I'd hate it if everything were equal all the time

[TrulyGruly]

Am I the only one who feels like this when they read it on here?

I don't want my DC to have to be treated equally to DSC all the time.

There are some things that are obvious but things like, I want DC to feel special to me, I want them to know they are the most important thing to me. I want DC to have a unique relationship with their grandparents (my parents) who aren't always worried about doing everything the same all the time for DSC too.

My DSC know that they are the most important thing in the world to their Mum, they get spoilt by their grandparents on that side etc... Why is it unfair for my child to have the same? I'd hate it if they didn't and tbh I'd be really pissed off if people tried to make it 'equal' for the sake of it all the time.

@Tiredoftattler

It is indeed a sad world in which we live when the question of how should you treat a child can be subject of debate and disagreement. Parents should treat all of their children equitably.

Absent some extreme situation, all children should be treated with kindness.

I feel sad for people who think that they need some kind of feelings rating scale to justify their treatment or regard for the various children in their environment. That must be an unpleasant living environment if that kind of dialogue has a place in your household or personal experience.

Yes parents should treat all children equitably but in lots of cases the dad doesn't, and it's actually the SM who's just asking for things to be more equal between the kids.

@EnoughnowIthink

Any half decent human being (money issues aside) will happily buy all children in their care an icecream fgs

Not all human beings are anywhere near decent though, are they? My ex’s last partner was pretty awful, she would stomp into the kitchen of a morning and make her child pancakes and stomp back out again. This was inspite of the fact my ex would give her child breakfast if she didn’t appear - and he got the same as my children. On days out she would disappear and return with drinks, ice creams and on one occasion, a whole picnic for her and her child and again, nothing for my children. I suspect, of course, that her behaviour was everything to do with some kind of disagreement with my ex (and she may not even have been unreasonable, I’ll never know!). But my children found it upsetting and really didn’t understand why they were being left out of what seemed to be nice treats for a child they were sharing their home with. . It happens.

The thing here is, how could you even know that she 'stomped into the kitchen' etc. You're hearing it via your children who may not be entirely reliable in relating these events. Plus they wouldn't know exactly what was going on either.

I go into my kitchen regularly and make my children pancakes without making them for my SC. Sure, my SC would possibly enjoy the pancakes (although they've both been known to make a fuss and act like they're being asked to eat glass rather than cake when served them) but there is much more going on here than them telling their mum that my DSes got pancakes and they didn't would suggest.

I don't cook for the SC at all any more. It's their father's job (and the only way to survive their eating issues and his NRP guilt). This is the case whether I'm making something they might like or not. Their father cannot make pancakes. He doesn't know how to and hasn't bothered to learn. So they don't get pancakes; they get cereal because that's what daddy makes. 🤷🏻‍♀️

OTOH, they're taken to McDonald's every weekend they're here and only ever fed unchallenging beige food, while my kids get balanced meals with vegetables and stay with me while the SC go for treats. Their diet is their father's choice. I'm sure they do tell his ex how awful I am because they didn't get pancakes but she's got no idea of the full picture (and, tbh, she's part of the general problem around eating and threatening to pull contact that drives the Disney dad behaviour).

It's always easy to blame the SM. But if she's doing things like this, then it's much more likely that your ex is a dick than she's just being mean on purpose. Even if it's not a response to his entitled NRP behaviour (even though it really screams that this will be the explanation), he is still responsible for letting it happen. He's not making the children pancakes or buying them treats. He's taking them out and letting them see that the other kids get treats but not them.

[quote sassbott]@FishyFriday that’s just rubbish for you and your DC. Sorry but it is.
It’s why I refused to even entertain family number 2 with my exp (I’m not saying that to say you should have done the same but out of empathy for your situation). Fortunately I was able to get enough time to see the wood for the trees to see that for my exp, his Children were his North Star. What had driven that? The fact that they weren’t with him. When he talked about an ‘our’ DC I just deep down knew that there would be zero ‘equality’ between children.

What would happen is his world would continue to orientate around the NR children, and the one who was ‘lucky’ enough to live with him would get the scraps of when he had the time to spend with them.

There is no ‘equality’ with certain NR children and the NRP’s. So I would absolutely and unequivocally support a SM putting her child first.
This notion of ‘equality’ between NR children and resident children is rhetoric drummed up by mothers who want to ensure their children rule the roost in the fathers home.

The icecream example? That’s not even close to being about equality. It’s a stupid comment thrown in to undermine the thread. Any half decent human being (money issues aside) will happily buy all children in their care an icecream fgs. The only caveat being if the SC are rude and ungrateful in which case, they don’t deserve one.[/quote]
Yes. It is rubbish. I totally agree.

