AIBU to be LIVID at my DSS mother

[Gooodmorningusa]

A long post. im livid and upset and I can’t sleep. I think I know how this is going to go but oh my god I need to vent.

my DSS mum, I feel is taking the absolute piss and I think she’s an audacious cow.

the back story is, we have DSS (8) EOW, I have been in his life since he was 2.5 and me and DH share a 2 year old boy. I work in a school office so I am fortunate enough to have most of the school holidays off (literally 12 weeks out of the 13!) so in the school holidays I step up and have DSS extra. So on the weekend he comes EOW, he comes on Friday morning, and we keep him till Tuesday evening and he goes home before bed time. I have always done this since he started in reception class and I do this for two reasons, so he has more time with us and also to help out his mum who is single and has to cut her hours during the school hols. In term time it returns to the normal EOW.

last week my 2yo DS was poorly with chicken pox and it floored him, early hours of Saturday morning he had a fever, had a funny turn, his eyes rolled into the back of his head and we couldn’t bring him round. It was horrible and he was rushed in an ambulance with me and DH stayed at home till MIL arrived to sit in the house with DSS as he was sleeping upstairs. DH came to hospital soon as he could. I was hysterical and have never seen my son so poorly and it frightened me, i thought he was gone when his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Anyways he was kept in hospital till Sunday night, we got home at 8pm. DH stayed with us most of the time while we waited for tests and DSS stayed with MIL (his grandma) then went back to his mums on Sunday evening. Just to add his cousins were there at grandmas too so not like he was the only child there.

anyways DH ex has booted off basically. Ringing up calling DH a selfish dad for staying at hospital all weekend and shipping DSS off to grandmas 🤯 so anyways DSS has come back this weekend as he was upset his missed his weekend last week. So I get a text earlier today off his mother ‘it makes sense for you to keep him till Tuesday as you needed to give it a miss this week’ ….. 😵‍💫so I reply saying no actually that wasnt the agreement, i have plans including an appointment of my own, wedding dress shopping with my SIL on Monday and I am going into work on Tuesday to do my admin. My mum will be looking after DS for these.
she then proceeds to call me selfish and tells me how I’m ‘palming my own son off’ and that ‘she knows I secretly hate her DS’ plus loads of other shit which I don’t think I deserve. In her opinion I should be making up for
the time I missed earlier this week. I reminded her my DS was very poorly and I also reminded her DH was in work on those two days so it’s always me who facilitates the extra contact.
my DH is fuming and has confronted her and she has repeated the same shit to him.
shes basically annoyed that she had To cancel her plans / work on Monday and Tuesday. But my DS was poorly and I didn’t sleep a wink all weekend with checking on him and being on a hospital ward. I admit that on Monday and Tuesday this week I didn’t think about DSS at all, I was shattered and I just let me DS sleep in my arms all day.

Would I be wrong if I told her to suck my big toe from now on?

And raging hypocrisy

Probably not at a weekend for the Monday, no.

Also, someone would have needed to drop him off, and DH leaves at 7am for work. So he would have had to have adapted his work around his son.

Just block the ex. She shouldn’t have ranted to you or started beef about your toddler. You shouldn’t have fallen into the trap of arguing with her but I understand why you saw red.

Ex has every right to be angry with your partner though. He should have skipped work on Monday/Tuesday or contacted her over the weekend to see if she could have dss. He was a cf going into work without considering you/ex/dss.

I wouldn’t blame you if you considered stopping the Monday/Tuesday contact in order to shield yourself from future trouble. It’s understandable why ex is angry but the anger shouldn’t be directed at you. It was an emergency and did she really want her son around a poorly child ? Dss wouldn’t have had much attention and could have gone home feeling under the weather if he hasn’t had the pox yet too.

Hope your son is doing better 💐

My comment was not in reply to you. I dont want to engage further with you which I've already stated to you directly and you are ignoring. Another flag.

You are simply continuing to prove my earlier points for everyone to see.

I didnt want to reply further but couldn't let that last outrageous comment stand. Dc have complex additional needs. I've been a carer for many years. I'm a huge advocate and have a lot of experience with neurodiversity which is why I can recognise it. Judging by the thanks from other posters there are many of us that share my view.

I will not engage again directly.

I guess it depends on area. Where we live, there's lots of options and I often book my DC last-minute depending on what else we're doing.

Yes, absolutely.We aren't allowed to troll hunt but certainly projecting could be an explanation.

You absolutely can't recognise it whatever you tell yourself. You are so off the mark it's unreal. This is an open platform, if you don't want people to respond to your (wildly incorrect) posts, don't post.

To be fair, he's throwing as little money as possible in the way of parenting his DS1.

But he's certainly using all the women at his disposal to avoid his parenting responsibilities.

You and I had been in agreement but your neurodiversity comment mildly offended me, as a neurodivergent adult and tbh I can understand @5iveleafclover ‘ s response to you about it. Your response to her anove, about the number of thanks you’ve had, has made me sad. Because it shows that people are too quick to think certain infuriating traits are symptoms of neurodiversity, rather than thinking of other options.

