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?

DH is already paying CM for the extra days they cover during the holidays.

I'm not relying on anything. I shared an opinion which I'm entitled to do.

Unless I've missed a post there aren't 2 ND individuals affected as you claim. There is only you. Again, I did not state Clover was neurodiverse so please don't misquote me.

The irony in you asking why my DD isn't posting on here yet at the same time berating me for being indelicate is hopefully not lost on you. I've stated she is neurodiverse and that I'm her carer. My previous posting history will confirm. I shouldn't have to justify her disabilities with further explanation to you. It's a shame you can't apologise for being so insensitive. Perhaps you should bear that in mind too.

I think this thread has been derailed enough don't you.

No he isn't. The OP hasn't said 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.

Would we know your DD or does she go to a different school website?

@Willyoujustbequiet the post has been deleted. Best to just leave it all alone now.

I've spoken about my dc over many years on here. Feel free to check.

Are you trying to make fun of her disabilities? I don't understand your comment.

I said there were two people affected, not ND people affected so you’ve misread or misunderstood there. I was affected as I’m part of the group it involves, and the other person affected was the one I saiid it about.

I didn’t berate you. I simply said you’d been indicate. That’s mild. As it appears from @5iveleafclover ‘s comment, MNHQ deleted the comment I was referring to, so it seems they agree.

I assumed as you said your DD was here reading the thread/on the thread (it was ambiguous) and said her opinion that she may, like many neurodivergent people, be posting on MN herself. I felt it would be offensive of me to assume her neurodiversity, unlike mine, prohibited her from doing so.

Go well!

Ugh typo @Willyoujustbequiet I meant, the other person affected who pointed out they didn’t like it was the person you made the comment about.

I'm getting confused. I don't understand why you class Clover as affected by a comment I made to someone else but I'm apparently not counted as affected by one she has made about me directly to me despite me saying I found it offensive? I don't get it.

I don't subscribe to the position that neurodiversity is in any way an insult or something negative or derogatory. If someone chooses to view it that way I think it is very telling to their own prejudices/ableism. That's always been my belief and I will call people out on it when I see it.

Sorry but she's right! You have him on those extra days - Monday and Tuesday - in the summer. That's a planned arrangement. You can't just not have him because your child was ill. What should have happened is your DH should have taken time off work to look after HIS children on planned days.

It was just a horrible weekend and we didn’t think about anything other than our 2yo and I can see why it’s pissed her off

This is your problem. You've completely disregarded your step son and, even worse, your DH has disregarded one of his own son's!

I'm sorry your little one was poorly, and I'm not saying the mother is completely innocent too as she shouldn't be sending nasty messages, but I 100% see why she's angry.

According to OP - Mum wanted EOW because she wanted some down time with her son not just doing the shcool run and weekly drudge which is quite - so if thareasonablet is dictating to dead beat Dad then excellent.

He gets his wife to do an extr 1.5 days on the holidays - not exactly half the holidays.

Yes he ahs to go to work, so does the childs mother - his responsibility does not end when his child care set up fails - he knew what he was doing and if she ahd known over the weekend may have been able to sort something out but he shows no courtesy to any of the women in his family life.

The EX is not responsible for enabling her EX tow ork to provide monies for his other family

Nope, absolutely not trying to make fun of your DC's disabilities. I have a physically disabled son. I have ADHD and am involved in the assessment of ADHD in others. Feel free to check my posts.

You wrote your DD was "on this here" and I thought you'd missed out the word 'thread' in between 'this' and 'here'. Maybe that's the fault of my ADHD I was teasing you, joking that as your DD was allegedly here but yet not posting, perhaps she was imaginary. I was using a well-worn meme: "goes to another school".

I was joshing with you to try and get some levity in a situation that had got a bit inflamed and where I think you were out of line. Since I'm neurodiverse and so have skin in the game, it should be OK for me to say this.

Im quite happy to see all these posts warning about favours becoming planned arrangements after a certain length of time. Even warning that the courts are happy to assume womens unpaid labour indefinately. Now more stepmothers will probably be a sight more careful about how much they do after reading whats on here!

Ah ok no worries I understand now. I didn't pick up on the meme sorry. I should have as I've been on here long enough!

I guess I'm just a bit over protective/touchy re dc. It's par for the course when you spend your life battling for them. You'll know exactly what I mean being in a similar position. I'm also probably over invested in this sort of thread as dc were abandoned by my exh due to their disabilities. I appreciate you trying to lighten the mood with some humour, I'm grateful you tried even if I wasn't quick enough to pick up on it!

The OP's Mon & Tues arrangements were never "favours". Favours are ad hoc. It was an agreed plan between the three of them to continue every holiday while the DSS was at school and the OP worked at a school. Saved her DH paying out extra money. And it was a plan that the OP, to her credit, has always stuck to for 4 years until now.

But yes hopefully stepmothers will be more careful about how much they do, and the type of men they get involved with!

You don’t have e to ever speak to her again. She’s none of your business. Block her on all channels and have her ex husband deal with her. If she finds a way to get contact with you, keep a diary in case it turns into harassment.

Yes, how very dare the ex's expect that the non resident parent's help them out with childcare for their own children. The NRP's should be able to continue to work uninterrupted full time and only have contact with their children as and when it suits them.
In this case the NRP is able to work uninterrupted because the OP looks after his son occasionally during the holidays, but is she really doing it as a favour for the ex or for her partner? I believe it's the latter.

If only women stopped marrying lazy fathers who couldn't be bothered to spend time with their children it wouldn't be an issue of the stepmother's having to do anything.

How do you propose that women know a man will turn out to be a lazy father before they marry them and have kids? I can tell you that they usually talk the talk and then simply fail to walk the walk.

Because they already have children? I mean if stepmother's didn't marry fathers who already have children but can't be bothered with them they wouldn't end up doing childcare and getting heavily involved with all of this crap- the dads would actually be a decent parent.

Ah, gotcha. I thought you meant that the ex should have known the dad would be a lazy father, and then she wouldn't have ended up relying on another woman to care for her kids (occasionally). My misread, sorry!

This case in particular, OP"s dss is 8, and it must've been obvious that her partner isn't the greatest dad as he's hardly bothered making much time to see his eldest son over the years.

Very true -- I was reading the previous post all back to front and took it to suggest it was the original mother who should have known better!