How would you deal with this? Absent parent.

[Tapewormuprising]

I wasn't sure where to post, so this is on the lone parent board too.

I'm looking for advice re my 8yo ds and his absent bio father.

When i was 16 i met a guy through a friend. We had a relationship for a few months and i ended up getting pregnant. We had broken up by that point, and although we got back together for a while when i was pregnant, i broke it off soon after. He said he would stand by us and help raise the baby.

To cut a long story short, when i had DS, he came round a few times for a few hours, took ds out for a walk or two, but generally was a bit hard to get hold of and unreliable (would cancel at the last minute and i was always the one organising him to come round).

He probably saw DS 8 times over the first 4 or so months. Then i didn't hear anything from him after that. I text him my new mobile number and then just left it. During that time, i also moved into my own flat and my dad sold our family home.

He paid maintenance on and off for about 3 years, usually only £5 a week out of his benefits. I got an email saying that the maintenance was crippling him and so i phoned the maintenance people and asked them not to peruse him any more. Tbh, i didn't want anything to do with him and we were fine on our own.

Now.

DS is 8. I've always thought he would grow up always knowing who his bio dad is and if he wanted contact, he could have it. The only problem is, DS has never really asked about his dad.

He calls my dp of 5 years his dad, but addresses him by his name. I have no idea wether he's aware of him not being his real dad. It's now become absolutely blindingly obvious that DP is not DS's dad as we have recently had a baby together and our DS's look nothing alike! We've had a few comments.

I don't want him to think that i have hidden anything from him, it's just that it's never come up. And i'm now worrying that it'll become a big issue when he inevitably does find out.

I can contact DS's bio father through fb, but i have no idea wether he's interested in contact. The other issue is that he lives in Thailand, and i have no idea how a long distance relationship would work.

How should i handle this? Do i wait until he asks? Or should i try and have some sort of control over the situation and tell DS now?

ANY advice would be very welcome!

Do you have any photos of your ds's biological dad? You could look through your ds's baby photos and drop into conversation that his biological dad visited him a few times but that he wasn't mature enough to be a father.

No photos of him unfortunately, but that would be an excellent idea if i did!

My mum kept some photos of my biological father and his last known contact details should I want to contact him. I never have.

Sorry. Cross post. Does he ask? I haven't really ever had any interest. In fact, my mum was the one who brought it up, just in case I was bottling things up.

Never asked.

The closest he got was asking why he called dp by his first name. And i just explained that it's because DP didn't help me make him, he was somebody else called *. DS said 'OK!' and forgot all about it! That was about 2 years ago. I missed my window by being caught totally off guard.

I think perhaps you should revisit this again, sensitively and you don't need to go on and on, just so he does know he has a biodad and then his 'real dad'. Just check his understanding. It might not be a big deal to him, it may be so huge he can't face it, he may not quite get the situation if you told him last when he was 6. It needn't take away from the fact he's got a great dad but I think it's probably important he knows the truth so there's no shock.

Why are people commenting on the children's similarity? My kids have different hair colour and eyes. Very rude of them.

'Does his biological dad have any public photos on facebook that you could show your ds?

I think it would be nice to have a very open conversation about your dp's relationship to your ds, would he be happy for ds to call him dad? Would your ds like this? It might become hard for your ds when your little dc starts calling dp dad.