My DC will always be my priority

[MarkUp]

Does anyone else read things on here sometimes and feel like SPs are expected to prioritise their DSC over their own DC?

I feel it from my own husband sometimes too.

But I refuse. My DC will always, always be my priority, yes I love them more, yes I care more, and yes I want to treat them more.

I will take them on holiday if I can afford to whether or not DH can afford to take his DC. I'll not make them save all fun and days out for when their half siblings are here. I will not reduce any inheritance they receive so it can be split 'equally'. I will not tell my parents they can't buy more presents at Christmas and birthdays for their own grandchild. I will not stop treating them to nice things if I want to just because I can't afford 3 lots of it.

@KaleSlayer

I don’t think it’s realistic to think step parents will feel the same about their step children as their bio children and that’s what I think doesn’t work about blended families. Parents usually naturally have bias for their own children and it does cause issues. Living with the issues that causes is something my friends who are step parents and my kids friends who are step kids are dealing with and it just seems too hard. But at least the adults have a say in it.

Come back when you’ve experienced it.

I think as this thread, and many others on here shows, there isn't one size fits all

that’s what I think doesn’t work about blended families
I imagine you're quite right in the case of some families, if unrealistic expectations go unmet and feelings are hurt.
What everyone is trying to get you to understand is that not all "blended* family has those expectations, so therefore it's not an issue.
My DH doesn't demand I love DSD like I love DS, he recognises that he couldn't love other kids the same as his own.
DSD has never been told "here's Yousee, she's your new mummy and is going to do everything your old mummy does" so she's not in any way put out that she still only has the one mother. Nobody ever let her down that way.

Come back when you’ve experienced it.

I’ll stay, thanks. You don’t get to decide who can respond because you don’t like what you’re hearing.

@ALevelhelp "An unpopular opinion on here, but I do struggle to understand why someone would get involved with a man/woman who already has children if they can't accept that it means their partner has responsibilities, and that child is going to end up being part of their life.
In our case DS's ex step mum very much knew DS existed (mutual friend of Ex and I) and behaved in a way that appeared she expected DS to stop visiting when she moved in. As I say, I didn't expect her to treat him as the same as her own DS, but she could have at least made his time there pleasant. Instead he was pushed away, his Dad stood back and allowed it to happen, and now their relationship is not great."

Sorry to hear that ALevelHelp, which sounds in some way similar to the experience of another poster who was a SD - i realise it is not always the case of course. Could any of the SMs here shed some light into what is the thinking process do they think behind this kind of behaviour from a SP? Is it they they see the child as competition? What can the SC do in this case?

What everyone is trying to get you to understand is that not all "blended family has those expectations, so therefore it's not an issue.*

But the issues are still there. My friend has a partner who doesn’t really try to parent her kids. But living with someone who parents his own children yet doesn’t parent hers causes issues between the step siblings for example. Having children under one roof who all have different parenting influences over them is difficult. My friend also doesn’t expect her partner to love her kids like he loves his own, they have their own dad. But at least half of our conversations are about the difficulties in her family.

@KaleSlayer

Come back when you’ve experienced it.

I’ll stay, thanks. You don’t get to decide who can respond because you don’t like what you’re hearing.

It’s not that I don’t like it - but that you’re lacking in experience to give a educated opinion. Your posts are all assumptions and guess work.

[quote Fondizone]@ALevelhelp "An unpopular opinion on here, but I do struggle to understand why someone would get involved with a man/woman who already has children if they can't accept that it means their partner has responsibilities, and that child is going to end up being part of their life.
In our case DS's ex step mum very much knew DS existed (mutual friend of Ex and I) and behaved in a way that appeared she expected DS to stop visiting when she moved in. As I say, I didn't expect her to treat him as the same as her own DS, but she could have at least made his time there pleasant. Instead he was pushed away, his Dad stood back and allowed it to happen, and now their relationship is not great."

Sorry to hear that ALevelHelp, which sounds in some way similar to the experience of another poster who was a SD - i realise it is not always the case of course. Could any of the SMs here shed some light into what is the thinking process do they think behind this kind of behaviour from a SP? Is it they they see the child as competition? What can the SC do in this case?[/quote]
I have no idea @Fondizone , I didn't feel he was much of a competition as he wasn't there much (EOW if he was lucky). She was fairly extreme though, thankfully I don't think most SM's are like her! Like I say, she very much knew he existed - had been friends before he was even born - so it wasn't as if he was a surprise to her. It got to the point that he wouldn't go if there was a risk his Dad wouldn't be there, so contact was reduced massively as his Dad worked in retail. I tried working on it, but even his Dad took his wife's corner ( didn't believe DS) so there was just no sorting it out. DS may well have been a little s*, I don't know, but he didn't deserve it and caused awful behavioural issues at home so it couldn't just be ignored.

