Holidays

[harryclr]

DP and I have argued a few times now about holidays.

We have a 7month old and he has a 5yr old DD from a previous relationship. I have expressed that whilst our baby is still young I'd like to go on a couple of more grown up breaks before he gets too old and our holidays have completely changed and are 100% revolved around children. Due to Covid we missed out on our baby moon and my birthday trip to Lisbon.

Is this selfish of me? I just think it would be nice to have time just us and our baby, as he doesn't speak or walk or have wants we are still able to go on a city break for example where he can be in the pram etc. A 5 year old needs constant entertaining and attention and the holiday completely changes. We can also be more intimate and affectionate and have more interesting/adult conversation when a 5yr old isn't around.

Does anyone think it's unreasonable of me?

He called me selfish and 'evil' and insists I want to leave his DD out and exclude her. He gets instantly defensive whenever I suggest anything, almost anything at all without her. He even went as far as to tell me where to go if I don't like it...I never said I never want to go on a family holiday, I am merely saying we have the opportunity at the moment to do a couple of different trips before our holidays are water parks, zoos and chips!

Is it selfish and unfair to just ask for some balance and compromise in this blended family?

I would only ever suggest to go away when DD is at her mums also, she is also at school.

Thanks x

@LaraLuce are you a step-parent or are you separated from your kid’s dad?

It is entirely normal to be discreet about what happens when the child(ren) are in their other home. We don’t talk much about time spent with grandparents for example as DSD gets sad she missed them. What is wrong with that?

@Songbird232018 sorry I didn't have time today (homeschooling, working, sigh...) , but this discussion is very interesting and I will come back to it tomorrow.

Also wanted to reply to something. A poster said my reply to the previous honesty discussion was manipulative because I said the sm should say a priori to the to-be-dh that 'she would prioritise upgrading her car over his children's future' whereas I should have said 'prioritise her career', as the example was connected to this. Having reread that, she (don't remember who) was right, what I posted does sound like I manipulated their answer! Sorry that was not my intention, i was just writing in a hurry.

[quote Notcrackersyet]@LaraLuce are you a step-parent or are you separated from your kid’s dad?

It is entirely normal to be discreet about what happens when the child(ren) are in their other home. We don’t talk much about time spent with grandparents for example as DSD gets sad she missed them. What is wrong with that?[/quote]
No, I'm not a step-parent or separated. I had friends at school who were step-kids and they expressed their feelings and experiences. My parents argued a lot but remained together, so I suppose when I see a thread like this I always put myself in the position of the step-child.

I think being a step-parent is also really hard, btw. Especially if you don't have DC yourself when you become one. But ultimately, it is a choice. Although the SC may have some choices in life, they don't have a choice about having a SP. I don't think all SC are necessarily unhappy. Good relationships with all the family members would certainly help. However, acting out in some of ways described or trying to split up the parent & step-parent would seem to me to be a sign of deep unhappiness in a child. Would a happy child really behave like that?

In terms of this particular thread, I have 5 year old and a baby myself and can see first hand the jealousy and rivalry, even without the step-family element. I go to soft play and things like that alone with the baby whilst 5 year old is at school and I take the 5 YO with me alone for one-on-one activities that baby cannot participate in eg a movie, or a lunch. In time, I would also be happy to leave both of them with GP and have a couple only holiday. But it would never enter my head for DH and I to have a holiday away with one child and not the other. I would miss the 5 YO, I would want to share that experience with her, her DSis would also miss her company. It would be less enjoyable for me, without her there. And it would cause terrible upset and jealousy if she were to find out about it, or if this was the kind of thing that was done repeatedly. I do wonder if that feeling of being unwanted, of "ruining" things with your presence, of not being a real and welcome part of that new family unit, would spill over into other parts of life, even if this particular holiday was kept secret. I've read posts on here from step-children who say that they felt like they were visitors to 2 different families, not fully belonging to either of them.

[quote Balabomy]@Songbird232018 sorry I didn't have time today (homeschooling, working, sigh...) , but this discussion is very interesting and I will come back to it tomorrow.

