Step kids at weekend

[Bananarama77]

I’m really unhappy about this situation but not sure if I’m overreacting.
My DH is due to have his kids this weekend & he usually picks them up from school on Fridays but this weekend he has commitments to work so he has asked me to collect them from school which usually wouldn’t be a problem however I have plans to meet friends & I was hoping to get a few hours to sort myself out, get ready etc. I’m fed up with having kids here constantly & I rarely get a day to myself. Nice kids but not my responsibility. AIBU?

If someone with no kids tried to tell parents how to parent their children, you'd rightly think they were talking out of their hole.

Unless you're a step parent, or have been a step parent, your opinion on what step parents should or shouldn't do really counts for fuck all.

@Floofydawg I often wonder what the response would be like if the stepmums started to post on threads where mothers bemoan their lack of sleep, or the fact they might like to piss in peace for once with 'well you knew what you were getting into'. 😂

I'm gonna do it. Watch this space 😂

Lol exactly.

Finding parenting hard? Bit sleep deprived? Feeling isolated? Can't get the hang of breastfeeding and now feel shit about yourself? WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? YOU KNEW WHAT YOU WERE GETTING INTO!

I think you'll find that some posters who are not agreeing with OP's attitude are stepparents too.

They may not be pushovers either but they definitely have better relationships with the children than OP has with hers.

@PelvicFlora YOU COULD HAVE LITERALLY BEEN ONE OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WHO DONT HAVE CHILDREN 😂😂

I think they are.

Oh god your post and responses have given me flash backs to being with my ex and being informed that I would have his children for weeks in the holidays and he couldn't possibly take time away from his business so I better get time off work... leaving was a relief

Those posters' opinions have more validity.

I do tend to find that of those step parents offering an opposing point of view they tend to fall into one of two camps:

1. Their DP/DH doesn't take the utter piss and has good boundaries with his ex, so the step parent doesn't feel resentful and taken for granted, or...

1. They are a martyr to the sainted DSC and get a masochistic kick out of being a doormat - probably because they live to get pats on the head from society for being a good, subservient pushover. Just as women should be.

Well I would be no.1

However, I do get think if you marry a man with children then you should try and have a relationship with them. Same ss the Mother should choose a partner that will treat the children right.

I don't think OP is really bothered about them.

I disagree with opinions that they are your responsibility too because your their defo mum... err no - they aren't your responsibility at all. They have a mum and a dad! Tell your OH that your not happy being default childcare and that you aren't taking responsibility for his children. He should be organising with their mum to swap or something.

@PelvicFlora that's a very astute observation, the two camps thing. I like it.

But that's the thing. At the start, unless they're an evil sociopath, step parents do want to build a nice relationship with the children. And often there's a honeymoon phase where it all feels like it's working well.

However, over time, the children's parents take the piss. The step parent is guilted into becoming more and more obliged to do childcare, and has their good will eroded. Then the step parent starts to feel resentful and withdraws from the whole dynamic in order to protect their boundaries and their sanity. To anyone looking in from outside who has no clue about it, it can read as rejection of the children. But when you find that your partner and their ex have slowly taken over your free time and your free choice over how to spend that time, the only option is to take a hard line.

This is usually the point where the step parent posts on MN along the lines of the OP on this thread.

Those of us who've been through it know that there was likely a time at the beginning when OP felt very fondly for the DCs, but that quickly became leverage for her DH and ex his to take advantage of her independent wealth and her availability.

How else could OP start to change the status quo and get some control back without removing that leverage?

And ultimately none of this is of OP's making. The DH and his ex have pushed it too far and fucked it. Yet OP somehow gets the blame.

Good post @PelvicFlora

It’s frustrating when people with zero lived experience of being a step parent come onto these threads just to tell us how if they married a man with kids, not that they’d ever be stupid enough to do so, then they would definitely do xyz in such-and-such a way. It’s just like the old joke “I was the perfect parent until I had children.”

However what I find even more frustrating is actual step parents who, through a mixture of effort and good fortune, have had a relatively positive step parenting experience and therefore assume that anyone who is having a hard time is either not cut out for it or must be doing something wrong.

I’ve posted several times before about how I moved out of our family home for a while when things got bad with one of my DSC, having had an excellent relationship with them for a number of years prior. Having come out the other side I had the most beautiful Mother’s Day card and message off this particular DSC. I didn’t have to do anything in particular to fix our relationship because my behaviour/attitude was never the problem, but some posters on here could have had me believing I was the most selfish, resentful and unsupportive SM on the planet (I wasn’t). Thing is though, I had very few problems with my other DSC so in another life I might have sailed through my DSC’s childhoods patting myself on the back for how well I’d navigated the blended family dynamic that so many seem to struggle with.

Of course this doesn’t mean a SM is totally powerless to influence the direction her life is taking and her actions can indeed make things better or worse. But if posts on the Relationships board were treated in a similar way to those on the Step Parenting board there’d be a disproportionate number of responses asking an OP “what did you do to make him act that way?”

There are some interesting points here.

There was a thread about how blended families are mostly not good for the children and I defended our family set up saying it worked.

Lots of posters said they were unhappy growing up because of the adult"s behaviours. So I can now see that this is the case for many.

I do find it odd that the stepparents get annoyed with the children and not the adults putting on them. Withdrawing their relationship with children but still thinking the DH is wonderful. The marriage and the adults are not the only thing important.

