if you split from your kids' father and started seeing someone else, how long before you'd bring him back to stay ...

[wannaBe1974]

My cousin has recently split from his partner, they have a 3 year old ds. within about 6 weeks she was seeing someone else and had him over to stay almost straight away. The whole family knew almost straight away because her 3 year old ds told his granny that he'd had a bad dream and "had to get into bed with mummy and

a year

Agreed!

Agree prob about a year.

And even then, only if I was pretty sure the guy was going to be a permanent part of mine and my children's lives.

Not nice for the ds at all!

Had he met him before the middle of the night?

I took it very slowly when I started seeing DP. He would only come around after ds was in bed so he didn't eat into any of my time with ds. Would sleep on the sofa just incase of situations like the OP described and would be gone before ds got up in the morning.

Dp would call around for an hour or so during the day at the weekend so they got used to each other.

And Dp and ds have known each other since ds was born. He even came to visit us in hospital when he was born so definately not a stranger to ds but still took things very slowly!

Message withdrawn

well I think that they'd met before the middle of the night, but she seems to see nothing wrong with him being a fixture in their lives, waxes lyrical about how well the two of them get on and even said that her ds said "mummy you and xx should get married and have another baby", mm so soon after mummy and daddy split, i do find that somewhat difficult to believe.

from my experience - if you were my ex who left me to be with his mistress, he WANTED them to stay straight away - I managed to pospone that for 5mths and then it was full-on with ME explaining the situation

I have been seeing new guy for 4 mths and kids have spent 4 hrs with him last weekend BUT it was in a situation with lots of adults so he was "just a friend" - it was more a "lets see how he deals with his DD & my kids" - more of a test for him than my kids

think it will be quite a while til we spend the night together with kids as well

Message withdrawn

It's easy to get caught up in the romance/lust when you start seeing someone new and it's easy to imagine that you'll be perfect together and it'll be happily ever after BUT you just can't do it when you have a child!!

It makes me so mad because its so unfair on the child. What if they become really attached to this person and then suddenly it's all off?

What may seem like a relatively short relationship on grown up timescales is completely different from a child's point of view. Can't some grown ups remember how long the summer holidays were when they were kids?

Sorry to rant on your thread wannabe but a girl recently broke up with my brother because he was taking the softly softly approach, as she has a child, and she couldn't understand why and was putting pressure on him to stay at her house all of the time.

lact8 your brother sounds incredibly responsible, and actually it should have been the girl who was thinking like that surely?

Agree totally btw, if it was me I would wait a very long time. But this girl seems to have jumped in with both feet, she reckons her ds isn't upset at all by the split from her xp - i just can't imagine that?

not when the kids were there for at least the best part of a year i would say.

I'd be surprised if the split wan't affecting him too. When I split with XP ds was 2. I tried to keep things as normal as possible for him and reassure him that he was No1 priority in my life. (my parents split up and my mum made me feel we were the most important. My dad moved his girlfriend in not long afterwards. As an adult, I love my mum to bits and have a fantastic relationship with her. I haven't spoken to my dad for 3 years, so it does matter!!)

Ds was 5 when I started seeing DP and more of an age where I could discuss things with him.

Poor little boy

couple of days... but he'd have to leave through the window