my ex (not child's father) for this exact reason. He was much stricter than me and it created conflicts between us. I tried to discuss / communicate but he always fell back to his way of discipline. Like you've described, I think this very much reflected the way he was parented.

You should be able to set healthy and reasonable boundaries in a healthy relationship, including in regards to how your partner (not child's father) reacts and interacts with YOUR child.

My current bf has his own child too and we have very clear roles. I am his gf, not his child's mother. He is my bf, not my child's father. This has not stopped me having a great, loving relationship with his child and vise versa. But he is not my child's parent, he leaves that to me and supports me if I ask.

Don't let someone else dictate to you how to parent your child when you know you have your child's best interests at heart. He is not respecting your boundaries. Sadly I don't think he will change. My ex didn't. And in the end it was the best thing for my child and my relationship with my child that I ended it.

I have never seen a thread with so many posters willfully missing/ignoring the actual points

Similar age, timeline and set up here. We discuss everything, he parents her as a dad would (her own is absent/ useless) but I have the final say and I do the school stuff etc as that's what I want to do. He takes my lead on things but we're pretty aligned so there's rarely any conflict.

I'm with those who said he is either her dad or he isn't and that you can't have it both ways.

If you get defensive, does this mean that you undermine him? Does she ever play up to that if so? Do you ever compromise and/or back him up?

I feel like I would've possibly asked her to finish what she was doing and then she could have a yogurt. She wouldn't wither away from hunger in that time and your partner feels supported.

Answering the title, there is no ''allow'' when it comes to my husband. DC is just as much his as he's mine.

This is either about him parenting his stepchild or about how he parents all the children. If it's the latter, then I don't see why you had to bring in the fact that YOUR eldest is his stepchild because that's irrelevant.

Your heading says How much parenting do you allow your partner do?

And then you say
I completely understand he should be allowed to parent, that’s not the issue. I just don’t like they WAY he parents.

They're two conflicting statements.

I find it confusing that you've allowed him to help you bring up your eldest (I'm presuming financially as well), you've allowed DC to call him dad and you consider him to be dad but he's not allowed to discipline her. So, he can discipline your shared children bit your eldest gets special treatment?

What exactly did he say/do to make your daughter cry?

I personally think there's something a lot more deep-seated going on here.

I wanted to put “if partner isn’t child dad” in the title but that would have made it ridiculously long!

I would 100% pick him up on treating our shared children the same way, but they are too little yet.

I just don’t agree with the “children must obey, just because!” Style of parenting.

@Klunt I wanted to put “if partner isn’t child dad” in the title but that would have made it ridiculously long!

So it just about your eldest child, even though you've said it's about how he parents all the DC. Why don't you just admit that instead of saying conflicting statements? I personally wouldn't go on to develop a relationship and have DC with someone and then tell him he had to treat MY child differently to OUR children. So if he's not 'allowed' to parent YOUR child, I assume he doesn't have to contribute towards feeding, clothing, housing them or include her in family days out and holidays because he doesn't have any responsibility towards YOUR child, does he? Because that's all your responsibility and you should be bringing your eldest up in a different way to the rest of your DC, yes?

Then you simply need to have it out with him about his parenting approach without pulling the "I get the final say because you're not her dad" card. You will have the same problem when your other kids are older, and playing that card now will only create distance between your DD and the rest of the family.

"There’s been a stepfather in mine’s lives for 7 years now, primary into secondary ages. He has NEVER disciplined either. Not his place. If he doesn’t like the way I run things he can move out 🤷🏻‍♀️ "

Is he your DH? Does he contribute financially for their home? Cook and clean?
It does seem a bit shit that step-parents have to do all the work and also put up with bad behaviour.

But my child isn’t badly behaved. He picks on things that I really don’t think matter at all and it just makes everyone miserable.

So how would you have dealt with the situation? And how did he deal with it? Is there a big gap? I think part of the issue on this thread is it is difficult to judge who is unreasonable because you haven’t actually explained what he had done. It’s difficult to judge if you are undermining him in his own home with wishy washy parenting and putting unfair expectations for him to be a dad while being walked all over, or if he is a harsh dictator being cruel to your daughter. Was he very harsh? Did he shout? What was it that reduced her to tears?

He shouted at her, and wouldn’t leave her alone until she answered him as to why she wasn’t doing as she was told. He had a habit of telling her off about not doing something before she’s even had the chance to start doing things. She was hungry, she grabbed a drive out of the fridge and had finished it before shr even got to the bin. Those things take about 10 seconds to eat. She then went back upstairs to carry on with her room and he met her on the landing and started having a go.

Hmm I would sit him down and have a serious conversation about this because in a few years she will be a teen. You need to lay the boundaries now so that when she’s older your house is not a battleground. He needs to back off

My current bf has his own child too and we have very clear roles. I am his gf, not his child's mother. He is my bf, not my child's father. This has not stopped me having a great, loving relationship with his child and vise versa. But he is not my child's parent, he leaves that to me and supports me if I ask.

That's all well and good but OP says in her opening that he is viewed as the child's dad. So it isn't the same,

Bad behaviour.
Picking a yogurt out the fridge.😂
Honestly if you were cleaning, stopped for a break. How would you feel if someone began berating you.
Kids aren't slaves fgs.

"Bad behaviour.
Picking a yogurt out the fridge.😂"

The poster (NOT OP) said she didn't allow the stepfather to discipline at all. If you read correctly, you'll see that I was replying to another poster.
I made the comment because as a childless person it seems to me that the step-parents are actually the ones treated as slaves sometimes. Cooking, cleaning and paying money for a house where they have no say in how the children behave. It sounds really shit.

Hmm, I don’t think it’s acceptable to be shouting at her for eating a yoghurt. To be honest I don’t like shouting at kids full stop, I find it borderline abusive. There’s really no justification or situation where you would need to shout at a child about tidying their room. To me that wouldn’t work - I prefer a calm and respectful approach to my kids, so in that respect I would say I agree with you. But it’s not about it allowing him to parent her, it’s not allowing him to bully her and shout at her in her own home.

Do you want her to think of him as her dad? If not: carry on. If you do: you have to let him parent. You can still disagree with him out of earshot of DD, but you can’t have it both ways. That’s confusing for both DD and DP and will create a horrible wedge between them.

I just don’t agree with the total authoritative style of parenting and wont allow any of our kids to be parented this way

I'd guess that you are just not compatible, are you? Doesn't matter how often you discuss and agree something, he doesn't stick to it.

That seems to be petty clear to me, to point to you not being compatible.

What has cooking and cleaning got to do with picking a yogurt out of the fridge.

Mine go in the fridge and take what's bought for them without asking.

Some people think it should be like Oliver twist.
Please sir can I have some more.

Absolutely no way would I allow this to happen, he sounds like a bully, she's your kid

She decided she wanted to call him daddy. I had no say in it really but I would have preferred if she didn’t tbh but I’ve let her make that choice.

I do want him to be her dad, and he is, but I also will stand up for my child when I think he’s being unfair to her.

Your actions completely undermined your DH!

She is hardly going to starve. You should have just told her that once she had finished tidying then she could have a yoghurt. Give her an incentive to finish tidying!

You owe your DH an apology. His request for a tidy room was perfectly reasonable.

You would have preferred it if she didn't have someone to call dad! Or you feel the person you've introduced to her in a daddy role isn't good enough? Either way you're not being fair and it's time to live with your choices. He's her dad. You made her choice when you moved him in and let it unfold.

Your parenting differences are nothing to do with who has higher ranking as a parent imo.