Stepmothers says

[Mothersdayschmothersday]

My DC are guest in her house. They are constantly being told this and it’s starting to take its toll.

For context, it’s a newly purchased house bought a year after their father married there stepfather who he met 2 years previously.

She works part time.

So as not to drip feed and I’ve named changed as it’s outing but he was and is still highly abusive so I can’t say a damn thing to him.

Can’t stop contact as they want it but how do I handle this?

What can I say to them so they feel less excluded. Their father won’t stand up for them either, and lets his wife call the shots. She has made it clear she doesn’t like the DC being around for too long but whatever it’s only EOW anyway.

@Katbum of course nobody expects a nuclear family set up (it does happen as you say when it’s wanted), and nobody expects the stepmother to be a mother in any capacity, but it’s always devastating for the DC when a weak father allows his new wife to further damage an already fractured relationship with his DC.

I have a family member who was a stepmother to two lovely DC and they adored her, and always felt as if both houses were home, it’s down to the individual and in the OPs case, agreed.

In this case it sounds like the father’s house is not very warm or welcoming because of the people who live there, mostly the father. Very very sad, and I feel for the OP and her DC.

Yes, sad for the children / but breakups and the attendant fallouts are always sad for the children. It’s the parents legal and moral responsibility to deal with that - not the stepparent. Why is this stepmum getting the blame for a ‘weak’ father? Nobody could damage my relationship with my kid, the step mother doesn’t control that. The father does.

@Katbum but that’s exactly what I said, it’s down to the father. He is damaging his relationship with his children, and creating a household dynamic, but firstly pushing his kids out and secondly allowing his wife to treat as in the OPs case his children like shit, therefore further damaging his relationship with them.

This is in the scenario you painted of course whereby the DC are guests in their father’s home.

No decent father would let his children have that perception, and no decent woman would marry a man like that.

This has nothing to do with the mother.

Mother had kids with him - then broke up with him. Stepmother is living her life with exactly the level of responsibility she has for these kids - zero. It’s telling that SM always feature in these threads about awful dads, as if somehow they should facilitate or improve their relationship with their husbands kids. Many of us with step kids feel about them the way we feel about all our DH’s relatives: family by marriage, relationship not our responsibility.

@Katbum You’ve gone off topic from this thread a bit.