Sick step children. :-(

[theredhen]

At the moment we have the 4 x DSC with us. There are a lot of stomach bugs around at the moment, DS had it this week and it seems DSS has had it yesterday at Mums too.

DSD4 has arrived here tonight and thrown up 3 times. She's only 7 and says she wants to talk to Mummy. Mummy simply says "oh dear" and a few ooh and aah's and then hangs up.

A few months ago, DP had a snotty e-mail from ex wife dictating that DP is NEVER to look after the children when they are ill.

Guess who's got a new boyfriend?

So, what happens when DP gets the bug and the 4 DSC are ill? Would you look after 4 sick children?

Redhen- I found your other post about when she was ill- it's obviously double standards in this situ. I would be annoyed too.

Feel sorry for the DSD if her mum is more interested in the new man.

I do look after the DSDs when they are ill, in fact sometimes when their mum was at work they've stayed at ours if they couldn't got to school.

OTOH my DSS has a D&V bug ATM and his mum said the DSDs aren't allowed over in case they get it - tbh I'm glad she said that as we have 2 young children who would really suffer. Plus in our case we are very flexible about visits as we are quite near.

I dont see why the children would not go to their dads? Surely all children get ill and she would have to have them when their ill. I do think if it is an access weekend she may have made plans she has been looking forward to. Unless the children are desperately ill then I dont see why their father can't cope with them for the weekend. After all if they got ill at their mums she would not ring him and say i cant have them their ill? It does irritate me that the absent parent almost sees it as babysitting when really they have as much duty towards the children as their mother. As for whether your DH is looking after them or not that is between the two of you to sort out and its not BM fault. I only say this as my childrens SM whom i get on really well with, spent 30 mins screaming at me and stating how my children are horrors when at hers and their dad was useless. Sorry but thats not my problem. They only go there every other weekend and my DP and I have all the humdrum inbetween. But my DP does not ring their dad and give him a hard time as it is our time with them. Sorry not hyjacking your post. Its just that you need to see them as part of your family and if their ill, their ill.

oh that's it i'm going to deliver my first

This is how I see it:

If my child is ill with some sort of contagious lurgy (not a cold or a twisted ankle) would I knowingly send them anywhere so they could pass it on to other people ? ..... the answer is a resounding NO ..... so NO to other friends' houses, NO to school and NO to grandparents etc. Additionally, if already poorly, why inflict an unnecessary journey upon them ?

(My plans could be postponed).

The same applies to going to their father's house if the parents are separated .... particularly if there are other children there who could catch it. I accept that if parents are together, and one of the kids gets something, it's usually impossible to separate them and yes, you do have to get on with it and have no choice but to risk everyone falling ill ..... but when there are 2, separate households, it is possible to impose a temporary quarantine if the adults concerned are sensible and unselfish about it.

It is NOT (for the umpteenth time) about dad shirking his duties. As MJ pointed out about her son, if children fall ill whilst at their dads, I would expect him to adopt a similar sensible approach towards not spreading it about, to keep hold of our son and look after him, if he was too ill to move. Whenever my son stayed at home due to illness, we - my ex and me - simply juggled contact weekends around so I still got my "correct" amount of weekends "off" ... but at a different time - that's all, hardly the end of the world. I'm sure Redhen's OH would be just as happy to do this if it meant that illness wasn't spread.

And now I shall shut up ... because it seems that for some people this is more about point scoring with the ex, rather than doing what is a) most comfortable for the ill child, and b) most sensible to minimise the spread of very unpleasant bugs.

I'm with catsmother.

If the DSD falls ill at our house and is sick, then we take care of her.

If she has been sick at mums, she doesn't come as mum doesn't want our DCs to be sick as well.

Its no different to not sending your children to school after they have been sick in the night.

I am still bemused as to why everyone thinks its OK to send children who have a tummy bug into a house where there are other children, just because its an access weekend.

I presume you would all support the BM if she sent the children into school after being sick as it was a school day? Hmmm?

I am going to coin a new phrase "sanctimoniously doublestandarded" to express what is going on here!!

