Hi :) Okay so our living situation is a bit of a pain at the moment. I have lived with my boyfriend for one and a half years, and he has his nearly seven-year-old daughter every week Friday-Monday. She's a lovely kid and we get on amazingly, so absolutely no problems there. However, she has no consistency in her life - she goes to her paternal grandparents to sleep on a Saturday night where there aren't any rules, and at her mum's she also stays out at different houses during the week when she's in school the next day, so during the week, she can easily stay at five different houses. Me and OH have been talking and he's desperate to sort things out because we feel so bad for her - she's poorly and tired all the time, and she's grumpy which is totally understandable!
Sleep is one of the main issues. Because she's passed around so much, she has no consistent bed-time routine. She shares a room with her sister (not OH's kid) at her mum's, she shares a bed with her grandparents, she crashes out with the whole of her mum's family at cousins' during the week, and here I can't even keep up. When I met my OH, he was sharing a bed with his daughter every night, and then he began getting her to sleep in her own bed. But two years later, we're still having problems. She frequently gets in bed with us during the night and wakes me up - I'm a really light sleeper, and she and my OH take a lot of room up in the bed, so I often end up on the sofa. However, if I'm not there for the night, she's allowed to sleep with OH. I've been away for a few weekends now, so she's back in the habit, and it's doing my head in - I'm back on the sofa, not sleeping properly, and being woken up at 6am on weekends. Not only that, I feel bad for her because it's like when I'm back, I'm kicking her out! And then vice versa.. It's a lot of mixed messages in my opinion, and she's started doing it at her mum's house with her mum's new boyfriend, which OH doesn't like and her mum always takes her back to her own bed. I said to him that it doesn't seem right to accept it at our house with him and not at her mum's because how can she know where she stands? I completely think that if he wants to share a bed with her then that's fine and it's entirely his decision, but it's my choice to not to have to put up with it. I'm at the point of moving out - I'm swamped with work and am constantly knackered at the weekends, especially because she is taking hours to get to go to sleep at night as well, sometimes as late as midnight, even though she initially gets in bed at 8. If she's having nightmares or she's poorly, that's different, but as a general rule, wanting people to sleep in their own bed isn't unreasonable, is it? I'm just wondering whether, since she's only here at weekends, is it something I have to put up with and I just have to sleep on the sofa? I've spoken to OH saying that I can't carry on as is, but I have no intention of telling him what he can and can't do. Obviously OH isn't happy and feels like I'm giving him an ultimatum, so am I overreacting? Thank you in advance :)