To have said I wasn't going to feed them?

[chucklechucky]

This happened last weekend but only had chance to post.

Last Saturday I ended up looking after DSS 11 by myself when DH had to work overtime. We also have a 3 year old together.

DSS had asked for a friend to sleep over which to be honest I wasn't keen on as I was by myself and could have done without another child in the house when DH wasnt there but I reluctantly agreed after a bit of guilt tripping!

I did say to DH though that if DSS's friend was staying then he would have to have tea at his own home first and come after that as I didn't want to have to feed him as well (the friend). We didn't have any pizzas to chuck in unless I dragged a 3 year old to the shop for one and what I'd planned to cook was more of a sit at the table kind of meal which I didn't want to have to do with DSS's friend, who I've never met.

Dh seemed a bit put out by this and was making comments like "you wouldn't say that if it was DC3s friend when they are older".

We ended up getting into a little bit of an argument and I basically said he either eats before he comes or he doesn't come. Dh did end up speaking to DSS who asked his friend to have tea first. Friend did so, came over, and they were fine (if not a little loud and had to be told a few times to keep it down once it was late).

Things with me and DH were tense the next day.

Was I being unreasonable? I felt I was doing DH a favour as it was, and then another on top having DSS's friend over when he wasn't there and I just cba cooking tea for another person on top of that too and having to have a sit down meal with a random 11 year old I didn't know.

I don't see how it's a big deal to just simply ask a friend to have tea before coming over. Aibu?

Yeah to be fair i would want my kids friends to feel at home and i would be very welcome to other children coming round!! I get the snacks out, get the games out . the whole shabang but lets face it you didnt because he isnt your son he is your DH son. Thats WHY you dont care.

And!? Do we always have to be jumping up ready to accommodate guests every weekend?

Yeah and neither did she say "I hate my step son, never let him have friends round and never make any effort to make him welcome in his home". But didn't stop some posters!

Doesn't fit the agenda though does it accepting that really what we have here is information about ONE situation that in isolation really isn't that dramatic.

err men and women don’t have brains that are wired differently. Maybe wicked stepmother trope exists because women get the blame for men’s inadequacies?

Well yeah she should have said no. But the husbands badgering and pressuring of her to agree and her further update that he only ever wants her to agree with his way of parenting just gets glossed over doesn't it? And pointing out that actually that's not okay is pulling out the crumpled misogyny card apparently.

Imo the misogyny is the fact the husband and his behaviour barely gets a mention. Which is typical.

Your determination to attribute feelings / reasonings / justifications for op's behaviour despite op being perfectly clear in her post what her reasoning was is becoming quite odd.

Or maybe because they behave like op and you?

Really poor horrible behaviour. Mean and lazy

Less odd than people talking about emotional abuse.

I don't think I've attributed anything that many other posters haven't also (but theirs being negative).

Obviously you are determined go think OP is a wicked SM who hates her stepchild, so I'd expect nothing less from you than to dislike me saying MAYBE there are other reasons than OP simply being an evil person.

How horrible is this though, he is a child and the op is his dad's partner and mother of his sibling!! Ffs

God I feel sorry for your step child!

Couldn't ever imagine being so shit to my kids friends or my husband who's eldest ds's step dad doing it.
Our home is a safe place for my kids & all their friends then can come here and eat, talk, sleep, anything they want & in return I hope they trust us enough to come here and be honest if they ever need anything at all.
You just don't know what's going on in other people's lives and behind closed doors. For one night I'd have eaten with the other kids first and gave the friend dh's portion of food and the SS and friend would have eat together after everyone else. Dh would be getting himself a frozen pizza on the way home!!

Years ago my youngest was invited for a sleepover at his best friends house. He went after school on Friday and came home about 3 on Saturday afternoon. As soon as he came in he asked when we were eating because he was starving.

I asked what he’d had to eat at friends house. Nothing. The stepfather cooked an evening meal for his kids on Friday. Nothing for his stepson or my son. Saturday morning stepfather cooked breakfast for his kids. Nothing for his step son or my son. They were 8/9 at the time.

12 years on I still think what was wrong with the miserable bastard to treat two young boys that way.

I am more a friend role.

I think most people would chuck a pizza on in " a friend role". I think being a SM or not is a red herring.

It's just not a nice thing to do to any child.

Cool. Were you told beforehand that you'd need to give your child tea before going? If not, what's the relevance?

Well she should get him to post. Plenty of us would have something to say to him too. But as that something doesn’t exonerate OP and he hasn’t posted, we haven’t said it.

Yes you were very unreasonable and unkind and you husband is right, you would not be doing this to your own child in years to come, if I was in a relationship with someone other than my husband and they did this, it would be a game changer for me, it would actually put me off them and I would separate from them. How someone could be so nasty to children I don't know and if I were the other child's mother I would not have let my child come to your house, I would have not liked you, even if I hadn't met you by your actions.
A real nice thing to do would have been to order Dominos as a treat.

Well, it's two separate things. The aibu is was it wrong of her to say the friend needs to eat at his own house. So that's what people are focusing on.
The fact her husband is being a dick about other things and pulling her up about stuff is different (and yes, wrong).

Playing favoritism with children is emotional abuse. I stand by my comment

Growing and nurturing your relationship with your step child will pay enormous dividends in the future - it’s easy, when in the thick of it, to turn down this or that and think it doesn’t matter. That’s literally the relationship, right there. The small things are the big things and all the people on here who say “don’t provide childcare for your husband” have no grasp at all of family dynamics, which are about doing things for each other, not a series of transactions and score keeping

And yes, you should have just found a way to feed both children. Random sleepovers seem to be a fact of life these days, this one won’t be the last, I suspect

Well having read @chucklechucky second post I can see why she is pissed off.

She must behave like a loving parent when it suits DH but when there is something that she doesnt agree with, it is none of her business as she isnt his parent and she must hate the SC.

He cannot have it both ways. If she is a co parenting her step child then that means ALL of it, the nice bits and the not so nice bits such as saying no sometimes, or disciplining if necessary. But if she isnt allowed to say no or put her foot down about anything then equally she should not be expected to put herself out when they want something! If he wanted his kid to have his own way so badly then he needs to not do overtime when the boy is there. If he wants to do the overtime then he needs to accept that the OP is in charge while he is at work and what she says goes.

Time to have a conversation about expectations, possibly including counselling about how to move forward with this as I suspect that unless it is nipped in the bud now, this is the sort of issue that could end the marriage.

See! She said miserable bastard! It’s a “He” behaving the same way as OP but she still said he was in the wrong. Misogyny is an overworked distraction in these discussions.

Funny. Never usually a requirement for the husband to post his own thread before posters will say what they think of him.

Absolutely.

Not if his behaviour is the key isssue. But here op’s is at issue.