I was here about three years ago. It drove me mad too - we had an incident where dp went for a run, which was a couple of hours, and dss hadn't yet got up, so I was left with him when he did.
He was 9. He got up and came down, I said "would you like some breakfast" and he said nah, I said, "not even some toast?", nah. So, I didn't get him any. I'd had mine. I then made some tea and had some chocolate and offered him some which he had. Ex went mad later sending texts saying I had 'not allowed' dss to have breakfast when he'd asked for it but had 'instead' given him chocolate.
Dp just replied saying 'dss is 9, he can get his own breakfast'.
I doubt dss lied though, probably she interrogated him (it may have been the first time he was left alone with me) until he thought he was in trouble so he changed the facts a bit to make out he hadn't done anything bad. He hadn't! (I should have just given him some damned toast!).
Another time she went into the house [he was still living in the marital home, she wasn't] and saw some of my clothes on the sofa and texted to say we were 'disrespecting' her furniture. He was going to text back this, that or the other but in the end I persuaded him just not to reply.
Anyway - two things:
- it actually does get a bit better. She will start to relax more, especially if dp shows it's not having an affect on you. I fully understand the fear of contact being cut, isn't it awful that people have to worry about this? Then the NRP gets accused of being too soft with the child, which they are for fear of child complaining to RP and RP deciding that NRP can't see them any more.
Replies should be just be simple - 'OK', or 'sorry, yes', or none at all. Don't worry about telling her 'you only need to contact me for blah' it will only feed her resentment.
- I think you need to try to stay out of it as much as you can. dp is a bit hopeless at seeing the big picture, so I do often explain things to him from a different point of view, but there's no point keep going on, he still has to make the decision and take the action. He prefers the quiet life and, in fact, he's right, even if it annoys me that he seems to be being taken advantage of.
Oh, 3) relationships with men who have kids go MUCH more slowly than other relationships, at least a year behind. So I would say just sloooow right down on everything. If dsd asks things like about whether you're getting married, just say 'maybe one day', try not to feel drawn into that kind of thing. Luckily for me dss never did this and he never said [so far!] "you're not my mum", but dp made it clear early on that if he is with me then I am the adult in charge so whether I am his mum or not isn't really relevant at the time. Same with the ex 'no plans! :) ' is enough I think.