Stepson staying over

[FancyACuppaThen]

What age will step kids not really stay over WEEKLY or more?
Late teens would you say? Oh yes call me wicked step mother 😂 I don't hate the kids but it does come with a lot of stress, I'm just thinking things will be much more chill when they're grown up and not sleeping over every week... can start planning things I actually want to do as a couple or with my children. (11 year gap between SS and my twin boys)
Any other step mothers here sometimes struggle or dread them coming over??
Vent here please I need to know!
And anyone judging, different people have different situations, if you're completely infatuated with your step kids and would like to gush about them on here then this post ain't for you. Peace!

That poster was saying her husband behaves inappropriately with his little girl aged 10, so she ‘hopes the girl gets a boyfriend soon’ to take her time up.

The boy sounds unpleasant but that doesn’t change that it’s his home. If his behaviour makes you so unhappy I’d look at speaking to your husband - he is the one failing to parent properly. What I wouldn’t do would be resent him coming over and try to set an arbitrary date where he won’t be welcome any longer. Think of it on the flip side - when will you permanently get rid of your kids from the house? This boy is your husband’s son. He has a lifelong responsibility for the child no matter how much you dislike him.

Your other half is probably secretly wondering the same about your kids…

They’re all his kids so that’s ridiculous.

If he's not yet 12 I think you've a long road in front of you to spend dreading the times he comes over and hoping it'll stop soon, as well as a lifetime of him still being your DH's son and part of your family. Could you try to improve your relationship with DSS? Is there anything you like doing together? Movies or TV series to watch? School subjects you could help with? Cooking? If you could find some way of connecting that would give you something to build on. Does your DH have any suggestions? He'll end up feeling very torn between the two of you if you can't manage to improve things

You must try to let go of the anger you feel towards his mum. That's absolutely not his fault and he's likely to pick up on it, which will make him cautious about you.

Mine stopped coming when they got jobs.

After years of felling like you OP I kind of miss them now.
My kids are now in their 20s and I miss the buzz of a full house.
Careful what you wish for

It could become more frequent. I know a couple of children of divorced parents who decided to move house and base themselves with their NRP in their teens.

I was a step child and I stopped going to my dads on arranged days at 18 when I started going clubbing etc but would still pop round often.

As pointed out regularly on here - You have a DH problem.

I can't go into too much detail but the children I know of that age, including SC, don't and didn't spend time on their phones if adults around them engaged with them. Other gaming devices are a different issue and I'm used to having a controller put in my hand or expected by the children to watch their "e-sports"

So first tell your DH that he is behaving unacceptably around his eldest son and needs to engage with him on a one-to-one basis when he's over, and like @Fireyflies said you should also engage with him, making your DH look after your younger children.

More importantly you need to learn to separate people, especially children, from their batty family members. Let the individual show you who they are on their own.

He’s 12! Still young.

I would swear and be constantly on my phone if I had to go and live in a house with someone who didn’t like me, ignored me and resented the money I cost and dismissed my existence as just the by-product of an unhappy one-night stand. Poor kid.

I sometimes dread the consequences of DSS coming over as he tells lies about his father (very serious lies) and I get worried what trouble it will cause. But I don't mind him being here in general.

Do your stepkids even get a choice? My partner's ex refuses to not send the kids over to us every other week so she can get her break - youngest one is 15 and oldest one is 18 next year - so I imagine we will be doing week on/week off until they go to uni or get their own place (oldest one didn't finish school so he's not off to uni next year).

Do your stepkids even get a choice? My partner's ex refuses to not send the kids over to us every other week so she can get her break - youngest one is 15 and oldest one is 18 next year - so I imagine we will be doing week on/week off until they go to uni or get their own place (oldest one didn't finish school so he's not off to uni next year).

We had this. The ex was hellbent on protecting her own time, and we had years of what I described as ‘extreme rota compliance’. Real life flexes for everyone, but our ‘set in stone’ arrangements were exactly the same when DSS was 18, as they had been when he was 11. If he hadn’t gone to Uni, I suspect we’d still have EOW now (and he’s nearly 30).

My SS was 19 when he stopped coming regularly the other one at 15 still is

Sorry posted to early! And you know what going from 3 to 2 has made everything so much more chilled (one loves here permanently to be fair) but with just my youngest step son coming it's easier cooking it's easier choosing films and activities and in general the house is cleaner (slightly) and more chilled in general!

Late teens??? That's wishful thinking; late 20s maybe, if you're lucky!

I detest my step daughter (teen) coming to stay.

