What do you think of this situation? unreasonable or normal?

[inapickle99]

Sarah and John have a young child together (3) and John has two older children (7&9) who stay with them 40% of the week. They have been together for 5 years.

John is self employed and was working at the weekend, Sarah was at home with all children. Sarah invited to go on a day out with her sister and niece and agrees. She drops off two step children with their dad to spend the day at his work with him and goes with their joint child on the day out (to an aquarium).

Do you think this is reasonable? No option given to the other children to go along.

meh. Maybe this was the actual final straw.
Maybe Sarah will leave this useless lump and he can wrangle 3 children EOW on his own. Until he finds his next nanny with a fanny?

Can't see how he could have just left the house without her being aware of it. In the highly unlikely event that he slipped out while she was sleeping or something, then fine. But if he was like "just off to work, you don't mind do you?" then she had the opportunity to say no.

Although I'd be the last to deny the biggest wanker here is for sure the dad.

Yep! I find it hard to feel any sympathy for stepparents, having been treated like an annoyingly expensive inconvenience by mine since I was 6 years old.

OP has been quite clear that she’s aware this is an ongoing issue causing arguments in their household.

Maybe it was the final straw. Doesn't negate the fact it was the kids she shat on, not just her crappy husband. I mean you can justify it all you want but the kids will have felt like shit and she can't have not known that they would. She just didn't care. And fair enough she has no legal obligation to, but it takes a pretty cold heart to do something like that to a stranger in the street, never mind children you've had living in your house for years and the siblings of your child.

But your parents are great, right?

This is why it sucks to be a stepparent. Supporting often shitty parents, yet being berated by them and the children for their failures.

No, my parents were not great.

I think Stepmum and dad are both in the wrong. But I couldn't have left them out.

I'm wondering if dad has a habit of taking the piss and stepmum was making a point though.

tbh i do feel really bad for the children here, but it seems as though their mum is now finally ready to tackle the issue?

The question is how to do it. She needs to be clear to her ex that the children are there to facilitate contact with him, and that it is lovely that Sarah does things with them, but she will also want to do her own thing occasionally. Perhaps the new default should be: if dad isn't going to be there, the first person to ask if they can have the children is their mum? And then the step mum? and if neither of them can (or want) to have the DCs that day (and poor DCs but if it's dad's contact time...) then Dad has to rearrange his life and look after his own children.

We don't know the exact story here, but we have all seen it over and over again. So we could make an educated (and possibly incorrect guess).

John could have stopped work and taken his kids to the aquarium. He could have called OP, and she could have taken them to the aquarium. But it’s someone else’s fault, right?

So have the argument (ideally not in front of the kids). Stand your ground. Don't make it the kids problem by acting up in the middle of taking care of them (however that came about).

Bloody right he could. Fundamentally the whole situation is John's fault. Doesn't absolve others of their responsibility to be human, just as I am not responsible if i encounter someone stabbed in the street but it's probably incumbent on me to stem the flow of blood regardless.

As you say, “however that came about.”

You have no idea whether Sarah refused to have the kids on this day in advance or not. Given it’s an ongoing issue, do you really think, on the balance of probability, that she agreed in advance and then changed her mind on the day?

Op, you could bring up with your ex, the issue of who is looking after the kids when he has them.
Does your ex need to work weekends to make ends meet with so many children? Can he change his work hours without losing money? Does he communicate with his wife with plenty of time about her looking after extra children?

Does he know how the kids feel?

Just for clarity if mum doesn't do anything to attempt to amend contact plan etc, just throws up her hands and says 'dad's shit and stepmum's heartless, what can i do?", I'd judge her too. Again it's dad's mess, but anyone who cares about the kids should be trying to clean it up, not because it's fair but because it's what's right for the children who asked for none of this.

Could they have come home to you? Or was that not an option?

You don’t know how many other day trips Sarah’s been solely responsible for.

If someone was stabbing pedestrians outside your house every weekend, you’d call the police and get them to deal with it (and move). Not give up your life to be an unpaid paramedic.

Absolutely possible. Maybe she agreed grumpily, feeling like he had left her with no choice, then got the call from her sister re the aquarium and jumped at the opportunity to make a point to John.

Regardless of what's fair, I woul not allow my children into another home whereby they are second class citisens.

Goodbye shithead dad, goodbye stepmother.

None of it is fair but don't expose your children to such horrible memories for the future.
Keep them at home where they are wanted.

So she should be doing the equivalent of that (appropriate authority/moving). Leaving him, or flat refusing to care for his kids (BEFORE she's actually in the middle of doing it). But in that situation, as it arose, she chose to be cruel to them to get at her husband. It's shitty behaviour whichever way you slice it.

Or maybe she refused to have them and said she’d drop them at his work, and he called her bluff.

We don’t know. But ultimately responsibility for the kids during John’s contact time is with John, not Sarah.

Tough one, it is not at all fair on the kids who are too young to understand, and only hear/feel that they aren't wanted, so can understand why you are upset.

But this situation is 100% down to your ex I'm afraid, why is he working weekends when he has the kids, it's not up to their stepmum to solo parent them, it is up to you and him to parent them between you.

If he can't have them that weekend because of working (which you say is very common), why can they not stay at home with you? Is there a reason this contact arrangement is so inflexible?

This.

None of this is the kids' fault, yet they're the ones who are suffering the consequences of the adults who are meant to be looking after them acting like twats. The other three are blaming each other and pointing the finger but are fundamentally undamaged by any of it.

There's a lot of projection going on on this thread - which I am as guilty of as anyone else, having been in the position of those poor kids being shoved unwanted from pillar to post.

She did - the appropriate authority here is John.

I’m very sure she is considering moving too.