@PelvicFlora I am a step-parent, to three lovely boys

I do find it odd that the stepparents get annoyed with the children and not the adults putting on them. Withdrawing their relationship with children but still thinking the DH is wonderful. The marriage and the adults are not the only thing important.

You see that kind of transference across all types of relationships, like taking back a cheating husband but directing most of the anger at the OW, or being angry with the in-laws because DH prioritises his mum’s opinion over his wife’s. So whilst it might not be right, I wouldn’t say it’s odd.

You’re right but it’s a difficult emotion to manage, I do feel resentment towards the kids sometimes & I do remind myself that’s it’s misplaced. It’s like when people (who usually have no idea) say that I should love them like they are my own..bollocks..should they love me like their mother? absolutely not & the suggestion is absurd. I like them & on the whole we gave a good relationship, how that will develop as they grow older only time will tell but guarantee if I distance myself from them I will be slated for it but if they distance themselves from me later on that will be acceptable as I’m only a SM. It’s a thankless job being a SP especially as what you believe you are getting yourself into can change as it did in my case.

It is a delicate balance which I don't think unless people are in the exact same situation they can have any idea of. Its very nuanced and depends on the individuals involved.

There are several parts to the way the SM feels about the children when the situation has become untenable:

1. the kind of transference @DebussytoaDiscoBeat describes above.
2. a sense of general resentment because she’s left dealing with the children so, in an immediate sense, that is the problem. The cause of the problem (and therefore any possible solution) lies elsewhere, but the problem manifests as in her life as being overwhelmed and resentful of being left holding someone else’s babies.
3. the behaviour of the children themselves as a result of their parents’ choices and attitudes can be a genuine problem. Again, the immediate issue can be children whose behaviour is difficult. They may even treat their SM with outright contempt. This IS a genuine problem with the children for the woman posting about it, not just misdirected annoyance at her husband.

Women posting on stepparenting are disproportionately those who’ve found themselves in crappy situations. Just like how people posting about their husbands are much more likely to be dealing with cheating and/or abusive arseholes, or people posting about their children’s sleep or diet or behaviour are generally dealing with difficult situations.

To come on to those threads and insist that they are the problem because your situation - both your partner’s attitude and the context in which your stepfamily exists - is much better is actually to demonstrate even less empathy than the angry ex wives and former SC with an axe to grind posters do.

It also just occurred to me that it often happens the offer way round too, older/adult children thinking their parent is wonderful (or even just mediocre!) and mainly blaming the step parent, when it’s the parent’s choices that have led to the children having a step parent in the first place, let alone having sole responsibility for the kind of person they have chosen to involve in their children’s lives (note I’m not saying both parents had a choice about the separation).

I have seen numerous posts on this board where most of the anger is directed towards dad’s new girlfriend, quite often a succession of them which should actually tell you its own story, yet dad himself will barely get a mention other than perhaps a brief acknowledgment that yeah, he’s a bit weak for not standing up to these awful women, but…

@DebussytoaDiscoBeat Yes I've seen that a few times. Like the SM is to blame for dad's shortcomings. For all they know behind the scenes SM is telling dad to buck his ideas up!

Yes it's a defence. Confronting the fact that your DH is happy to take advantage of you and guilt you into 'your place' as nanny and skivvy to his kids is scary. Once you acknowledge it, you have to do something about it - stay, go...? Neither option is great. The real solution of course is for him to change his behaviour, but that's out of control. So the frustration and resentment gets transferred to the kids.

I would also add that none of this is conscious. It's simply behaviour that adapts over time as a way to survive the situation.

By 'the situation' I mean that when the parents are essentially controlling the step parents' time, removing their agency to say no by guilting and shaming them - that can feel like a violation. So you shut down from the whole dynamic as a protective defence.

When step parents are allowed to develop relationships with the step children on their own terms, everyone's boundaries are respected and no one feels violated.

When the quality of the step relationship is judged as conditional on the step parent's capitulation to the parents and their facilitation of the original family unit, then that's a recipe for misery.

Sometimes I honestly think this comes from the ex’s. My DH ex bad mouths me in front of the kids & calls me names, she’s disrespectful about me often which I can never get my head around as she left him! Apparently she was fine until we moved in together (in a serious relationship) & then all the game playing/bad mouthing/attempts at sabotage started. A couple of friends who also happen to have SM have told me that whilst they were younger they honestly believed that the reason their DF was a crap parent was because of the new wife as that’s what their Mum’s had told them it’s only now they are much older they realise it had nothing to do with her & everything to do with mums anger/bitterness & dads lack of backbone/laziness. It’s funny how DF never really have issues with SF just Mothers with SM. Not all obviously but it’s more common

I do find it odd that the stepparents get annoyed with the children and not the adults putting on them. Withdrawing their relationship with children but still thinking the DH is wonderful. The marriage and the adults are not the only thing important.

No stepmum thinks her DH is wonderful if he’s continuously putting her in the position of looking after his kids when she doesn’t want to.

And getting the parents to parent their child isn’t the equivalent of her withdrawing her relationship from the child. If anything, forcing her to give up so much of her free time to do the parents’ job for them could have the adverse affect if you want them to have a good relationship. Quality, not quantity. Looking after the child 1 day a week is better than looking after the child 5 days a week. 1 school run is better than 5 school runs. Why can’t the parents bloody do it?