@aSofaNearYou "Well the majority of his behaviour comes from his ADHD, but he also has less boundaries than we would like in his primary home around this kind of thing, but that's just our perspective."

this is one tricky thing to navigate i can imagine about being a SP to a SC who lives with their Bio-P. that there is not much control over behaviour in the other household, and things become inconsistent, which probably also has an adverse effect also on the SC, who has to live with two very different household "cultures" (for lack of a better word).

[quote Fondizone]@ALevelhelp "An unpopular opinion on here, but I do struggle to understand why someone would get involved with a man/woman who already has children if they can't accept that it means their partner has responsibilities, and that child is going to end up being part of their life.
In our case DS's ex step mum very much knew DS existed (mutual friend of Ex and I) and behaved in a way that appeared she expected DS to stop visiting when she moved in. As I say, I didn't expect her to treat him as the same as her own DS, but she could have at least made his time there pleasant. Instead he was pushed away, his Dad stood back and allowed it to happen, and now their relationship is not great."

Sorry to hear that ALevelHelp, which sounds in some way similar to the experience of another poster who was a SD - i realise it is not always the case of course. Could any of the SMs here shed some light into what is the thinking process do they think behind this kind of behaviour from a SP? Is it they they see the child as competition? What can the SC do in this case?[/quote]
In this case Dad should recognise that his new relationship isn’t a fit for his circumstances whilst he has a young child.

Clearly expecting the SC not to visit or continue contact with their dad is unreasonable.

@KaleSlayer

Come back when you’ve experienced it.

I’ll stay, thanks. You don’t get to decide who can respond because you don’t like what you’re hearing.

I don't think it's necessarily that people don't like what they're hearing Kaye, just that you are very adamant about something that you haven't actually experienced yourself and what you're saying is actually quite hurtful to those of us who put a lot of effort in and sacrifice a lot so that our stepchildren do feel comfortable in our homes.

I don't have any children myself yet and so I wouldn't take myself over to one of the threads where a new mum is asking for advice on how to get her baby to sleep and just lay into her that she's doing everything wrong and she's bad for the baby based on my limited insight via friends who have babies. And I wouldn't reject everything that people who have actually experienced it themselves were saying to me and just say they didn't like what I had to say.

Obviously it's all just opinion on here and there is no right or wrong, but it can be frustrating when many of us are genuinely trying our best and care a lot about our SCs to have somebody who has never experienced the dynamics and difficulties themselves repeatedly tell us that our families are inherently damaging to some of its members.

[quote Fondizone]@ALevelhelp "An unpopular opinion on here, but I do struggle to understand why someone would get involved with a man/woman who already has children if they can't accept that it means their partner has responsibilities, and that child is going to end up being part of their life.
In our case DS's ex step mum very much knew DS existed (mutual friend of Ex and I) and behaved in a way that appeared she expected DS to stop visiting when she moved in. As I say, I didn't expect her to treat him as the same as her own DS, but she could have at least made his time there pleasant. Instead he was pushed away, his Dad stood back and allowed it to happen, and now their relationship is not great."

Sorry to hear that ALevelHelp, which sounds in some way similar to the experience of another poster who was a SD - i realise it is not always the case of course. Could any of the SMs here shed some light into what is the thinking process do they think behind this kind of behaviour from a SP? Is it they they see the child as competition? What can the SC do in this case?[/quote]
Do we have any insight into two completely different situations that we have a tiny bit of information about from a now grown up child and the mother of a child?

Erm... no. I've no idea what was going on there.

I do know that in stepparenting, it very often isn't what people assume is going on though. And people seem less interested in listening and asking questions to find out than they are in grabbing the evil stepmother myth and battering someone over the head with it.

Your posts are all assumptions and guess work.

No. They’re based on what I see my friends going through and what they tell me. And what their kids tell my kids. And my brother is a step parent. And my mum was a step child.

@ALevelhelp There are some very strange people out there... I had one friend, whose SM told her that she was reminding the DH of the Ex-wife (by the way she looks), so she'd prefer not to see her around! She later struggled with various depressive traits, and decided not to have a child herself just in case they end up in a step family situation.

