Is this "Disney Dadding?"

[OneSolitaryCornflake]

Hi I'm trying to get my head around something it's only small thing so don't tell me to LTB!

Everytime my DSC are here the "nice food" gets bought the cupboard is suddenly full of snacks, treats and the fruit bowl is filled up with allsorts. But when they aren't here we are basically living frugally and rarely have these treats. Is this fair on our shared DC? Or is it Disney dadding?

I kind of see ah ok fair enough every two weeks the nice treats come out but it seems a bit unfair that we just get the basics the rest of the time. Or am I waaaay over thinking this?

he needs to be thinking what else can he do, what can they go and see etc. I'm going to write a list of ideas and we can all go as a family.

Doesn't need to be as a family.

If he decides on his contact weekends he wants the kids to try out a sport then he needs to find a sports club that is happy with this - some are - and then he needs to take them on Saturday/Sunday.

Depending on the weather he can take the toddler to watch as well.

What tends to happen is once they hit their teenage years they will either continue but won't need him to take them, or drop out.

@RedWingBoots yes this is true it doesn't have to be as a family

My partner use to do this every friday was goodie night.. up until she be boucing round the place at 1 in the morning from the amount of sugar she had. Plus the daddy i cant sleep i feel sick every hour of the night.
It soon stopped

I'm struggling to see the big deal tbh

Several posters are saying your dc will feel like they are a 2nd class citzen etc.. but please stop and see it from dsc pov. I'm sure they may resent the fact your dc gets a full time dad whereas they just get EOW. A few nice snacks doesn't balance that out.

Could you not have them 50/50? If contact was increased their visits wouldnt require the disney daddy bit.

@Beamur

Associating love with junk food is also not a great habit long term either. An appropriate amount of treats for the weekend and to say 'hey glad you're here' would be fine.

This is also an issue. I understand why people do this, but it isn't a very healthy way to show love and could lead to issues down the road. I personally think a lot of my issues with comfort eating are because of the fact my lovely dad who I hardly saw always treated us with lots of junk food and sweets. I now associate those things with my father's love and spending time with him, it is hard to break the habit of comfort eating now when I feel lonely and miss my dad. So actually the treats might not be the best thing for your SC in the long run either. I'm talking about all the huge numbers of sweets etc though, I don't think having a variety of fruits is a bad idea!

This reminds me of an incident that happened with my grandparents and my younger cousins that caused bad feelings. Sometimes we would all go visit our grandparents together, sometimes we would go separately. My grandmother would usually have treats, I recall her having Pringle’s chips and Dr Pepper soda for me when I visited. The time period I am talking about was ~40 years ago.

Last year I was reminiscing with these cousins about the grandparent visits, and one cousin said, “you didn’t know? We only got Pringle’s and Dr Pepper when you were along on the visit too. When it was just us visiting (her and her sister), we didn’t get that, we got (= stuff that was less fancy).”
The anger she felt over this inequality that happened decades ago was clear. I had no idea; I didn’t know what my grandmother served to people when I wasn’t there, or whether she even knew that everyone highly valued these particular snacks.

These things can build up to be hurtful over time. There was a lot of anger directed at me by this cousin, as well as her mother (my aunt-in-law) over a collection of grandparental inequalities, that I never understood as a child. I imagine larger inequalities served to magnify smaller ones and make what might have been no big deal (Pringle’s) under other circumstances into larger ones. I wish it could have been resolved between the adults at the time - that would have benefited both me and my cousins.

To get to the point of my long story. It’s best to address these hurts rather than let them build up. And...your child and your stepchildren probably all have individualized tastes in treats? Could their dad make a point to treat them each with a thing THEY particularly like? So that it’s individualized and each child is considered in a way unique to only them? Sometimes it’s less important exactly what you get compared to others, but that someone thought particularly and uniquely about YOU - your tastes/feelings. (And yes, it would be nice for the little one to have treats when the stepkids aren’t there, that does send a message.)

@Willyoujustbequiet

I'm struggling to see the big deal tbh

Several posters are saying your dc will feel like they are a 2nd class citzen etc.. but please stop and see it from dsc pov. I'm sure they may resent the fact your dc gets a full time dad whereas they just get EOW. A few nice snacks doesn't balance that out.

Could you not have them 50/50? If contact was increased their visits wouldnt require the disney daddy bit.

Do people really think that resident children should somehow just be grateful that their parents aren’t divorced and that everyone should ‘make it up to’ the nonresident children?

It’s a deeply unhealthy attitude that causes so many problems.

It would be much better to just accept that things are how they are and to make the best of it. Rather than focusing on how much time the children are with their other parent, to think about building a relationship with them in the time you have.

50-50 is not the answer to everything. Often it’s much more about meeting the parents’ wants rather than the children’s needs. Many children hate 50-50. They need to feel that they have a main home and not to be chopping and changing every few days or every week. Most adults would object to living like that. They’d much rather do EOW because that is the weekends - and they matter far more than school days to the kids. They need a relationship with both parents not to be treated like possessions to be shared fairly.

Another issue that NRC face, particularly as they grow older, is the guilt they end up feeling for wanting to just spend the weekends with their friends, rather than going to their other parent’s house. The guilt-driven Disney dad type of nonresident parenting where spending time together is treated as precious and filled with treats actually makes this worse. It ramps up the guilt and obligation and makes children feel they’ll be upsetting their parent. Is that how people want them to feel? Like they are responsible for their parent’s happiness?