Also wanted to reply to something. A poster said my reply to the previous honesty discussion was manipulative because I said the sm should say a priori to the to-be-dh that 'she would prioritise upgrading her car over his children's future' whereas I should have said 'prioritise her career', as the example was connected to this. Having reread that, she (don't remember who) was right, what I posted does sound like I manipulated their answer! Sorry that was not my intention, i was just writing in a hurry.[/quote]
It was me.

But actually, what I wanted to comment on is just how gracious and reasonable your response here is. That’s not something that happens often on the step parenting board.

@LaraLuce if you are not a step parent, or a professional with insight to step parenting dynamics, (and this is said with the best of intent), why are you posting here? Honestly I cannot fathom it out. It’s akin to someone who hasn’t given birth/ had a baby posting / or is a professional posting on breastfeeding/ postnatal etc threads. Then stating that they are equipped to comment by virtue of the fact that a friend of theirs had a baby, not just that, but it also gives them the insight to challenge others who have actually gone through the experience or had professional training to help others deal with it. And tell them you don’t agree.

Legitimately. On why basis do you think you’re remotely equipped to come on here and challenge multiple posters? Who are either step parents themselves (or like myself were in that situation).

Commentary like yours is actually intensely naive, unhelpful and dangerous. You have zero experience of step family dynamics and your assumption that all children are equal and should be treated as such is part of the societal narrative designed to undermine step parents and force things onto families that are not healthy.

In answer to your question, yes all children can behave in all manner of ways. Including being intensely disruptive, in full on rejection mode, the list goes on. Depending on age, said children either have no emotional cognisance of what they’re doing (and it takes very boundaried and consistent parenting to manage behaviours) or they know exactly what they’re doing and are either just not very nice/ being manipulated by a resident parent in the background.

If you read the step parenting boards, far from step children being ‘unwanted’, I think you’ll find the wider problem (time and again), are NR parents (normally fathers) expecting the whole dynamic to pivot around the visiting child. I would say about 90% of the threads on here have some element of red carpet treatment/ tail wagging the dog element. Trust me, a lot of children in these situations have their needs more than met. The people who consistently get shoved down the priority lists are resident child(ren) and partners.

Including an example further up where one SC felt so entitled about their sway in their fathers household, they kicked off when the lounge was painted in a colour they didn’t choose! These are not one off examples, they happen time and again.

All this adult is saying, is I would like to do xyz just us and our baby. Contact is not being cancelled. Child does not even need to know. Why should this persons needs (as a partner) not be just as valid in her relationship? They should. And it’s challenging this narrative that is so vital. Just because there is a step child in the mix, it doesn’t mean everyone else’s needs should be de-prioritised.

Well, I do work professionally with incredibly damaged children who display really challenging behaviours. It can be very difficult emotionally but I find it helps to keep returning to a place of empathy and to see the behaviour as a sign of an unmet need, rather than labeling the child as a 'tyrant' 'just not nice' etc. Then I can try to meet the need in order to change the undesirable behaviour.

In terms of this thread, it popped up in active convos and I'm a parent of 2 children like OPs DP, similar ages. As I've said, jealousy and sibling rivalry is a big issue for us, and I can see that taking one child only on holiday has the potential to exacerbate such problems. I can understand why OP's DP wouldn't want to do that, which is why I commented initially.

I do consider children to be equal and deserving of equal opportunities and I do think parents should strive to be as fair as possible between their children, whilst taking account of their individual needs. The 5 YO in the OP is not being taken on holiday by her DM. I can understand why the DP would not want her to miss out on this expensive treat and opportunity for fun and learning. Even if the 5 YO didn't know HE would know that he had denied one of his children that opportunity. Of course, the way he e xpressed this was not acceptable.

It’s not meant to be an opportunity for fun and learning for a child though, it’s meant to be relaxation for the adults. The baby seems to be only going because they don’t have another home and another parent to stay with, and they are relatively portable and sleepy. The 5 year old would not be missing out on anything that was meant for them anyway.
If OP was proposing to go to Disneyland without the 5 year old that would be a major dick move and a whole other conversation.