DSD was quite ill on Friday night but has been a lot better since and (touch wood) nobody else has caught it.

Apologies for not replying earlier, but this is the first time I have 5 mins to respond.

The point I was trying to make was that;

a. DSD wanted to be with her Mum and her Mum denied her that despite threatening to take DP to court over him keeping the children when they were sick just 6 months ago.

b.If DP were to be sick, it would naturally fall to me to look after 5 children, some of whom might also have been sick. With so many children involved, would it not be wise for BM to help out with her own children in this, not a normal, situation?

Recently BM was sick and we were told to look after the kids indefinetely. Neither BM or BM parents communicated anything to us and we were told at the very last minute that the kids were to go back to hers. Obviously as we both work full time, we had to make a lot of cancellations and lost money etc. None of which is a problem, but a bit of communication and reasonableness would have been appreciated. DP does a lot of running around for the children on "her time" to save the other children being carted about needlessly and to help out BM. All I am asking for is the same consideration the other way round but apparently she has other plans.

DP and I very rarely get any sort of decent break from having children, so the poster who said that just because DP has a penis doesn't mean he shouldn't look after his kids - I can assure you that he looks after his / my children a lot more than BM has the responsibility of children and he supports them financially too.

BM (and all of us) are entitled to a break, however, if your children need you, I don't think it would be unreasonable for her to at least to have offered to help out if necessary.

I'm sorry my earlier was no help but it was all I could manage after bashing my head against the keyboard.

Thankfully catsmother and babyheave have managed to step up and say what I was unable to.

Hope your weekend is going as well as can be expected theredhen.

Thanks Jonesy. I took your as frustration towards some of the posts.

.

redhen I hope your weekend wasn't too bad and everybody is on the mend now.

I have to give a to some of the comments here. Unbelievable......... I'm glad catsmother and babyheave managed to put over very eloquently what I would have wanted to say but would have been too frustrated and annoyed to actually say!!

I think there are two points here:

Firstly whether you should send a contagious child into another household, simply because it?s an access weekend;

And

Whether the children?s natural parents can co-parent in any way, regardless of whose weekend it is.

I concur with Babyheave/Catsmother?s posts, that in a ?together? family you?ve just got to take pot luck over who catches what. But is it really so harmful to have a ?temporary quarantine? when there are two households to consider? This strikes a chord with me, because some time ago two members of DSS?s ?main? household had swine flu. DSS didn?t have it, yet I was still reluctant to ?contaminate? our household, yet he still had to come to us that weekend, just because access was scheduled.

DSS could get eaten by a shark on an ?access weekend? and his mother wouldn?t be interested, because it?s not ?on her watch.? The flip side of this though, is that she would never expect DH to get involved with anything when it?s HER weekend.

The ex-wife doesn?t work, and when DSS was younger, she?d send him to his Dad?s when he was ill, even though DH couldn?t readily get time off work to look after him. And yet if he?d stayed at home with his Mum, he would have been in his own surroundings, and have someone to care for him. But noooooooo, the rota takes precedent over everything.

Sometimes it all seems too black and white, to the detriment of the child. You hear of many parents, both mothers and fathers, who abdicate all parental responsibility, just because it?s not their weekend. I know that when I was small, I wanted Mum when I was poorly. I think many children are the same. And it must take a very hard-hearted woman not to let her children come home when they?re ill.

I agree that under normal circumstances, if a step child becomes ill when they?re with their Dad, then you should care for them as if they were with you full time.

However with Redhen, the sheer weight of numbers becomes an issue, at which point I?d expect both bio parents to become involved, regardless of the access schedule.

It would really annoy me that the ex made a huge fuss about wanting to care for them when they?re sick, only to do a complete U-turn when she gets a new boyfriend, but there?s not much you can do about that. But I still think it?s mad to send poorly children into a different household ? particularly when there are so many of them.