The quality of the relationship is not measured in time or treats. Being secure enough in your relationship that your teenagers can ditch you to stay at their friend’s house etc is really valuable.

With my STBEH, I find myself realising that he is totally insecure about his relationship with the SC. I just don’t think he believes they really love him and would choose to spend time with him if he didn’t Disney it up. But, his guilt-ridden parenting style is shaping his children’s expectations of what their father is for. He’s showing them that he’s just for getting as much out of as possible (and their mother is keen for them to think that way).

Every time they’d arrive, the first thing things they’d say to him would be ‘when are we doing X?’, ‘when are we getting [new toys]?’, ‘I want (to do) X?’ Etc. As far as I can tell he was priming this by spending the car ride back to their mum’s at the end of contact promising them stuff. And their mum would ‘motivate’ them to come to see him based on what they’d get. It’s not their fault that they behave in spoilt and demanding ways; they are just responding to the environment around them.

It’s not good for them at all.

Several posters are saying your dc will feel like they are a 2nd class citzen etc.. but please stop and see it from dsc pov. I'm sure they may resent the fact your dc gets a full time dad whereas they just get EOW. A few nice snacks doesn't balance that out.

You know this is a really, really stupid argument, don't you? Maybe you should try thinking about it from anyone's perspective other than the SC, and given that you've already acknowledged that it does nothing to balance that out, it might cross your mind that what it's doing to other people is worth caring about.

But no, most likely you will just continue to only ever think about the SC, including in situations where the central topic does very little for them.

@aSofaNearYou
Perhaps an alternative to looking at the situation from the stepchild's pot or view would be to consider if the OP's child would happily trade 2 weekends of a pantry filled with treats in place of his father living with him full time. I seriously doubt that to be a trade off that any child will willingly make.

A child who loses the ability to live with both parents suffers a lose that should not be glibly tossed of with an "Oh well, children are adaptable and will adjust." How many wives would be happy in a situation where the spouse/partner says "I think that I am going to go and spend every other weekend in my parents home?". Would we say , " Oh well, adult women are adaptable ,and she will adjust?"

[quote Tattler2]@aSofaNearYou
Perhaps an alternative to looking at the situation from the stepchild's pot or view would be to consider if the OP's child would happily trade 2 weekends of a pantry filled with treats in place of his father living with him full time. I seriously doubt that to be a trade off that any child will willingly make.

A child who loses the ability to live with both parents suffers a lose that should not be glibly tossed of with an "Oh well, children are adaptable and will adjust." How many wives would be happy in a situation where the spouse/partner says "I think that I am going to go and spend every other weekend in my parents home?". Would we say , " Oh well, adult women are adaptable ,and she will adjust?"[/quote]
It's not a race to the bottom, just because some children face some difficult circumstances doesn't mean we shouldn't think about the feelings of other children, too. An excessive amount of junk food on weekends at dad may not actually be a good thing for the sc, either. It's already causing a weird 'special food' dynamic which isn't good for anyone's relationship with food. I think it makes sense to spread out sweet foods and focus more on quality time as an expression of love. And again, quality time for all the children (with 1 on 1 time for each child), not just quality time when SC are there.

@Potatopotate
I agree completely that all children are entitled and should have one on one time and quality time with both parents..

I don't equate providing food treats with quality time in any sensrr,and as such it makes sense to me that a man committed to and conscious of his spending restrictions would choose to buy food treats at a time when all of his children can partake.

I don't see and would work against having any of my children equate available of snacks with love or personal value. I would certainly never suggest that the availability of snacks speaks to their value in my life.

[quote Tattler2]@aSofaNearYou
Perhaps an alternative to looking at the situation from the stepchild's pot or view would be to consider if the OP's child would happily trade 2 weekends of a pantry filled with treats in place of his father living with him full time. I seriously doubt that to be a trade off that any child will willingly make.

A child who loses the ability to live with both parents suffers a lose that should not be glibly tossed of with an "Oh well, children are adaptable and will adjust." How many wives would be happy in a situation where the spouse/partner says "I think that I am going to go and spend every other weekend in my parents home?". Would we say , " Oh well, adult women are adaptable ,and she will adjust?"[/quote]
You're another one that constantly uses that argument so we're obviously not going to agree, because I think it's stupid.

It's nothing more than a trump card used to permit anything that doesn't seem right that is linked to a SC.

It doesn't need to be either you have your parents together, or you have nice snacks, what would you prefer. It's like using the argument "well would you rather be dying of Cancer?" For every. Damn. Thing.

It's totally irrelevant that the SC have to split their time. The snacks are not something that will fix that, you've even said that yourself, so why are you also trying to claim it should be done in compensation for the SCs plight? It's totally contradictory.

I'd be so annoyed if my dc came back from their dads with bags of ultra processed food.

I think it's fine to buy treats that dc and sdc like but it should be weekend treats - so whoever in the house that weekend gets nicer fruit that the bog standard apples and bananas. We used to have a chip shop tea every Friday, my dad would always treat me to a pineapple fritter and a bottle of dandy lion and burdock. Food creates lovely memories and I don't think it should be taken away from sdc, but for your dcs inclusion sake it should be weekend treats. He needs to reign in the ultra processed food too. Get him to watch the programme (its on channel 4 or iplayer) about the health implications of upf. He might decide to stop buying them shite without your input.

I’d be giving that crap back on the doorstep drop off tbh, who the fuck does he think he is loading the kids up with crap and dumping on my house!