@LaraLuce You have two resident children. It's been asked a few times already but could you answer how you think the child would even know in order to be upset, if they were with their other parent at the time and it didn't disrupt contact? The baby isn't going to tell her and neither need OP and her DP, so...

This is one of the reasons why lack of experience as a step parent makes it difficult to meaningfully weigh in on a discussion like this. You are naturally in the mindset of both of your kids being around all the time and, by default, always doing things with both of them. When you have a NR child it becomes a very normal part of life to do things without them when they are at their other house (or you'd spend a lot of time twiddling your thumbs) and to not necessarily mention those things to them, either because they would feel left out and jealous, or because they are five yours old and don't give a toss what other people have been up to.

I think whilst it's possible to have empathy towards step parenting situations whilst having no direct experience of being a step parent yourself, what winds me up on this forum is posters who proudly proclaim that if they were a step parent they would never entertain doing xyz.

You simply cannot know how you would react in a situation until you have experienced it for yourself. For example look at how many people start out in a relationship "knowing" that infidelity would be a deal breaker yet go on to give the cheater chance after chance. Or how many threads are started by parents struggling with their own DC in ways they hadn't foreseen.

I am not a parent. I have an inkling how I might have parented my own DCs had I had them but regardless of my intentions so much would have been influenced by my children's personalities plus whatever the wider dynamics were in my life at that time.

I am guessing that being a parent brings a particular joy in and of itself. It's a harsh truth but that same joy is simply not there when it's someone else's child (unless you've been given agency by the parents and the child themselves to develop a truly close bond, in which case the OP's situation wouldn't have arisen). Yes the OP's DP has two children, not one. He also has a long term partner with her own needs and wants. Her need at this point is to get away for a break where she isn't having to tailor it around entertaining someone else's 5yo, whilst said 5yo is at her mother's as per her usual contact schedule. It's also not happening at the expense of a family holiday geared around the children.

People also forget that the issues being posted about on this board don't happen in isolation - there's a much wider dynamic at play which, for most step parents, doesn't need spelling out because they "get" it already. That's not to say we want an echo chamber - even within step parenting there are many ways of doing things - but the many judgemental "I just know if I was a step parent I'd..." posts that crop up on this board are largely unhelpful.

You simply cannot know how you would react in a situation until you have experienced it for yourself
100% correct. I’m not the SM I imagined I’d be, nor am I the SM I was a few years ago. There are many reasons for that, including deliberate decisions taken by DSDs mum to make sure she wasn’t too close to me or even her dad. Now DSD is 9 and very much her mother’s daughter, it’s hard for me to even think of her as DHs never mind part mine. There have been failings on all sides there.
I also realised early in that I could quite easily emotionally bankrupt myself if I loved and cared for her the way I originally wanted to. On a one way street with other adults purposely blocking you, it’s easy to end up in a bad place.
I also rallied that actually my needs and my DSs needs are important too. Second born isn’t second best and my DS won’t be put on a shelf until EOW rolls around and he’s allowed to live his life because DSD is back.
It’s easy to make proclamations from up their on your moral charger, with no experience of what actually goes on in these homes and relationships.

It's also import at to realise the other adult has a massive impact on te relationship by which I mean the child's rp.
If they are helpful and supportive the liklihood of a postaive step arnt bond increases as everyone is building a positive work type relationship.
The most disruptive agrees I've and generally uoelpful the relationship between the parnwts the more difficult the step part relationship is. It's sad but it's true.
The children's personalities play a part as there is no natural love bond. I like two of my dsc more than the other before they are more likable less wokr and less likely to maon like a drain about everything regardless of what is done. That's natural.
Taking my own ds away is easy as I know him well and tbh I can just accomadte his needs which are signicnatly different to his much older siblings. A combination of different types of holidays with various parts of the family unit meet the children's different needs best.

Multi tasking fail there with all the typos.. Sorry!

That's not to say we want an echo chamber - even within step parenting there are many ways of doing things - but the many judgemental "I just know if I was a step parent I'd..." posts that crop up on this board are largely unhelpful.

Absolutely bang on!

I find it helps to keep returning to a place of empathy and to see the behaviour as a sign of an unmet need, rather than labeling the child as a 'tyrant' 'just not nice' etc. Then I can try to meet the need in order to change the undesirable behaviour.

