Well, I feel like I was anyway.
Since I last posted here over well over a year ago ( backstory here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/stepparenting/1846550-Hi-New-here-just-trying-to-figure-a-few-things-out-advice-welcomed ) things have been going well. I've been away at work for 253 days out of 365 (I just did my tax return), we bought a house, which DS loves too. She is now 8 and a half, and we still have a great relationship, still struggling with knife and fork, can read and tell the time but doesn't want to bother so says it's too hard. Plus, DP and Ex have got on well for the longest time ever, even now things are going tits up!
FYI I have been at sea since just after Christmas, and came home for 6 weeks leave at the end of April, so we've had 2 weekends with her.
1st weekend: So here's the issue: she sucks her thumb. (Ok, so she also needs asking 15 times before she does something and flies into a tantrum when she doesn't get her own way but we're mostly competent at dealing with those things). I realise that there are people who will say it should be stopped because of how it may affect her teeth, and those who will say let her do it it's a great comfort, and I understand both of those view points. Personally I think it encourages her to be babyish (there a multitude of other babyish habits, but that's for another time), and is possibly contributing to her being bullied at school. For these reasons, her mum is also of the opinion that she needs to stop sucking it, but her greatest weapon seems to be the threat of removal of the all hallowed i-pad. (Knowledge gained in the conversation I had with Ex herself, after the event..)
I (and DP) believe in the power of consequences, (frankly if I thought for a second I would ever in a million years get away with a short sharp smack across her bum, I would [never did any lasting damage to me and I damn well remembered the lesson]) so I threatened her with something much worse. Pepper sauce on the thumb. She looked suitably terrified and the thumb was absent for a while, over the rest of the weekend I continued to try this and it worked pretty well. She had a sleepover with 2 friends at our house (Ninja surprise attack of "Dad, can they sleep over?!?!?!" ....."Errrrr, if their mum doesn't mind" sigh) and was knackered on sunday morning. And when she's tired the thumb automatically goes into the mouth... Now, after telling a child the same thing over and over again every minute or so for half an hour (this may be an exaggeration but it felt like it) I was getting pretty damn annoyed. And I got the pepper sauce out of the cupboard.
Meanwhile her dad is also getting frustrated, for the same reasons as me, we're all in the kitchen at MIL's house, so she's talking too, and (Oh the power of hindsight and analysis) poor wee DS is getting just as fed up with it all as we are, and she's tired, so the thumb just keeps popping into that mouth.
I wasn't thinking like that at the time though. I felt like she was just doing it to piss us off. So I did it.
She was (understandably) not happy at this turn of events. However, the fireworks only lit when she licked it. I put tabasco-frikkin-sauce on her thumbs, how frikkin dumb am I?!? I realized immediately that I had gone too far, but hindsight, even a second after, is too late. Of course she rubbed her eyes then because she was crying. Oh god I felt bad. We washed her eye and then MIL swept her away from me for cuddles and comfort (she was [again, understandably] pissed off at me right then). When we'd all calmed down, I did apologize to DS and we had cuddles and then lunch and then the long drive north to return her to her mum. She called her mum from the car and I was surprised (and relieved) to note that she did not mention the incident. I decided that I ought to admit my mistake/fuck up to Ex at the handover and when I had she said that she'd rather I didn't do that I agreed and apologized again, deeply aware of how well within possibility it was that she could have thrown a huge fit at me (heck if the shoes were on the other feet..). I got hugs and kisses as we said goodbye (from DS, not ex!)
2nd weekend: So, it kinda felt like we'd gotten away with it. We had a great weekend, on friday I had a meal ready and waiting when they got in, bedtime not too unreasonable, saturday we visit my sister who has a toddler, DS and my nephew get on like a house on fire, DS is asking questions about whether she'd be part of mine and my sisters family if DP and I got married, lots of hugs all round... Sat eve we have the usual phone call to mum/ex and she comes up with the idea of a treat if DS only has to be told to stop sucking her thumb say, 3 times in a day. More than that, no treat. Super idea, says I, lets try that, and because she's been so busy and engaged all day we've barely had to tell her to take her thumb out so she gets a small chocolate egg and everyone is happy :) Sunday, I'm making my first ever roast leg of lamb (It was home grown, I come from a family of sheep farmers, this is as close as I come to religion) MIL comes over to us, they all watch a film, I cook in a happy domestic bliss... Watching TV being the second primary trigger for unconscious thumb sucking, it's popping into her mouth more and more, I'm keeping away from this though, it's her Dads job to deal with this one, I overstepped the mark once, not going to risk it again. So last weekend DP came up with the idea of masking tape around her thumbs, and decides to try this now. And actually, it works.
It worked up until the point that DS was told that, now the film was over she needed to practice her lines. (She wants to audition for a drama school). Didn't want to practice her lines. Gets out her phone and calls mum. Mum says she should do her lines. Suddenly the masking tape on her thumbs is the most awful thing ever, she can't get it off and she won't let anyone take it off because she's scared it will hurt. I do my very best, I'm on my knees, calm and soft voiced, offering to help but she doesn't want any of it, so I suggest that she needs to calm down and then tell us what she wants because we can't actually understand what she's saying, and maybe she should go and sit in her room while she calms down. She calmed down a lot after that, (perhaps because not being seen while you're being upset is not as effective). So after that's all cleared up, we have a lovely lunch (she ate everything and asked for seconds which is high praise indeed) and in the car journey north I only have to tell her three times to take her thumb out (so no treat..). Handover is happy happy, DS is excited about the prospect of next time we have her which will be a bit longer (half term) and we can go visit my folks in idyllic ...shire, (she LOVES the dog), Ex and I have a genuinely fun chat about DS's "boyfriend"... everything seems pretty peachy.
And now DS is apparently refusing to come down to see us, to the point where she would rather stay in her grandparents caravan than go home with her mum because "Daddy doesn't know where to find her and can't come and take her away". So suddenly we're at the point where Ex is saying she's going to break the court order, and we're going to have to pay for mediation, play therapy and generally jump through hoops again so that DP can see his child. The fact that Ex is still being calm and friendly and genuinely perplexed as to the origin of this behaviour is good, but I don't trust her parents not to be muttering things into DS's ear (their dislike of DP is intense, vitriolic and longstanding. In the years before DS was born, when DP and Ex were together and we were all friends she told us herself on may occasions how manipulative they were). However, I'm deeply worried that one of the driving factors may be that we've gone too hard on her about the thumb sucking thing and she now thinks that we're going to demonise her about it. The fact that she won't talk to her mum about it either suggests to me that perhaps we've almost gone too far on providing a united front...
It could be something completely different, but I really needed to vent all that anyway. I apologise for the ridiculously long post and thank you for bearing with me if you got this far.