My H doesn't (or won't more probably) see that his choices are always to prioritize his other children, even where it's at the expense of DS3. Tbh, he's actually prioritizing himself. He wants to be able to go to the gym etc. He wants to have a level of contact with his other children he's not ashamed to admit to (but he resents having to spend all that time actually with them 🙄). He has to look after his other children when they're here (because I'm definitely not doing it for him). So he fits in all the other stuff when he doesn't have contact.

He won't parent his other children so they can fit in to the rest of the family dynamic. He's terrified that his ex will pull contact if he doesn't pander to the kids' every whim. He's scared that the kids won't want to come if the red carpet isn't fully in place, to the extent that they arrive and immediately start demanding to know when they're going to go to X, Y and Z that he's promised them at the end of the last contact.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are trying to get on with normal life. H is trying to squeeze in what he considers to be a normal amount of leisure and all his work commitments around the red carpet time with his other children. In his mind I'm the problem because I won't just act like I'm the SC's mother and look after them so he can work 9-5 and go to do all the things he wants while they're here. Apparently he's forced to squeeze it all in to the rest of the time. What he won't recognise is that his expectations about how much time he has and should have are not reasonable given his responsibilities. He is a parent, which does mean he can't just go to the gym whenever he wants.

And he has a demanding job, so it's his responsibility to organise his contact and childcare around his working hours. If he can't get his ex to agree to drop them off at 5.30 (rather than 4 because that suits her better) or to let him put them in wrap around childcare his choices are to admit he can't do the level of contact he thinks make him look like a good NRP or to compromise the time he'd have with DS3 (knowing that I'll just pick that one up as I am his mother).

I totally recognise he's in a bind there. And understand he wants to ensure he sees the other kids. But he chose to have them with a woman who isn't going to be easy to deal with at any point in their lives. And he chooses to prioritize his leisure choices (not that I ever go to the gym or such like). It's shit. It wasn't supposed to be like this (when we decided to have a baby he had childcare to allow him to have contact but his ex decided to veto this, and then refuse to do drop offs at times that suit his working day, plus he was trying to parent them in a meaningful way until the ex stopped contact entirely for no reason other than she's a shit).

So we are here. Where I am default carer for the baby who gets shoved to the margins of the time available to his father. At the same time I'm cast as the villain because I won't just act as default carer to the SC (a thankless and utterly scapegoatable task if there ever was one) so that he can have the time available to spend with everyone. He fails to even recognise that, while I won't do all the wife work for his other children, I am doing absolutely everything for my children - including the one he's equally responsible for. I get precisely zero time off from that. But, you know, I just won't help him. 🙄

It depends entirely on the situation though. I had a friend growing up whose mum had died when she was 2 and her dad had remarried. The new wife always treated her two biological kids (with the girl's dad) much better, and actively left her stepdaughter out of things, didn't treat her to things, etc. Now, that's fine really, provided the stepchild has another branch of family out there who DOES treat her when she's there, but this girl didn't. She'd lost her mum and was treated like crap.

@LindaEllen

It depends entirely on the situation though. I had a friend growing up whose mum had died when she was 2 and her dad had remarried. The new wife always treated her two biological kids (with the girl's dad) much better, and actively left her stepdaughter out of things, didn't treat her to things, etc. Now, that's fine really, provided the stepchild has another branch of family out there who DOES treat her when she's there, but this girl didn't. She'd lost her mum and was treated like crap.

I will never understand people can treat a small child this cruelly, but I understand even less a parent who allows their child to be treated this way. Reading that, all I think is what a shit dad that little girl had.

I had a friend growing up whose mum had died when she was 2 and her dad had remarried. The new wife always treated her two biological kids (with the girl's dad) much better, and actively left her stepdaughter out of things, didn't treat her to things, etc.

I wonder if your friend's dad knew what was going on. In many of these situations, the unfair treatment isn't done in front of the dad.

The other side of it is that dad is looking for a second wife to take care of his child and looks the other way.

Now, that's fine really, provided the stepchild has another branch of family out there who DOES treat her when she's there, but this girl didn't. She'd lost her mum and was treated like crap.

See, whilst I don't feel equality in a step family situation is realistic, while all the kids are together, I believe they should be treated fairly by any adult, not just their shared parent.

For example, if I have my DD and her friends together, I would treat them all equally at that time. Of course her friends aren't my kids, but it shouldn't be the case that if I'm in charge of the kids in that moment, that I treat my child better than them.

