Join me for a second glass of virtual prosecco

[WhoGivesAFlying]

Thought I'd start a new thread as the other is now full. Come and share you SPing problems here, it's a safe place and hopefully some other wise SM can offer advice or just a large drink!

Would just like to lay a rant as both a step-parent to my partners children all week, and NRP to my children once a fortnight.

I treat their kids like they are mine. Except when they go their dad's ,so most of the time.

So when you feel like complaining about, and let's remember what they are, children disrupting your household, bear that in mind and offer us the same courtesy you expect, nay, demand from us.

As an add on, it's the only time i get to see my children.

We had a teen family member from overseas visit once, she stayed for about 3 weeks. I told her to put her laundrey in the basket and that I would wash/dry it and place it in her room for ironing! Well, she never did it....so I went in her room to collect her dirty stinky underwear, which was all over the floor. I washed and hung up to dry for her, some of the skankiest, greyest, grubbiest, torn & tatty, non-matching, (OK, that's a bug of mine) worn out and ageing underwear I'd ever seen....just once!
I checked her size and style and went to the supermarket to buy her 4 matching sets....then I threw her old ones out! She wasn't exactly thrilled but at least there wouldnt be horrible laundrey on my line!

BAT, same here, in fact its the middle of winter here and they arrive with no shoes.
What we do is take those clothes off them, put them in a box and they wear normal season appropriate clothes until home time when they put the same ones they arrive in back on to go home.

WhiGivesFlying shame we don't live close to each other as we would have gone out on the town and left them to it. Im stuck in rural Scotland and find it really hard to make friends so really feel your pain of no where to go

Matilda123 what problems are you having? I could right a book on my in laws and there disgusting behaviour. Nice to know im not alone with it

So when you feel like complaining about, and let's remember what they are, children disrupting your household, bear that in mind and offer us the same courtesy you expect, nay, demand from us
Actually it's not the children that disrupt our households - and if they do it is not their fault, and I don't think any of us actually blame them (except in the case of the adult step children). They are product of their upbringings. The disruption comes from manipulation from spiteful bitter exes and Disney dads who are too afraid to parent their children because they have little or no support from these exes.

Honestly, I read the previous thread, and what you described was not what I saw. I saw as much of people moaning about children that weren't theirs as I did blame on poor parenting. I don't disagree with what you, I'm sure there's a lot of that happening. But that's no all this thread is.

Too many people want to judge and not be judged simultaneously. I love my stepchild, but my partner doesn't seem to realise that if it's okay for me to clean her child's shit from walls, floors, carpets and doors, to the point I had to use a sander (hardly a baby either), then she needs to accept that teenagers can be sullen.

Oh my, an interesting weekend. Family event, Dsd came down with her partner, and bought dss over from his mums. Church service followed by prayers at dp's Mum's grave, followed by a bbq at dp's dads. Big get-together. Dss spent the whole time indoors in the sitting room glued to his phone. He may as well not have come. Really disappointed by his rudeness. Dsd needed yesterday, she still struggles with the loss of her Nanna, and I hope it helped her. Was lovely to see her.

User: Maybe you should start a thread about your problems from the other side of the fence as it were. I'm sure you will find a lot of support. Most of us on here have dc that have step parents so we can see both sides.
Bottom line is that its never easy. I wish every day that DP and I met 20 years ago and had our own kids and didn't have to split ourselves in two like we do now. I adore my kids and care a lot for my DSC but they aren't mine and DP feels the same in reverse. Thankfully all of them are lovely but the little things that you would brush off with your own DC are not easy to handle with DSC and I find that it's good to have this thread to moan and rant rather than moan and rant at DP about things.

USER: My DSS is 23 and 5 months . How do I cope with that one? (see my posts for details) . I think if you go back to the original post its stepparent letting off steam about there DSC is safety and if things are said within the home it creates bigger problems. by letting off steam in this forum it makes you feel better and also that your not alone going through struggles. If you read all the post the majority are not aiming the problem at the child but at Disney mums and dads . Im my case my DH indulges his DS to stupid points and so does his mum but is as hard as nails on my DS who does all he can to get the approval of my DH.

I can understand that, I really can, and for the most part, I agree.

My real gripe was parents who expect their children to be loved as they love them, on a daily basis when they can't summon up the decency to even pretend to like or even tolerate a child who is there very little.

As for your 23yo DSS, he is responsible now for his actions regardless of how he was patented, and beyond that I would probably say that what you have is not a step-parenting issue but an issue with your husband and his parenting.

Disney Dad is my problem. cant see bad in him no matter what he does. Is very quick to criticise my parenting skills though but that's another story. I agree with you on that point. it takes time to build up a relationship with a child and its hard when your inputting 100% and getting nothing back. Teenagers are teenagers and I didn't particularly like my own when he was a teenager never mind tolerating it from someone else's who you cant discipline. I d feel sad when they talk about little ones

The major part of my problem is that I know my Wife will be ranting to others about it, despite being vitriolic to both me and my DC, yet id probably be on the sofa for a month if she heard so much as a whisper I'd questioned either her parenting or her child.

Can I ask about maintenance?

Dp pays his ex c£500pm. dss (15) lives with us now, I don't remember when he last stayed a night with his 'd'm. She doesn't even contact him (she lives about two miles away and works). Even before he started just being here all the time he was with us every other weekend and every weeknight except Thursday, except [it seemed] when there was a y in the day, when he was with us anyway. And often she asked us to have him extra weekends.

The situation is not reversed, she doesn't have him alternate weekends, I have no idea why not or what her plans are and no-one asked me if he could move in. Anyway....

