Deteriorating Relationship with SS.

[maryjane29]

I have a SS who is 12 years old. i have been part of his life since myself and his father met when he was 2. He lives with his mother full time..and stays with my husband i and our 3 children..(a 4th due in aug).. every second weekend. Recently his behaviour has become rather ..odd..attention seeking and very underhanded. i am fully aware of the impact that a new baby brings to a family..he has reacted like this before when one of our children were due but never to such an effect.

He is calling his mother every time he gets a telling off, refusing to take any notice of requests i make within the house, disrespecting me and making out we have no time or give him any attention whats so ever. And now has taken to great legnths to tell his mother he is now scared of his father and dosent want to spend anythime with him. He hasnt been to visit/stay with us for over a month now..and now has decided he wants to stay over the weekend.

I feel very angry that he has to behave this way to get such attention, i am totally beginning to resent him, and him being in our home... its terribly hurtful and upsetting for both myself and my husband to be accused of all sorts. i understand that he as an only child.. must be feeling put out when he is within our family..like he dosent fit in but we do try to include him in everything. +all the hormones that young boys have floating around cannot be helping..but how do we resolve this matter? We have met with him and his mother everytime he has had a problem..my husband has made a real effort with him to up the time he spends with him, but to no avail, the SS has made no effort to contact/spend time with my husband in these periods that he doesnt come to visit us, he ignores us in the street etc.. its sooo frustrating. things seem to change for a week and return worse than normal afterwards.

Any advise would be gratefully recieved.

A troubled wicked step mum! :(

I went through a similar period with SD. She is an only child at home with her mum but here has a little sister & 3 step siblings. She put herself in the role of Cinderella & me the wicked SM & my DD the wicked SS. It was all lies. She spoilt our summer holiday last year by telling her daddy on day 1 DD had pinched her. DD is a year younger & half her size. In the end I said I'd had enough of it & insisted DH go to his parents on the weekend he has SD so they had quality time together as that was what she clearly wanted - her daddy all to herself with the added bonus of doting grandparents. I took my children out for days out on my own. She very soon realised that it was rather boring spending weekends as well as weekdays with grown ups & missing out on kids fun. Since then she has stopped the attention seeking & telling lies & things have settled down.

The only thing I can say is - be nice to him. Even if it really, really grates on you, just be as nice and unruffled and 'oh, ss, we missed you last week, how did your weekend go?' He sounds like a pita, but he is 12, and he needs your support. He could be getting all sorts of guilt trips from mum at home, mum may have reacted badly to your pg, you just never know what emotional stuff they are going through - and at 12 he may be finding it difficult to talk to anyone about it.

Stick with it. And don't worry, I am a stepmum myself, have been for over 10 years, and my golden rule is, patience, patience, patience. You are not wicked just sorely tested! It can be difficult to remember he is still just a child at this age iykwim.

Firstly Maryjane, you patently are not a wicked step mother, or else you wouldn't be seeking help

I would think that this is probably age related. At least for me, the beginning of adolescence was when my step son turned from a really nice boy into someone who was wilfully deceitful and not terribly nice to be around. Thankfully he is now 21 and an absolute star, we are so close now, probably even more so since DH died last year. We had a horrid couple of teenage years with DSS but we came out the other side!

Now, a couple of things in your OP kind of stand out to me. You say he is an 'only child' but he is not - he actually has 3 (nearly 4) half siblings. The way you refer to your home seems to exclude him from being within the family home environment, which is actually really sad.

As difficult as it may be whilst his behaviour is so difficult, I think you and your DH need to do all you can to make your DSS feel that your home really is his home. Look at what you currently do and say when DSS is at your house and be very honest with yourself in seeing if there's anything you can do to make it better for him. It must feel quite bloody daunting to a 12 year old to make a fortnightly visit to this 'other' family - to try and ingratiate himself into a house that normally exists quite happily without him. I actually really feel for him and think there is probably some due reason for him kicking off as he has.

Also, you are setting him up to fail if you expect him to make contact with his father when he's not with you. He's a 12 year old boy who will quite frankly just forget. It's highly unlikely to be malice, just the ego centric nature of a nearly teenager.

Please don't think I am attacking you in this post, I really am not. But please try and look at this from a 12 year old child's perspective and realise it is actually a very difficult situation for him too.

Thank you for all your advise.

Rindercella, i appreciate that may have sounded harsh but i should have elaborated..he is an "only child" at his home, with his mum.. his mother has no other children and has never been in other relationship since her and my husband split over 10years ago. he has certainly never been an only child here.

I have never excluded him from our family or our home, these choices have been decided by him and his mother....he requested to have more time with his father, which his fater has arranged and on may occassion has said HE would call/visit/ and has never done so.....sorry i think you may have hit a nerve here....but at the moment he is excluding himself by his behaviour and attitude towards us as a family. We always seem to be painted as the bad ones..and esp so my husband gets such grief.. and i feel its just becasue he's moved on and built another life for himself.

