I think my little boy is being pushed out :-(

[Diamondhalo]

What the title says really .. my ex moved on a year after we got divorced.. I divorced him because he was literally never at home always working, or said he was working when really he was out with mates and lying to me. I don’t think he cheated or anything but looking back it was obvious he didn’t want to be at home with me , didn’t see it at the time, and we never did anything together in all the years we were a couple apart from the odd weekend away. After our little boy was born he didn’t change then I had enough and we got divorced. He was single for a bit then he met the woman he’s with now and he’s changed so much he literally worships her and does everything for her and they’re always going on holiday and out for dinner and so on.. I’ve got a few mutual friends who tell me this and it’s plastered all over Facebook aswell..
anyway they had two kids very close together in age and since the first one was born my little boy has been left out I feel , they go on holiday a few times a year and sometimes they ask him then sometimes they go just the 4 of them and my ex misses contact and my little boy feels upset that he’s not included
also since the first baby was born his dad reduced contact from 2 nights a week to just 1
and my son always tells me every time he’s there they do activities aimed at the two toddlers which are boring for his age and he is going to lose his bedroom there too because dad’s girlfriend doesn’t think it’s fair her two kids share when my son doesn’t live there .. I don’t think this is fair I think the two toddlers should share and my son keep his space but can I say this to my ex ? Can i confront my ex on any of this ?
I feel like their 2 toddlers are living the family life that my little boy didn’t ever get and it makes me feel awful also I think his girlfriend is having the family life I never got cos he never really wanted it with me this was one of the things he said to me when our marriage ended :-( they will get married next and im already dreading people telling me and seeing it all on Facebook
please everyone tell me what your thoughts are ?
Also what’s peoples thoughts on this why do some men spend years with one woman , then marry them , then either leave or it turns out to be a lie ? Exact Same thing happened to my best friend they had their dream wedding then when it came to talking about having kids he left her and now he is married to a woman who already had kids and has had another with her?
Sorry for long post

Okay then he is a guest rather than part of the family. That is different.
And loads of kids treated like this by their dads stop going once they reach teenage years.

@Westsussex

If he was treated better up until now, the change in sleeping arrangements perhaps wouldn't seem so negative for this child.

You say you always felt loved and welcome. He doesn't and it's not about the bedroom, which he hasn't even left yet.

Well, I didn't. You're ignoring the truth of someone who lived that experience because it doesn't fit your narrative. Also, any children see family members less in teenage years due to social commitments , etc. I adored my dad and step family, but I really wanted to spend more time staying and socialising with friends in my teenage years (As you would expect from many teenagers) it was in no way linked to not having my own room at my dads.

Why is everyone assuming the stepmother has all the time in the world with her children to buy them stuff? Maybe she works FT. Many mothers do.

Maybe the weekend is the time and somehow she’s being berated for buying her children clothes (which may be socks and pants!) because the time she is not at work happens to be when the OP’s DS is there.

Maybe it’s the girlfriend’s house. Maybe she owns it entirely. Maybe she’s the higher earner - and ends up paying for everything for their two children. Many fathers seem to almost opt out of paying for their younger children in blended families. We don’t know that the nice house and holidays and meals out aren’t entirely funded by the girlfriend.

We don’t know.

What we do know from the OP’s posts is that she is angry that the girlfriend apparently has the life she wants. And she sees it as just like her friend whose ex split up with her and went on to have kids with another woman. And everything she’s written here is filtered through this lens.

What she knows about what’s happening in her ex’s household comes via social media, multiple friends and the account of a 7 year old (who knows his mummy hates it that daddy moved on - let’s no kid ourselves that he doesn’t).

So yes, you can separate the sleeping arrangements from the other topics, but it's still important for Mum to help the son understand that the sleeping arrangements are perfectly usual.

So far it sounds like he's said he's noticed his step mum isn't giving him gifts/fawning over him as she wae and seems a bit moody (having had two toddlers in tow this is no surprise and he just needs help understanding why mothers are exhausted/tired when having toddlers. He's also annoyed the activities are toddler related, I'm sorry, but this is just families. Jesus wept, I had seven cousins younger than me. This was my entire childhood nappies, kiddie games. It'd not exactly serious. It's just life.