I know someone mentioned ice cream as an example and I remember a mum at school taking my DD and others out. She bought them all ice cream and was quite clear as to what they could choose (price wise), but her own child refused and chose a more expensive one.

Now this may seem like a small issue but the other kids noticed and thought it was unfair.

Behind the scenes, you can do differently, but it shouldn't look that way to the child.

Behind the scenes, you can do differently, but it shouldn't look that way to the child.

I agree, and also disagree with:

Now, that's fine really, provided the stepchild has another branch of family out there who DOES treat her when she's there, but this girl didn't. She'd lost her mum and was treated like crap.

I don't think it's OK to treat children poorly or not give them the treats other kids in the house are getting just because they have another side of the family who can do that for them instead. In a child's eyes, they are being massively singled out there. Particularly in this scenario where a child had actually lost her mother so lived with her father's household all the time.

I think that's quite different to other things I sometimes see debated on here, like the Christmas gift wars or people being upset that step-grandparents haven't got their child the same level of gift as their bio grandchildren despite not really knowing the SC.

I agree that it would be strange to not treat all the children the same way in the scenario where the SC had lost her mother. Basically there are 3 resident children there, so it would be very strange to buy cake for only the youngest two.

It's a long way from the weird arguments where people insist it's ok for you to buy your toddler an ice cream with your own money on a non-contact weekend but it'd be unacceptable if their father bought it because he must treat all his children equally. And similar bizarreness.

I guess in terms of days out etc, it would depend very much on the ages of the children. If it's a 15 year old SC and the younger children are toddlers, then I'd imagine there'd be a lot of taking the toddlers to soft play hell/the park that you probably would do without even asking the 15 year old. I can't imagine the 15 year old would feel left out (more grateful not to have to go).

As always in step parenting, it really depends on a whole range of very specific circumstances. And almost anything can be construed as 'unfair' or 'unequal' if someone is determined to do so.

@Bibidy

I agree, and also disagree with:

Now, that's fine really, provided the stepchild has another branch of family out there who DOES treat her when she's there, but this girl didn't. She'd lost her mum and was treated like crap.

Another poster said the above, I accidently copied and pasted it in my post. I wasn't commenting on it one way or another, but I agree that all kids in the house at the time should be treated fairly and equitably.

@FishyFriday wow...I dont even know how to respond to that. I would go absolutely mad with that set up. Its incredibly unfair to you and his son with you. Does he just hardly ever spend time with you both?

I've just had an argument with my partner (the only thing we ever argue about is his daughter) about him always only wanting to do nice things when shes here and never when its just me, him and our son, when i treasure that time so much.

I'm starting to wonder how long this is going to last now. So sad.

[quote harryclr]@FishyFriday wow...I dont even know how to respond to that. I would go absolutely mad with that set up. Its incredibly unfair to you and his son with you. Does he just hardly ever spend time with you both?

I've just had an argument with my partner (the only thing we ever argue about is his daughter) about him always only wanting to do nice things when shes here and never when its just me, him and our son, when i treasure that time so much.

I'm starting to wonder how long this is going to last now. So sad. [/quote]
Oh. I'm so thoroughly fed up with it.

He's out doing Disney dad weekend camp right now. His daughter is at a new gymnastics class he's signed her up for. And he's taken his son trampolining while she does it. They've been playing videogames and watching tv constantly since they arrived. This afternoon they're going to softplay. And tomorrow they're going on a day trip and then put for dinner.

But apparently all three of his children have equal priority. Only in his mind because the evidence suggests otherwise.

It used to be the only thing we fought about was his children (who are as demanding and spoilt as the above suggests, and they're really quite unpleasant to each other). But now I'm on maternity leave that's also morphed into an issue over money (long and short of it: it's 'his' money and he is basically being financially abusive now I'm in the unpaid portion of maternity leave; he tells me several times a day that there's no money and he's having to use 'his' savings, but there's money for Disney dad weekends obviously, and for him to go out, and for wine/beer if he wants it, and for him to go on a trip to visit his brother; basically there's no money for me, my DS or the baby*).

• once I'm getting paid again, I'm moving out. Obviously.

Oh. Yes. On non holiday camp weekends, he goes to the gym/exercise classes/on bike rides, plays videogames, watches youtube, wants to have sex while the baby entertains himself on the floor (because babies are great at that), and then complains that it's boring and he can't go out for a meal/to the pub/to a comedy club because there are no babysitters.

All three of his children have the same priority though. He claims. Which is interesting as there are 4 children in the house and he makes it very clear that he resents my son's presence.

@FishyFriday I will be raising a glass to you the day you leave this man after everything I have read of him on here. He sounds horrific.