I think dp should stop paying her or at least halve it. It's not via csa but a consent order. Neither of them have remarried so I gather it can be revisited? But, when I do it on the csa website it says he should pay £72pw. Is this because it can't cope with you saying you are 'paying' but the child stays with you all the time? I might trying doing 'receiving' and see what it says she should pay us.

She pays for nothing btw, except now and then a £75 pair of daft trainers which we have refused to pay for - Disney Mum! I suspect she earns about £25k.

I doubt dp will have the balls to do it but I am going to try once more to get him to think about it. I do understand that he doesn't want to cause a huge fall out but actually I think at 15 dss is old enough to cope with it!

I think this is the first time I've came on here and not really wanted to post in case I'm judged

Princess my in laws are mostly fine. Just recently with important things and social media it's like I don't actually exist and I'm not an important part of my dsd life even though she's here every weekend. I'll get over it though so it's fine that and that they still insist on letting dsd and her mum stay over at theirs regularly

Outtogetyou - the child lives with you? Then he should definitely stop paying. That money is supposed to be for the child, not the ex. His child is losing out by paying her. Consent orders are only valid for 1 year for child maintenance. After that it goes through CMS or private arrangement.

Matilda2013 glad to hear it. No one is ever judged as we are all in the same boat. great place to vent and rant and get it off your chest x

Out to get you: If he is living with you full time then why oh why is he giving her anything. She should be paying YOU. the door swings both ways. I may be wrong but the rules used to be if residency is shared 50/50 and they spend equal time with each parent the maintenance isn't paid. In effect your giving his ex 500 per month AND supporting the son. Wrong. stop payment altogether but put the money in a separate acc and wait for the courts. If the courts don't get in touch you will have a nice little nest egg for your 18 year old DSS

Definitely he should stop paying!!!
That's crazy!

But I just can't work out why the csa is saying £72pw?

He won't stop paying - it's too delicate. She truly believes that while dss is never there, he does actually still live with her (she has a court order that says so, innit?). Despite the fact that even she doesn't live with her - she appears to have moved out of the the house she bought jointly with a bf, using her spousal maints, and moved in with another bloke - as a result she says dss can't stay there. And that she wants more money.

If he stopped she would kick up a huge fuss - she would tell dss he had stopped and that he had to go and stay in the other house with the SD he hates (and who he called social services about - sigh) even though she isn't there herself, and she would go to court for the money and claim black was white to get it back.

I think he should halve it - that way she is far less likely to want to bring a court case and she might see some sense in dss staying here.

Having said that - I am sick to my back teeth of him now. 15 yo are tricky enough, but more so when they are not your own and when their mum has no interest in them and when their dad lets them get away with murder.

Dp was going to talk to her about paying him more attention if nothing else - she told him not to tell us she'd moved in with a new bf, we're not even supposed to know about the bf, and he had to lie to us about where he had been staying, so dp was going to meet with her and bring that up, but it was weeks ago and he's done nothing.

We're not short of money so it isn't an issue that dss is suffering because of it (unless you count not having an iphone 6 as suffering, which he does!) - but it would be nice to, I dunno, have new sofas as ours are her old ones which she replaced before they even split up and has replaced the replacements since plus bought another set as their new house had two sitting rooms! (I don't do credit, which is why we've not had new sofas, she does, which is why she has had three sets of new sofas in seven years and why she is always claiming penury).

We already save for him but it's a good point that dp could save more. I bet she isn't saving for him - in fact, I know she's not, she took the £7k out of the savings his granddad had made for him and has never replaced it let alone added to it (dss can see the account balance).

I may be reaching the end of my tether I now realise....

So, I've done it the other way around with her earning £500 gross pw and under 52 nights a year of him staying and it says she owes us £60pw :)

We'd be £740pm better off. Well, dp would be, we don't have joint finances.

The CMS calculator only goes up to 3+ nights per week (average). It doesn't allow for calculating that the child lives with you more than 50% of the time.
If the child lives 50/50 with each parent then nothing is payable. If the child lives with one parent (your DH) more than 50% then the other parent (his mother) should be paying maintenance.

Your DH is bonkers for paying it and your DSS is "suffering" for it because that money is HIS and he's going without it.

Out I do sympathies. My DSD lived with us for 5 years and yet DP was still paying maintenance to her Mum. He did stop it though. Just sat down with her one day and said that he could not afford to. We also had the other two kids 3 nights a week, for all those years.

It is true the kids lose out. DPs Ex has a lot of savings now, and yet the DSCs still ask DP for basic stuff like school books. They don't get much because me and DP are broke after so many years paying his Exes mortgage (still are paying), and maintenance to her for children that we mostly paid for.

Matilda I'm sorry you feel invisible. It's horrible isn't it, that feeling. I had that when my DSCs befriended me on social media - suddenly lots of images from their Mum about how much she does for 'her girls', lots of pictures of them all together etc. It did really grate at the time as I was looking after them much more than she was!

Invisible is the word...

User It doens't sound fair at all in your house, and you sound like you've built up a lot of anger about it that isn't being expressed, does that sound anywhere near the mark? If you are being expected to be perfect around your step kids but your wife doesn't tolerate yours? Is there any reason for this do you think, different parenting? The resentment will build until you are unhappy in your marriage.

My DP had his kids half the week and also one full-time, I had one child when we met, so I did have more of his children for longer to contend with, so not dissimilar to you. My anger came from him undermining me as a parent in the house, and also with the older DSCs I do give them some responsibility for being rude to me directly, there has to come a point where even as a young adult, you are directly in control of your own treatment of your step parent.