Ax someone ND, my read on Clover wasn’t that she was ND too, I mean you can’t judge from posts anyway. I have come across several carers, who think they know better than ND people themselves. Perhaps they do…

But respectfully, I’m asking you to not armchair diagnose other posters, particularly ones you’ve been arguing with. Regardless of the goodness of the intention, it can sometimes come across as ableism and unintentionally encourage that from others.

And when I say infuriating traits, I mean what you/one/someone perceives to be infuriating traits.

I think the armchair diagnosis comment is unfair as for clarification I did not state I thought clover was autistic/neurodiverse. I replied to another poster and said my thoughts "were moving to" neurodiversity. Bit of a leap.

I'm sorry that you felt offended but certain traits are associated with neurodiversity and its not ableist to recognise that.

DD is on this here and she found Clovers comment offensive. She feels its ableist in itself for someone to be offended by the suggestion of neurodiversity, as if its a negative. Its not and I dont subscribe to that belief either. I think that says more about a person's own prejudices. It was her initial reaction to some of the posts as someone who is ND that prompted me to consider this aspect and why I backed off earlier.

So respectfully we will have to agree to differ.

That's not how the courts work in the UK in my experience.

They don't force parents to have contact or to pay for childcare. I have friends who's exes stopped seeing their kids and all they could get was child maintenance. One was in nursery and all the costs fell to my friend.

If OP said no to the extra contact (which I probably would given the ex's disgusting comments), the ex would have to arrange childcare for those days or take time off work.

DD is on this here and she found Clovers comment offensive. She feels its ableist in itself for someone to be offended by the suggestion of neurodiversity as if its a negative

Perhaps you should explain to your DD that it was the context you used it in that was offensive, NOT the suggestion. YOU used it as a negative, not me. How dare you.

XW absolutely should not be directing this anger towards op. Op has gone above and beyond to compensate for her husband. It isn’t her fault that he hasn’t done a good job and it isn’t her fault that the xw can’t see where the real problem lies.

if I were op, I would say that the blended family needs to go back to default settings for now. All communication needs to go through the actual parents.

op, I’m sorry your husband has handled this so poorly, both recently and for the last several years. It’s got to be stressful having it come to a head while you have a sick child.

DEfault settings being piss poor parenting by the father for his eldest son tbh

The man is a joke - his family unit, ie OP, t has done 1.5 extra days er week over the holidays.
Not disrespecitng OPS part in this which is her choice - the DF has his child 70-80 days per annum that is pathetic what ever anyone wants to say

DEad bet Dad who leaves the women to do his parenting and in a stressful situation for both they lose it with each other because he can not be an adult He managed to get his Mum over the weekend to help, gae the eX no heads up for her to be able to arrnge anything, dued his child back with her - no notice and swanned off to work - he is not a prize specimen of parenting

Hmmm… one poster misread the OP saying that she had been in DSS (8)’s life since he was 2.5 as meaning DSS was 2.5. She noted shortly afterwards she had misread.

Another asked out of the blue if OP was the OW.

There are what, 50-60 posters on this thread NOT posting anything of the sort. So I don’t think the original post about “evil stepmother” commenters was justified 🤷‍♀️

’Swanned off to work’ ? How else is he supposed to support his family ?

How is DSS’s mum, who has him the majority of the time and doubtless covers all sickness days, inset days etc, supposed to support HER household if she has to cancel shifts because her XH doesn’t step up?

Note - she has one income, the DH’s household has two.

So you’re relying first on invisible (to others) thanks and secondly on an invisible (to others) DD to back you up…

Since your DD is here, why can’t she post directly?

The way you raised neurodiversity here was indelicate. You’ve had two people affected basically tell you so, so it’s a shame you can’t apologise for that instead of saying “I’m sorry you felt offended”.

Regardless of your own views, there is a general etiquette on fora to not suggest that specific posters may be neurodivergent unless they e implied that themselves. I think that may be the case on MN. Since you don’t seem to know that, it might be worth bearing in mind in the future.

There’s a bunch of forms to do for the first time, and I can forgive neither OP nor the person whose job it would have been, DH, for not wanting to research this at 8pm Sunday after many hours of worry at the hospital.

Which is why DH should have taken Monday off (and sorted camp for Tuesday if Op was still exhausted)

And according to OP she is the one who dictates the terms of contact EOW.

Most custody arrangements have every other weekend as a starting point so both parents get chill time with their child.
The half hour distance and dad leaving for work at 7am is clearly why term time weekday mornings don’t happen.

Tbh it's hard to imagine this dad having his kid more without just dumping the poor child on the OP.

For the gazillionth time - the only aspect of contact that OP commented on was that the mother didn’t want to miss out on every weekend with her kid. Nothing about mid weeks.

And there is no reason why the DH shouldn’t cover half the holidays. The DH. Taking time off, booking clubs or asking OP to cover. Then the ex could keep up more shifts in the summer. Again, nothing has been said about this.

For the sake of good relations, can DH afford to give her a bit extra CM to counter the missed days of work? It's lovely that you help so she can work more, but as a separate thing I can imagine she may have financial struggles at the route of the nastiness.
Feelings are heightened all round so it's important to focus on the best outcome and try to understand what is behind unreasonable reactions.