Daughter and partners relationship deteriorating and I need some clear advice.

[Rainingstars]

I’ve been with him in a relationship for over 4 years and we have a 1.5 year old together. I have an 8 year old with previous relationship (he was abusive) had no contact for years with our daughter.

To begin with the relationship with my partner and daughter was good. They got on fine and she really liked him, would often choose to sit with him and follow him everywhere. It has over the past couple of years and I say the last year in particular gone downhill. My daughter is being referred at school for ADHD which is making the situation more complicated. Around the time of contact with her dad starting the relationship with my partner deteriorated. I know he has got into her head as he wasn’t happy that I was living with another man.

Now my daughter hates my partner, she won’t respect him, she rolls her eyes and tells him to shut up. He is getting more and more annoyed and does less and less with her. This is triggering her ADHD and she is talking to him worse and worse. She said she sees him now as an enemy as he makes her feel bad.

He wont communicate with me and thinks the way to deal with it is to just ignore her. I’ve got annoyed and called him immature. He either needs to make an effort to re-build the relationship and gain her trust or he needs to go. The way it’s going it’s just unlivable. She is a child and he is supposed to be an adult. Yeah I’m sure he never wanted to sign up for this but it is what it is. What is the best way forward, it’s like a constant war and I can’t see the wood for the trees?

Brat. ADHD. Same difference right? 🙄

Did you mean to be so offensive in your choice of word?

@HowIrresponsible I am sure she is demand avoidant. She wants to control absolutely everything, at home, at school, with friends. When you ask her she will do it if she wants or she wants an explanation but if she won’t she just won’t. She won’t listen to any reasoning or others feelings. She sees absolutely everything as an attack so she feels she needs to defend.

@HowIrresponsible Yes 8, not 2. She is old enough to learn that you behave in certain ways - you obey adults. Mom says she is Line this in all relationships so the problem is the child. Consequences for behavior.

I was in almost this exact situation - flaky abusive narc ex who couldn’t stand that I’d moved on, new partner (who disagreed with my parenting style, tried to step in but only made things worse), 6-8 year old DD with (at that point undiagnosed) autism and a relationship that started off so well but rapidly deteriorated while I desperately tried to keep everyone happy.

One of my biggest regrets in life is that I stayed and tried to make it work for so long. My DC still bring it up 9 years later and I don’t think have forgiven me.

If he won’t listen or agree to work with you and DD then you’re right, he has to go.

On a side note, I did a Therapeutic Parenting with PACE course a few years ago and it transformed my relationship with DD and her behaviour too. I would recommend it to anyone with an ND child that is struggling.

I genuinely don’t think he has the tools to change. His upbringing and his parents abandoning us doesn’t help, he has no real support or guidance. Most people know that relationships take work. His family are all perfect I think they want us to fail.

Did you miss the part where she has SN?

The only way to change a child and their behaviour is to change the way you interact with and relate to them.

If this was me, the deal breaker would be - is he willing to seek support with you and invest in his relationship with your daughter. This might be family therapy, parenting courses, early help family support etc. if he's not then he shouldn't be living in your home as a parent figure to her

You do need to be prepared that if he goes, your 1.5 year old might be away from you 50/50.

No one had a 'perfect upbringing' and if he did he would be kinder and more empathetic!!

This is a red flag and screams of 'in our house we avoid things and sweep them under the rug'

@StormingNorman Yep. I meant it. I think we give children labels so that we don't have to be responsible for crap parenting.

In this case stepfather says to ignore her not coddle her. I think he is right. Apparently mom went all soft and fuzzy.

I have told this to him. He needs to change tactic because the way he behaves doesn’t work. They most definitely have a sweep it under the rug way of living.

This is good advice

No, she doesn't - she being referred for diagnosis of one those fuzzy labels that mean everyone is supposed to accept bad behavior. She may not.

(Could it simply be sibling rivalry because I'm not the center of attention any more?)

He's calling her stupid, he needs to go. That's not an appropriate response at all.

From another poster:

"Could it simply be sibling rivalry because I'm not the center of attention any more?"

OP - is it possible that's a factor? As well as the alienation from your ex.

