Children think they have one mummy each

[rhetorician]

We have two girls, 2 and almost 5. We are struggling a bit with the fact that we have a lot of 'mummy a is my mummy' etc and it's easy to fall into a pattern where each girl has a preferred mother. We are absolutely out and upfront to everyone and the eldest knows she has two mums. Any advice? Just a phase?

We have a 2.5 year old who is going through a phase (I think?) of pushing away bio mum in favour of non bio mum. She knows she has 2 mummies and who tummy mummy is but has aligned herself with the other. We're pretty sure it's a phase.

Not sure if this helps but I think constant reassurance and ensuring you both do plenty with and for the "other" child helps.

Good luck

No experience of same sex parents, but this struck a chord with me. Something my MIL said, and the relationship between DH and SIL. In MIL's words: "DS is mine and DD is her dad's". This would seem to date from DH's birth - he is the dc2 - and relates to the way FIL supported his DW by looking after their dc1. There is now a huge amount of jealousy and resentment from SIL towards DH.

When our dc2 was born, I could see the same pattern beginning, so I forced the issue and often dumped dc2 on DH, and went off with dc1. DH felt uncomfortable about this, it felt instinctively wrong to him. Perhaps, as an outsider to his family, I could see something that he could not. Eventually he understood. We now have 3 dc, and while some tasks tend to fall to one parent or the other, we ensure that we swap around all the time. We also try to each take each child away for several hours at a time, overnight if possible, to get some one-to-one time with each of them.

Thanks all, much wisdom! Younger dd has her sights set on me, older reacting to her...