But he needs some help in understanding this..mum and dad can either make it worse or better.

Depending on the milestone, we celebrate SD in age appropriate ways. Day trips out to places she's chosen, special meals, or a gift. Cuddles, lots of excitement. We pin her termly school achievements up on the fridge and make a big deal when she gets them. She wasn't saying we don't celebrate her at all, she was complaining that we were celebrating our other daughter, and not her, in that precise moment. She even said that was the case.

Jesus wept, I had seven cousins younger than me. This was my entire childhood nappies, kiddie games. It'd not exactly serious. It's just life.

Not sure how that's relevant. Did your dad cut contact by 50% when he realised you had seven younger cousins?

@Westsussex did your parents really never do any activities more suited to your age and just expected you to do things suitable for much younger children your whole childhood as you just said? Because if that is the case it is very sad and not normal.

So DS has his own room for 6 nights a week, then shares with a half sibling for 1 night.

The toddler has their own room for 6 nights a week and shares with a half sibling for 1 night.

(The 1yr old has it's own room, because it keeps everyone else up in a shared room and no one wants that.)

And the problem, OP is that the bed in which, for one night, DS and other child share a room, is able to be put away so the other child can have the same kind of space that your DS has for the 6 nights at your house. You do realise that you are the one taking umbrage on this, and your DS wouldn't have given it a second thought. You are feeding your own entitlements and feelings into your DS, and then making it dad and wife's fault.

You can encourage your child to think they are being "pushed out" when they actually have the identical set up as the other child, or you can teach your child "you both have your own room for 6 nights, and share for 1, and it makes sense to have a bed that doesn't take up all the room when you're not there, just like you don't have one in your room with no one in it the whole week."

You only want to handle it in the former way, because you are jealous of your ex's relationship and want to make the wife the villain because of it. The latter is the sensible and reasonable explanation, but you're not interested in that.The only person you are hurting is your own child, because of your feelings. Seriously, think on that.

I saw my dad once a week where I'd go to his home, there was a period of approx 6 months after my stepsister died, where I saw him but didn't stay. He'd pick me up and wed go out, for reasons explained above. I didn't take it personally or feel pushed out, it was life and I was ok with it. My mum would have helped me be ok with the circumstances if she noticed I needed that help.

I don't remember being sad, we were a family and that's family life :) it was just living with siblings, crazy but fun at times and totally worth it.

So he didn't drop contact. He saw you elsewhere, and you got 1-1 time with him.

Very different to what is happening to this child.

I had a reduced amount of time, but some of it was one on one at one stage. So staying one night per week usually (as this ds has) and a period of time where I didn't stay..

So not two nights per week as being said it should be by some, one was fine for me.

Totally understand others may have different perspectives but I can only be honest one night was enough for me.

Sorry just to add, when things were normal I didn't have one on one time with dad. It was with my step family.

Does the 2 nights v 1 nights actually make any tangible difference to the child.

For many children being picked up Saturday morning and spending all weekend with dad but going back to mum’s after dinner and sleeping there before school may actually be preferable to staying at dad’s on Sunday. Or Friday night.

The OP might be framing this as some disaster/heinous crime. But it may not be anything other than practical and the child might not have cared if his mother wasn’t invested in some narrative of her life being usurped.

On the basis the DS went earlier today, this sounds exactly right.

He was either going over to dad's on a Friday night, but now goes Sat morning instead, or went on the Saturday morning and slept over Sunday, and now he goes back to mum Sunday evening instead.

So, actually rather than being knackered at a week of school, having to go to mum's, drop his school stuff off, get changed, pack stuff for the weekend, eat something, then rush round to dad's for perhaps a couple of hours before it's bed time anyway, it's actually far better for him to stay at mum's, wake up Saturday morning, pack his bag, and off to dad's. Virtually zero change in quality time together. Far less disruptive for the child.