[quote Fondizone]@ALevelhelp There are some very strange people out there... I had one friend, whose SM told her that she was reminding the DH of the Ex-wife (by the way she looks), so she'd prefer not to see her around! She later struggled with various depressive traits, and decided not to have a child herself just in case they end up in a step family situation.[/quote]
There are some odd people out there, thankfully they are very much in the minority!!

@KaleSlayer

Your posts are all assumptions and guess work.

No. They’re based on what I see my friends going through and what they tell me. And what their kids tell my kids. And my brother is a step parent. And my mum was a step child.

Yes and whilst the rest of us can acknowledge that not every step family is ideal, but that many work. You are so narrow in your view that you can’t draw away from it and accept that actually your perception of others peoples experience might not be a blanket representation of every step family.

@KaleSlayer

Your posts are all assumptions and guess work.

No. They’re based on what I see my friends going through and what they tell me. And what their kids tell my kids. And my brother is a step parent. And my mum was a step child.

That's a lot of second hand information. You do know that people tailor their stories to their audience don't you?

No. They’re based on what I see my friends going through and what they tell me. And what their kids tell my kids. And my brother is a step parent. And my mum was a step child
And you are assuming and guessing that all our families are the same.
My brother's an engineer. My dad's an engineer. Doesn't mean I know that much about engineering.

@FishyFriday - again, thanks for belittling DS's experience. I'll let him know it wasn't as bad as he thought.

As I said before, it's not one size fits all. I'm more than happy to say that the vast majority of step parents are great (my DH is amazing), but some are not and my DS's ex step mother is definitely one of them. Just as I'm happy to say SP's can be really lovely, I'd appreciate others accepting that sometimes it's a pretty crap experience

Bibidy

I haven’t laid into anyone. I’ve just disagreed with some things. And I’ve just explained that my brother and mum also have experience of blended families as well as my friends. So it is a part of my life.
If someone was to disagree with something I did in my parenting and I was confident I was right, it really wouldn’t bother me. I think people should be confident in how they live even if someone disagrees. People shouldn’t post on a forum if they only want people to agree. 🤷🏻‍♀️

@KaleSlayer

What everyone is trying to get you to understand is that not all "blended family has those expectations, so therefore it's not an issue.*

But the issues are still there. My friend has a partner who doesn’t really try to parent her kids. But living with someone who parents his own children yet doesn’t parent hers causes issues between the step siblings for example. Having children under one roof who all have different parenting influences over them is difficult. My friend also doesn’t expect her partner to love her kids like he loves his own, they have their own dad. But at least half of our conversations are about the difficulties in her family.

Again, those issues are specific to that particular family. Many families have SOME issues. Me and DP parent the same, we don't have those problems. It can be difficult dealing with the different parenting standards in his OTHER household, but there aren't different rules in our own household.

[quote ALevelhelp]@FishyFriday - again, thanks for belittling DS's experience. I'll let him know it wasn't as bad as he thought.

As I said before, it's not one size fits all. I'm more than happy to say that the vast majority of step parents are great (my DH is amazing), but some are not and my DS's ex step mother is definitely one of them. Just as I'm happy to say SP's can be really lovely, I'd appreciate others accepting that sometimes it's a pretty crap experience [/quote]
I wasn't belittling it. I was merely pointing out that, as his mother, you have access to one particular (and indirect) perspective on the situation. Of course you do.

Yes your son had a horrible time. That's not ok. But there just isn't the information available to say anything about why the SM acted the way she did.

And it probably wasn't what you assume, because it rarely is. And you wouldn't have any of the information required to know.

[quote Fondizone]@aSofaNearYou "Well the majority of his behaviour comes from his ADHD, but he also has less boundaries than we would like in his primary home around this kind of thing, but that's just our perspective."

this is one tricky thing to navigate i can imagine about being a SP to a SC who lives with their Bio-P. that there is not much control over behaviour in the other household, and things become inconsistent, which probably also has an adverse effect also on the SC, who has to live with two very different household "cultures" (for lack of a better word).[/quote]
Yes this is definitely the main, consistent struggle for us. But interestingly it's one that would exist whether my DP was with me or not, as our views are very much aligned on how we would like our children to be raised! It's more a side effect of having separated parents, than being in a step family.

And you are assuming and guessing that all our families are the same.

I’m saying that of the blended families I know of, they are all dealing with similar issues. My brothers family actually had some sort of counselling/family therapy and was reassured that their blended family issues were incredibly common. So not, not all the same, but these issues are common.