What are your top tips to being a happy Stepmum?

[Rainydays55]

How to get the balance between having your own time, quality time just with your partner and time together as a family with the stepchildren? How involved are you with the parenting? Looking back is there anything you would’ve done different in the first few years?
As a fellow stepmum just looking for any tips I can pick up to help me stop stressing the small things!

My top tip would be to pick your battles - that's what I do.

If you have an issue, only tackle it with your DP if it's genuinely a real bother, otherwise don't sweat the small stuff.

what on gods earth is Disney parenting

My top tip would be to pick your partner very, very carefully. That's true in any relationship but even more so in one where there will be stepchildren.

Assuming you've better judgement than me, you will probably be alright.

@dorris88 Disney parenting is when you act like every visit is a trip to Disneyland and so everything must be wonderful and fun for the child. Basically it means not really enforcing any rules or consequences and giving the child whatever they want. It’s most common when the non-resident parent has limited time (e.g. every other weekend) and so can easily keep up this charade of fun, or is simply too afraid that if they do enforce basic behavioural expectations that their child won’t be happy and won’t want to visit them.

@Rejoiningperson

I'm new to this board.
What happens when step mum moves in the family home in situation when exH buys her out? It's one of options for us in near future. Is this a big mistake to make?

Happy stepmum here too. I take a huuuuuge step back and let the child's parents parent him. I'll chip in for birthday presents and treat him when he visits my home but otherwise I let my partner deal with his child and I deal with mine. I haven't moved my partner or his child into my house so kept everything very simple. At the beginning, I was trying to get too involved and be an extra parent to him then realised that doesn't work for me. I adore the boy, he's gorgeous but he has two parents and I'm not one of them.

@PoppenhuisStories

Don’t over involve yourself, let their father parent them and deal with all the DC issues. Feel free to do your own thing when they’re around, go out when they are over and spend time with them for meals or fun stuff when you feel like it. Respect their relationship with their father and allow them the freedom to have time together without you always hanging around. It always seems to go wrong when step mums get too involved and end up trying to parent the children. It’s harder if they live with you full time though. I am very fond of my DSC but I wouldn’t have coped living with them full time, or even 50/50 to be honest.

Totally agree with this!

My no.1 rule was insisting that ALL children were treated the same, that included mine not lording it over the DSC just because it was their permanent home etc. They didn't, but it was something I stressed to them would not be tolerated and I kept an eye out for it but it was fine.

DH was very reluctant to do any disciplining of one of his own at the beginning, which caused a lot of tension between us, the other kids were noticing the preferential treatment, but he changed his mind when his DS threw a massive tantrum one day just because DH wouldn't jump to his demands. It scared the shit out of DH, he could see what he'd enabled to happen and changed his ways.

Things are much better now and the kids voluntarily tell me "love you, bye" when they're going home.