But of course, how "disgusting" this reduced contact is...

It's incredible how you try and justify this kids dad just because you went through the same. Most kids would be massivley effected by this. You're the outlier.

Infact, I don't think you are the outlier. The vigour that you are reply to these comments insisting that seeing his son 52 times a year (less when they purposely go on holiday when custody is scheduled) and being outcast emotionally infavour of his half-siblings, suggested to me that you are projecting and you are not infact okay with the way that you Dad treated you growing up.

No normal person would defend a borderline deadbeat.

I do think it makes a diffrence. Especially when it happend immediately after his half-brother was born. Imagine being that poor kid, feeling like he's not enough now he's been replaced.

That's because it's only you, OP, and one other poster who think he's done anything catastrophically wrong.

To use your terminology, no "normal person" looks at this scenario and sees a deadbeat. A deadbeat isn't someone making specific time for one on one swimming with the DS while his siblings stay home. They do, however, see that this is all about OP, who as PP put perfectly, is consumed with her own narrative of her life being usurped.

The fact that you have the gore to call my father a deadbeat says alot more about you than it does about me. I don't need some toxic random women on mn trying to tell me how I feel about my childhood. I was happy. You desperately don't want that to be true....maybe look at your own hostility and need to try and tell someone else how they think and feel.. that's shocking behaviour even for mn so I won't waste anymore energy on that. I think it goes without saying I say how I feel, not you. Or should we all wait in line for you to tell us how we all feel about our childhood? Line up ladies lol.

But yes perhaps some others would feel differently, especially with a mum who is struggling with her break up like she's admitted and seeing a new life for her ex.

The son will likely be more than ok if the adults around him don't make issues where they don't need to be, as echoed by many other posters.

I'll leave you to tell the other posters how they felt about their childhood's for now.

I mean that just isn't true? There literally other people in this thread disagree. I mean you can think it's fine. However, to saythat no other person disagrees is a bit stupid given the evidence is literally in this thread😂

I don't see how you can't see him as a deadbeat? He's see his kids 52 days a year, chose his new family at every turn. Despite seeing his son so little he still decides to skip contact to go holidays with his new family and whenever his son is there he never gives him one on one time as his dad decides to on focus and his new kids. He's barely there in person and he certainley isn't there emotionally.

And looking at the children's ages, what OP portrays as "he cut contact down to one night when the first baby was born" would also coincide exactly with DS going to school.

But rather than acknowledge it's far better for DS to have a non rushed Friday evening just to get him to dads to sleep, now DS is in full time education, OP only wants to hear that it's all because of the baby.

This would also support the pesky girlfriend not having DS on Fridays anymore, so OP can go out on the town. Something else that OP complains about, and rather than take some accountability that the gf shouldn't be OPs free babysitter, OP tries to twist this into the evil gf obviously sees the DS as a nuisance. If someone tried to get me to look after their child regularly on a Friday night, when they were already staying with me every Saturday, whilst I had two toddlers of my own, the reason I wouldn't be doing it, is that they were a cheeky entitled fucker to even suggest it, and nothing to do with their child.

This is all about OP projecting her feelings onto her child. Suggesting stopping the overnight stay all together under the guise it's because DS doesn't have a vacant room there 6 nights a week. OP, you should look into counselling to get over this "she stole my family life" fantasy that is literally consuming you. I don't think you can even see how irrational you are, and it's all backfiring straight onto your child.

Everyone knows when a new baby is born is not the time to make major changes in a child's life. Children need reassurance that they are still important.

I mean, your reading skills are looking about as strong as your maths skills.

When you can't calculate 25% of 7, and declare "he never gives him one on one time" when the dad is taking just DS swimming tomorrow and leaving his other children at home...it's quite spectacular to declare others stupid.

He's see his kids 52 days a year

52 nights may mean 104 days (except for the getting up or going to bed part). That’s every other weekend.

And losing one night (104 to 52) may actually have made no tangible difference to the child. It may actually have improved things for the child.

But, hey, let’s pretend that time spent unconscious is the important thing.