Thing is, you are working with these children. It’s so very, very different to stepparenting.

Firstly, in your professional capacity you have some authority to impact their behaviour. And you are given that authority on the basis of your professional expertise and experience. Stepparents very often do not have any control over their stepchildren because their parents do not allow it.

The children are not intrinsically tyrants or not very nice. But the dynamics in their family lives can make them so. Both the RP and the NRP can (and all too often do) play hideously damaging roles that mean children (who might be truly lovely in another context) behave dreadfully and are made into tyrants.

Stepparents cannot do anything about this. And stepmother’s in particular are often scapegoated or marginalised within these dynamics.

Another really, really key difference is that all of this happens in your home. There’s little to no escape from it. It permeates all your relationships with your family members in various ways. That’s a completely different thing to working with children in a professional context. You can go home and relax. Even on non-contact days the SC is often an absent-presence in your home and their parent’s feelings and attitude about that dictates so much.

Plus you aren’t trying to bring up your own children in this context. You aren’t trying to ensure they grow up with boundaries and manners and such like when their half/step siblings are allowed to have none. You are not trying to ensure your children are not afterthoughts or utterly forgotten because the prodigal children have arrived.

I’m sure you are excellent in your professional capacity. But with the greatest will in the world, it gives you no insight into what it’s like to actually live in a blended family.

Frankly, no one anticipates the reality of it.

On a one way street with other adults purposely blocking you, it’s easy to end up in a bad place.

Absolutely this with bells on.

I started out my step parenting journey naively believing that on the whole, cause = effect. That is to say, I always approach anyone new with the presumption that I'll be nice to them unless they instigate being unpleasant to me. Even then I'll be civil to them at worst. I tend to get on well with people so assumed that my attitude to life "worked".

It was therefore a real shock to experience for the first time in my life what it's like to be treated with hostility and unkindness just by virtue of being in a relationship with a (separated) man with children. I anticipated a little wariness but assumed once they got to see I was warm and friendly and funny and genuinely wanted the best for the DCs we'd all rub along just fine. Nah. You can't win when there's someone behind the scenes with huge influence who's simply not interested in anyone being civil to you. By the time you realise this, you're emotionally exhausted and the damage to your mental health has been done.

Nowadays I get on well with my now-adult DSCs nowadays but I'm still having counselling as I've not recovered from everything I went through

Ugh. These wind me up.

Yes of course you can go with just the child that lives with you, and it's more than acceptable. Just like the stepchild will go on holidays with his/her mum.

Let's get rid of this awful covid and put forward a scenario as if everything were normal.

The mum and her child (and the mums partner if appropriate, or her grandmother, or just the mum and her child) go to France for a week and have a lovely time. You, DH, DC and step DC all go to Portugal for a week and have a lovely time. You, DH and just your DC go to Spain for a week and have a lovely time.

Each child has been away twice. Each child has been away and had dedicated time with each parent once. Each child has been away and spent time with their step sibling once. Why the stepchild has to come on every holiday at the suggestion that he/she is horribly disadvantaged if not, is not right. In fact, it's resulting in one child having three holidays and the other only two.

Calling you evil because you want a situation where both children get equal treatment in regards to holidays is not acceptable at all.

And yes, you are quite right. Whilst they are in a pram and not running around all day, you can have a much more relaxing time as an adult.

Unfortunately, the stepmother bashing you will receive on here is inevitable. Unless you are prioritising the stepchild well above your own, get in your box, Cruella.