Shes bone idle - lies in her room all day until 1pm then takes an hour and a half to get ready to leave the house so pretty much dictates everything we do on the weekends we have her.

i have 2 young kids with my husband (1 and 4) who don’t get a look in when she’s here. It’s hard to smile and pretend to be happy when she’s here.

she has 1 job to do for her pocket money she gets even on the weekends when she’s not at our house -the dishwasher- but getting her to do it is such a hassle, you would think she had been asked to cut out her own kidney.

my husband won’t dare have a word about her attitude due to fear of being disliked.

It’s great 👍🏽

Sorry to add to this post so much later but I'm currently feeling so lost and absolutely dread DSS coming over. His mum uses dad as a babysitter when dad wants to have a proper routine and relationship with his son. He's a lovely boy who unfortunately is poisoned by his mother and this occasionally shows. He has some awful habits and now I have DD I really worry about the impact this will have on her. It's getting to the point that I wonder if myself and DH would be better separating but when DSS isn't here I feel so incredibly happy and myself and DH work so well together. I'm hoping you may have some words of wisdom to help?

No advice @BabyCM but I do think that late teens sticking to a strict schedule infantalises them and stops them from having a life outside of home. It'll be an unpopular opinion on here but I have a hard stop at 18. Of course I expect DH to still have a relationship with him, but does he need to stay over every week? No.

well I still visit my step mother regularly and stay over and I am in my 60s, and both my parents are long gone

Thank you for your reply. My DSS is only young at the moment but things are so bad that even my DH is considering stopping the sleep over agreement for his DS sake as it's only upsetting him. He's so torn on what to do for the best for his DS. He of course wants a relationship with his son and wonders if seeing him in the week could work instead but feels that if he steps back then at least his mother will stop hurting him mentally with all of the poisoning. My selfish side cheers at the thought of him not coming over but then I spent all evening convincing my DH to give things a little longer to see what happens with DSS being so young.

I think that's entirely different though. It's a casual arrangement and presumably you live too far away to go home after visiting.

My SS lives a 20 min drive away. No need for him to continue living between two houses into adulthood. He can obviously still visit, but there comes a time when there's no need for a strict schedule.

I came on to mumsnet this morning because I was feeling sad about my step family situation, and this thread was at the top.
i KNOW that there is always a better way of framing things and blah blah blah we should be positive and not see “us and them” and treat everyone like we would in any normal family
blah blah blah but NO. The OP asked for a rant, so here’s my rant. All we do, all day every effing day is see the positive spin on what is essentially a shoddy situation. Shoddy for the kid whose parents split up and they have to move from house to house, shoddy for both bio parents who don’t get to have their child full time, and shoddy for us step mums because we get pushed to the side when the kid visits, and despite our VERY VERY best efforts to be patient, fun, caring, understanding, quiet when we need to be quiet, Cooking, cleaning, making packed lunches, comforting nightmares in the middle of the night (because bio mum let a 7 year old watch an 18-rated horror film), constantly dealing with and mending problems that you didn’t create…all with a smile, all with an “I don’t mind this at all attitude”…. STILL we get treated by the child, through no fault of their own, like they would rather you weren’t there, that they just want their daddy and they don’t mind you but it would be nicer if you just kind of slipped away…and it hurts, but you can never ever show that in the moment. Store it up and try to choose the absolute perfect moment have a meeting with your partner once the child has gone back to mums.
and all of this comes as a shock to the system, every weekend the kid comes over, because the time when they’re not here is so blissful and happy and you’re with the love of your life, the apple of their eye, the centre of their world. Then BLAM. You have to grit your teeth and make it through til they go back to mums and there is no room for error.
I joked to a friend recently that if I were to go back in time I know I would do it all again because I love my partner dearly and I truly believe we’ve made the right choices every step of the way, but also that I sometimes wish I’d never met him 😂.
so there is my rant!!
any advice aimed at helping me to see the positive side, I don’t need it. I know it all. I’m just fed up sometimes and I’m venting here instead of at my partner or stepson. So now I can go back downstairs and be my usual, thoughtful, carefree, jolly self.
the end.
x

@TayceOnToast I hear you. My SS literally stops his conversation with his dad when I enter the room. So I've taken to avoiding him when he's here which essentially means my home is not my own for part of the week. It sucks.

“Home is not my own” I feel this 😔

Have we all made a terrible mistake?!? Sometimes I feel like running out into the streets and grabbing every young woman I see by the shoulders and saying “DONT DO IT IF HE HAS
KIDS! RUN!” 😂

(Then other times I think about my single friends my age and feel smug AF that I live a nice family life but shhh that’s not for this thread 🤫) x

Ours were with us full time.

One left at 26 and one boomeranged back and forth and left at 28.