I’m AuDHD and believe DD is too (she’s 11, she’s been declined by paeds twice for functioning ‘too well’ in school because her school were very supportive!). I will start with the neurodivergent ‘Let me share my experience with you because it is similar to your’s’ approach.
She is strong willed. Has been since she was tiny. Even before she could talk she would ‘refuse’ certain items of clothing! If tried to put her in tights, she would kick and squirm!
Her Dad and I had very different approaches to parenting. I believe kids do well whenever they can. I do believe in manners and good behaviour but (strops aside!) I can tell when DD is overwhelmed and when her behaviour deteriorates there’s a reason. I can usually de-escalate her fairly quickly. Her Dad feels like she needs a firm hand. Tension was high when he lived here. We split a couple of years ago. DD really struggled at first but now she is far happier. I know he thinks I’m soft on her but with loads of positive parenting, she has blossomed into a delightful, chatty, thoughtful girl. She even won an award at the end of term for her supportive attitude towards her peers.
In your situation, I would definitely suggest positive parenting (I literally started with ‘Good morning, you woke up! That’s a great start to the day!’ when she wouldn’t get out of bed 😁). How to parent book is good, I also found The Explosive Child by Ross Greene really helpful to see things from her perspective and how to change my approach with her.
I wonder if your DD is experiencing rejection sensitivity with your H? If she feels rejected by him, especially with a new sibling around. Ultimately, he is the grown up, she is a kid. He needs to step up and work on their relationship. If he ignores her, she will withdraw. Most kids would but RSD is intense. Even now, as an adult, I can rationalise things but I still find it difficult when I feel rejected. If he won’t work to improve their relationship, unfortunately I don’t think he can keep living with you. This dynamic will be heartbreaking for her.

The thing is the world doesn't bend to our needs, there has to be give and take. I feel for your DH it doesn't feel like there's any room for manoeuvre. It sounds like the relationship broke down when he asked her to accept any sort of discipline. I wonder how you will deal with your DD taking a dislike to her sibling? I think that you are going to have a rocky ride if you can't work out a way to get your DD to accept that we all have demands made of us that we would choose not to comply with.

Different situation to you OP but I ended my marriage because of my ex partner's poor relationship with my son.

My son is NT and a well behaved kid (now man). We got together when DS was 9 and for the first few years it was hunky dory with DS and DP as DS was a pleasant, compliant kid (not an angel, had his moments like all kids do). Teenage years hit and their relationship went disastrously downhill when DS was about 14-16. He was no longer the cute kid who'd happily do what DP told him and play football. He was stroppy, moody, back chatted and we had a couple of incidents of DS getting into trouble & DP couldn't deal with it and it turned into a nightmare.

I suppose the parallels to your situation are that it's "easy" enough to parent a kid that isn't your own when that child is "fine". But when the going gets tough, unless you have that instinctual fierce parental love, it can be very difficult to put up with a challenging kid day in day out.

I don't blame DP (even though during the divorce I saw a very ugly side to him) - he went into the relationship with the best of intentions, determined to love DS as his own and unless you've been a step parent, you don't know how it's going to turn out.

He is a brilliant dad to our shared younger DD and I can spot the differences- he is very tolerant of her when she's stroppy and cheeky and IMO she's a more demanding child than DS was at her age. But she's his flesh and blood and that's the difference.

No advice but I hope you all manage to navigate if.

Ending the relationship and have to share another child and the potential harm that will do to her on top is just something I really don’t want to do. But I can’t see any solutions. He’s clearly miserable and not able to cope. I feel rubbish and guilty all around and I’m fed up of living in this war zone. He can’t avoid his way through this, it’s kind of unintentionally turning him into a bully and it’s changing the way I see him.

I think you have to end it, like it or not,

At school they repaired the relationship with her male teacher by changing the way he dealt with her. He was telling her off an awful lot and removing her from the classroom. I think it was feeding the Rejection sensitivity and she then refused to listen to anything he said and was quite rude (defensive) towards him. He started to really praise her and talk to her about her hobbies and yesterday she cried leaving school because she says she loved him. She is very quick to turn defensive on people and attack them but I’m pretty sure it’s just a protective behaviour and she doesn’t really mean it.

I worry how will he deal with anything. What if his own child has some ND because I’m sure I am so it’s likely his child could be ND. How will he support me with anything.

'He keeps getting annoyed and shouting and calling her stupid.'

Unacceptable.

He is picking on a child with special needs and refusing to try to learn how to better deal with her.

I would kick him out OP.

Your child comes first.

@Startingagainandagain he is overwhelmed with the behaviour, it is extremely difficult to live through. I am not and angel all the time because it eventually breaks you. But he does need to change the way he deals with it or absolutely nothing will change and she will be more and more defensive towards him. I just don’t think he has the mental capacity to understand how and why she is behaving like it.

I have 2 children though so I’m so torn.

This. He needs to go.