I agree with @LaraLuce that one wouldn’t think about excluding your own 5 year old DC when going away (assuming a carer was available), so why would you when the DC is a SC? Of course there might be some circumstances where it has to be the case, but generally one wouldn’t. Also agree that children do and will remember being excluded, even if they are 5. Especially if they are experiencing a parental split and in a sensitive state. If you hide it from them, there is a risk that they will learn, and it will hurt more. Also agree with TiredofTattler that OP needs to think about why DH is not on board with this romantic get away. I geeked out and did some brief digging on the social sciences. These may be interesting:

*Why having a go at having a good relation with your SC as an SM matters:

• The SC’s health and wellbeing: The more time NR-children lived with their fathers after divorce, the better their current relationships were with their fathers, independent of parent conflict. Poor SM-SC relationships and more distress in turn predicted poorer health status for the SC [1].
• Relations with your own DC: Low quality relationship with an SC was found to be negatively associated with the quality score of relationship also with DC ([2]
• Your family as a whole: Having an SC elevates the risk of divorce in remarriages [2]

*SM attitudes:

• In the US surveyed SMs described their roles as another parent/mother-like (33%), friend/supportive adult (31%), dad’s wife/support to dad (15%), outsider (13%), and household organizer (10%) [3]

(So it is probably not “insane” to think about a mother-child relation with an SM. Although this is not UK data. Also I didn’t find out whether this was for NR or R or a mixture.)

*SC attitudes:

• As LaraLuce said and you are saying, things aren’t easy for SMs...Having no control over an SC (for NR-children) but being expected to be mothering is difficult to balance but worth it.

• Loyalty conflicts often negatively affect step‐relationships because stepchildren tend to pull back from stepparents to ease tension.[4]

• Stepsons and stepdaughters rejected nonresidential stepmothers because they perceived them to be jealous of the time they spent with nonresidential fathers and tried to reduce their time together. [4]

SM versus SF:

• SF tended to balance their investments in social and biological children more equally than SM [5]. SC from SM families are also significantly and substantially less likely to perceive their parents as sources of emergency assistance.

• SM families are consistently reported to be more problematic than SF families [6]

• Custodial mothers' remarriages are associated with more parent-child solidarity than single-mother families, but the remarriages of custodial fathers are associated with lower solidarity [7] “Over the course of 20 years, most of the children experienced the remarriage of one or both parents, and one third of this sample remembered the remarriage as more stressful than the divorce. Of those who experienced the remarriage of both of their parents, two thirds reported that their father's remarriage was more stressful than their mother's.”

• And on a positive note, good Conflict resolution, acceptance as one's own, and positive relationship with father and biological mother seem to be good indicators for a successful relationship outcome. [8, 9]

Nearly all successful SMs perceived themselves as mother figures in the sense of responsibility for the children, and a desire to be a nurturer or a protector [9] i guess this last point is most important to previous discussions around being a motherly SM…

[1] www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J087v47n01_06?casa_token=8zkEo_c161IAAAAA:oBagFI9ndfhxfh0DavZyqsKcGk_f2-m4t3_Y_UjjDwCiGo7cDveWwnSMyneIQT_yxERfM68_EQ
[2] Ward, R. A., Spitze, G., & Deane, G. (2009). The more the merrier? Multiple parent–adult child relations. Journal of Marriage and Family, 71, 161–173. )
[3] (White & Booth, 1985)
[4] scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?start=10&q=Stepmother+attitudes&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DM-7RgnUSZnAJ
[5] Schmeeckle, 2007
[6] Ambert, 1986; Ihinger-Tallman, 1988 and Furstenberg (1987)
[7] scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&qsp=2&q=children+of+divorce+%22parent+conflict%22&qst=br#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DqivPjvajTv4J
[8] onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00814.x?casa_token=_D91Zr96zLQAAAAA%3AOLm14AsFzDSLqtkuhbMBhQwPTLodN9t8Ey7i47JR-E-JqOKSkdN9BQNaNymUPaPdynAQyf9cH7SP
[9] Whiting, J.B., Smith, D.R., Bamett, T. and Grafsky, E.L., 2007. Overcoming the Cinderella myth: A mixed methods study of successful stepmothers. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 47(1-2), pp.95-109.

one wouldn’t think about excluding your own 5 year old DC when going away
I suspect OP would “exclude” her 5 year old from what is supposed to be an adult focused break. Otherwise just not bother.
I’lol happily “exclude” my son from all sorts of things that aren’t for him or suitable for him so I don’t see why i should be expected to shoe horn in a step child where she doesn’t fit.
Family holidays are a different conversation.

(sorry this was very long...and admittedly they are also points i picked to cite, so there is a bias there...)