SS has his own room, own things.. and always had done and we never exclude him from holidays.. special events..one of us always go's to every school thing he has on and we all as a family make sure we r there for him...BUT..how am i meant to carry on treating him as one of my own with his recent behaviour...how do i detach myself in a positve way from the negativity he is bringing each week. it is not only upsetting myself and my husband but our eldest who is 5..dotes on him and cant understand why he dosent want to be here at times.

Could it just be beacuse i am expecting again, i feel like i have caused this unrest in our split family :(

It sounds tricky.

It must be v hard on him to share his dad with three siblings and fourth on the way. Does he get much time with his dad by himself?

The onus shouldn't be on him to make contact, your DH should initiate.

What does DH say about it all? Has he talked to DS about it, alone?

Hmm. I feel for all of you. I think you'll benefit from talking lots on here, though! Would I be right in thinking your 3 are younger than DSS? I suspect the lion's share of this 'problem' is nothing more than puberty. It is very hard for you to be treated like an evil monster by a child ... but it's almost certain to happen 4 more times in your life!

Patience is the key. Along with some bench-line boundaries, a proficiency in eye-rolling and the ability to provide endless food. Good luck

Dozer-

It must be horrible to share his dad with so many of us, i wouldnt like it if it were my father and i thank you all for making me see things from another point of view with your opinions here.. but im afraid we have always wanted a to have a big family and have never made any secret of that. my SS is and always will be part of our big family too, its just sad that he cant be here more often so that maybe he would feel so excluded.

My husband and ss do alot of things together much more recently now though than they have ever done before, which does at times improve the situtaion. they talk about this alot.. and my husband does initiate all activity's outwith the times my ss spends wit us..its just frustrating when he makes such requests via his mother and she calls to say such things that he doesnt then want to follow them through, and my husband gets the blame if he's hasn't made contact with his ss instead.

My husband feels that due to his/our life choices he is the bad guy.. in this split family with our ss mother, he is made to feel extremely guilty at all times via text and phone calls from them both when he dosent react correctly to every request made of him by either her or his ss. i dont feel at times that ss mother is very supportive to our family and their needs at times.

it is very tricky frustrating and i only hope in time things should settle down. its come between myself and my husband alot recently and i really hope it dosent again, i dont want our family to break up over this..but i cant help at times feel very segregated myself with it all.

thank you again for all your words of wisdom. xxx

I don't think you are a wicked step mum but I do think the strain of the relationship is causing you to react in a less than helpful way.

You don't call your SS "DSS". Would you stop calling your children "DS" or "DD" because they were being difficult? I can understand that a step DC that doesnt actually live with you may not be held in as high regard as the children of the family but therein lies the problem. With children generally I think the rule is that the more they push the more you pull them in tight, you don't withdraw. I just wonder whether the lack of the "D" is an indicator of why the SS is behaving the way he is. Also, I think that it is important you make a special effort to keep that "D" even when you dont feel like it!

The things you describe don't sound particularly unusual or criminal for a hormonal lad and may seem worse because of the step family dynamics. From his perspective it does seem rather inconsiderate to him that you have had such a large family, although that is a perfectly reasonable choice for you to make I think the onus on your should be to put in extra work to make the DSS feel comfortable with that choice you have made and valued in your family.

I agree that a step child living elsewhere should NEVER be expected to make any effort to see the family or to call or to sort out problems. A parent's job is to love unconditionally and help support the child and work through the problems the child has. I agree with the post that said the effort needs to come entirely from your H and your family and that these things with step children are daunting and difficult and remain so for the duration but that is just how it is when you are a reconstituted family!

I don't think it is helpful for you to form opinions about your H's ex either, the SS won't thank you and although I'm sure it must be hard to watch your H being under so much pressure, no matter whose "fault" the previous relationship was the situation is how it is now and it has to be worked through and tolerated and the children have to be paramount in this process. Your H's upset is likely to be irrational and please try to support him without getting twisted up about the ex and everything being her fault.

Don't take on too much, take a step back. Your DH is the middleman, these things are largely down to him and I think you are taking on far too much of the stress and worry of this.

Do bear in mind that because he looks more grown up than your dc's, he is still a little boy. I say that as someone who remembers thinking that dhs' nephew was a massive monster who was dangerous for my PFB to be around and now when I look at my ds4 who is still a baby in my eyes and realise that dh's nephew was younger and smaller than him at the time I am aghast at how I viewed him, he was just a baby.
My two older boys are 15 and 13 and they really don't keep in touch with anyone but their own friends, I think if I were away and was waiting for them to contact me, I'd be waiting a long time

He is calling his mother every time he gets a telling off, refusing to take any notice of requests i make within the house, disrespecting me and making out we have no time or give him any attention whats so ever

I hate to tell you OP, but that's pretty par for the course for teenagers. You may find it happening all over again in a few years time!
The difference is, he has another home and parent to play off against the other.
Doesn't mean he doesn't care or doesn't want to be with you all.
I'm glad you can now start to see things from his point of view and Offred's advice about taking a step back is sound. It needs your husband to be far more involved and (word I hate) proactive.