Some people get so hung up on making sure the other parent does the "horrible bits" too that they forget the kids are caught in the middle and suffering. This hasn't happened to me, and I know it's veering off topic slightly, but I know of other stepkids who've turned up for a contact weekend and announced they've got nits. It transpires they've had them a few days (and been to school !) but the mother tells her ex he can have the pleasure and expense of sorting them out as she "normally does all the crap stuff". I mean ..... what sort of parent leaves their child like that just so they can inflict a nasty job on their ex ? It misses the point of good parenting completely.

I agree with you Cat, it's the children who get caught in the crossfire.

Redhen, are you able to update us? How are things going?

Well said Cat and very true.

Hi all,

DSC have gone off to school today and Mum will pick them up tonight, I did update the thread a few posts ago.

I agree that some people are so determined to "punish" their ex's that the kids get caught up in the crossfire.

DSD also had nits recently. BM is very keen to send e-mails when it's to critisise our parenting of her little darlings, but not so quick to inform us of things like this. For all she knows, DSD could have picked them up from us and yet she sends her to us without any communication to possibly pick them up again? She is only interested in her childrens welfare when it suits her own agenda, not when the children really need her input.

We took DSS abroad in February, and 12 hrs before departure BM sent DH a text, stating that DSS could only travel if we had arranged for spare inhalers for DSS to take on holiday. DH had no idea what she was on about. We'd never heard anything about inhalers before. It transpired that DSS had been diagnosed with asthma some years before and should have an inhaler with him at all times .....

Thankfully our surgery was sympathetic and we got it sorted out.

But as BM refuses to co-parent with DH in any shape or form, DH had no idea that DSS had been diagnosed, let alone needed inhalers. God knows what would have happened if he'd had some sort attack half way between Manchester and Gran Canaria. I'm sure BM just wanted DH to look like the bad guy, but it would have been DSS who suffered.

Mind you, at his age he should be old enough to tell his Dad about that sort of thing, but even so, surely BM could have mentioned it before.

So can i just ask then. some of you deem it unreasonable if a child has nits to go to their access weekend? My daughter continiously has nits and only does not have them when the schools break up. I do my utmost every other day combing and combing to get rid of them. Should she not go to her dads because of nits? Thats ridiculous in my opinion as she would never go. And no her step mum has no problem i just let her know. Unless a child is really that poorly, and yes I do agree if the child is asking for their mother then they should go home. For the record, I dont send my children ill to their fathers as I want them with me. But there is no reason why a child who is wanting to go should not go. Unfortunately kids pick up things. It is both the parents responsibility

Yep, the story I related earlier was about a child who'd had nits for at least a few days but mum had done nothing about it, and had left it to the child to announce they had them .... deliberately leaving it all for dad to do, and letting the child suffer in the meantime. It'd be different if treatment had been started.

No problem with a child having nits or any other such nasty, but as other people are are living in the same house, surely it is polite to inform those people. If we are aware, we can stop these things from spreading back and forth continuously.

Oh sorry i must have skimmed the topic and not read clearly. Yes bang out of order for the mum not to tell the dad thats unfair on the child and the dad as a) The head louse can actually make a child feel lousy which I did not know! DD constantly has them and its upsetting and tiring keep combing. Her mood went down and it was my DP that told me as he is an EHO. b) not fair on dad not to know as cant brace himself and the children to cope with it. Apologies for getting confused (confused)

I have found myself in a bit of a horrible situation lately. I am 39 weeks pregnant and have had a hideous pregnancy where I feel awful.

My DH had to go and pick up his daughter as she'd been sick and her mum said she couldn't leave work (he was supposed to be at work). She had a bit of a temperature too, and I felt like such an evil witch because I said that if she came to ours, could she stay in her room to try to limit her contact with me as I just couldn't face the thought of catching a sick bug and / or possibly getting a temperature at this late stage. I also panicked about DH catching it, when obviously he would be needed at the hospital with me.

I struggled with this sooo much and felt so awful for my SD, but I think it is hard to look after other people's ill kids if you don't feel good yourself or are pregnant or have small kids that you don't want to catch things. I do think that consideration of other people's situations is so important. Weekends can easily be swapped if a child wants to be where they are most comfortable...