Nearly all successful SMs perceived themselves as mother figures in the sense of responsibility for the children, and a desire to be a nurturer or a protector.

I would say that is correlation rather than causation. Many of us start out as wanting to be nurturing figures, it's instinctive. It's when you're rejected time and time and time again because of the actions of everyone else within the family dynamic, actions that you have zero control over, that that desire diminishes. And then you would not be describing yourself as a successful step parent, would you.

OP is not excluding a 5yr old. She's trying to create a holiday while she can that's barely impacted by her own 7 month old. So not unnecessarily bringing along a 5yr old is pretty obvious.

OP is trying to create a short break as minimally affected by children, while she can. Biological or step.

OP has only a few months before the baby can walk and sleeps less and less during the day. The 7m old baby lives with it's mum (OP) and dad. OP can't "do" anything about that. Unless they leave the baby with grandparents or someone similar, if they go away, the baby has to go too. So OP is trying to capitalise on a city break before the baby becomes a toddler. The concept that the 5yr old, who will be living, as per normal, perfectly happy with its mother, must come along or OP is "evil" for excluding her, is just bizarre.

This is not a week at Disneyland. This is OP making the most of the limited chance she has for perhaps the only holiday she will ever have in the next 18yrs that isn't strongly directed by the children, biological or step.

Why having a go at having a good relation with your SC as an SM matters:

- The SC’s health and wellbeing: The more time NR-children lived with their fathers after divorce, the better their current relationships were with their fathers, independent of parent conflict. Poor SM-SC relationships and more distress in turn predicted poorer health status for the SC [1].

- Relations with your own DC: Low quality relationship with an SC was found to be negatively associated with the quality score of relationship also with DC ([2]

- Your family as a whole: Having an SC elevates the risk of divorce in remarriages

Thing is, much of this is outwith a SM’s control. And that comes across in the research too.

Yes SC will be healthier. Obviously living in a house where there’s conflict between your mum and your step/half siblings. Clearly you’re more likely to divorce under this kind of tension.

But very, very often there’s absolutely nothing you can do because the SC’s parents are behaving in such a way that you cannot win no matter what you do.

Take loyalty bind issues, for example. The research shows that the warmer and more appealing a SM is to a child, the worse it makes the bind. There’s nothing you can do to improve that relationship. The only thing that can help is the child’s mother explicitly giving the child emotional permission to like their SM and enabling the relationship.

Thing is, often where there’s a big loyalty bind issues, there is a parent who absolutely and fundamentally does not want to support this.

Similarly, the reason stepfathers often have a much easier ride is purely to do with gender roles in society. No one expects as much from them. Nor blames them in the way they do women. Even if a mother is expecting their partner to take on a fatherly role, that’s a very different prospect to the expectation of a motherly role.

Very often the person with the least ability to change anything in stepfamily dynamics is the SM.

SF tended to balance their investments in social and biological children more equally than SM [5]. SC from SM families are also significantly and substantially less likely to perceive their parents as sources of emergency assistance.

The really crucial difference lies on what counts as a fatherly or motherly investment. Mothers do much more in families. It is much easier to balance things between children where it’s pretty minimal (and the fun/easy stuff) in the first place.

@MyCatHatesEverybody

Nearly all successful SMs perceived themselves as mother figures in the sense of responsibility for the children, and a desire to be a nurturer or a protector.

I would say that is correlation rather than causation. Many of us start out as wanting to be nurturing figures, it's instinctive. It's when you're rejected time and time and time again because of the actions of everyone else within the family dynamic, actions that you have zero control over, that that desire diminishes. And then you would not be describing yourself as a successful step parent, would you.

I think it’s actually completely misattrubuting the causation.

The correlation almost certainly exists because those ‘successful SMs’ have been allowed - indeed supported and enabled - to have responsibility for and to nurture and protect the SC. The cause of the success is little to do with the SM. The only thing that sets these ‘successful SMs’ apart from the ‘failing SMs’ is the context in which they are trying to achieve anything.

So actually it would be better to think of the parents as succeeding or failing not the SM. And it’s their children who they are failing.

I agree with you entirely kumquat.