Am I the evil stepmother?

[Sleepystrugglingmama]

Bit of background, I (29f) met my partner (35m) at the beginning of last year. He has two children from previous relationships. We were just looking for a more casual relationship as he was recently divorced and I’m a widow.
Cut to less than a year later and our son was born. And I am currently pregnant with our second child.

Ive always had a good relationship with my stepchildren, and with his son who is almost a teenager that relationship hasn’t changed. He’s very sweet with our son however my stepdaughter who is now 3 has decided to be mean and quite nasty both towards myself and my son.I understand she’s jealous and now has to share her daddy with a new baby and that the adjustment is hard for her but her behaviour is becoming more of a problem and is affecting my relationship with my partner.

When I collect her from school she cried and hits and kicks me. She is constantly telling me that she loves her mum and dad and her older brother but not me and not the baby. Last week she put her hands over the baby’s mouth when he was cooing to shut him up.
She has kicked my son, takes his toys away and hides them. And whenever my partner is holding or playing with the baby she doesn’t like it and kicks off until my partner leaves the baby.

She has stopped doing as she is told, stopped her toilet training and has gone back to using a nappy, suddenly won’t sit and eat her tea.
She has been good as gold before the baby came but now she’s even taking it out on the cats and rabbits by spraying them with the hosepipe.

My partner just keeps justifying her behaviour saying she’s 3, which I totally understand however he is reluctant to tell her off or let her know that this behaviour is unacceptable, and tells me I’m too harsh when I tell her off.

It’s causing a lot of issues between me and my partner on top of having a new baby with another on the way.

Is it me? Am I just being mean towards her?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

If I were in a casual relationship, I wouldn't allow myself to be impregnated twice in the course of the first year, especially if a young child already were on the scene (not to mention the older kid, by yet another woman, too).

Exactly @IOSTT

I am absolutely flabbergasted at the sheer nastiness in this thread. Women supporting women my arse. Like you said, people could point out the issues kindly. Some folk have woken up today and chosen judgement and condescension.

But your post summarises the plot entirely ignoring the existence of his children. And that is really why so many posters are weighing in, because essentially this story has been conducted as though they don’t exist/ aren’t important/ are a nuisance. That’s wrong.

however my stepdaughter who is now 3 has decided to be mean and quite nasty

This is a horrible thing to say about a 3 year old who’s already had her world turned upside down by her parents’ divorce.

Yes it’s you.

You are all replying to a PREGNANT WOMAN. The first couple of posts were harsh, and so many of you have jumped on board, it’s like mob behaviour and bullying. Saying things like “her current boyfriend” and “you’re probably not his ‘one’”. Perhaps she hasn’t considered her 3 year old SD enough. There's no perhaps about it. The 3 year old was definitely not considered and still isn't being considered, other than how to best punish her.

but she is a new Mum, and perhaps does not yet have much experience with children. People could point things out kindly. If some of you are / have been the “ex wife with kids” who was left by your partner then that is no reason to take out your anger on the OP. She came here asking for advice and has been treated like a piece of dirt. What would you all say if a large group of men had been judging her for her choices and slagging her off

What good would pretending she hasn't contributed to this do? What good would glossing over it do? She is 29, a fully functioning adult and old enough to hear the harsh realities of her situation that her and her boyfriend have created through their own actions.

It sounds like she needs to hear the harsh truth because she's about to make the same mistake again, adding another child and expecting a 3 year old to get on with it and not react.

Experienced or not, did they ever question how the existing children would react? Or were they expected to get on with it?

They've been together 20 months and are expecting a second child and grumbling because 3 year is struggling to adjust with no support and not being parented properly by the Dad or his girlfriend.

What's her being pregnant got to do with it? She didn't ask for advice, she asked how she could get a clearly sad, upset, potentially very damaged little girl to behave better because it was starting to affect her relationship. Well, being that she's a mother now, perhaps she can accept that the effects on her relationship come a very distant second to the ones on the existing child. Instead of asking for advice on how to get her to behave she should be asking for advice on how to fix this problem her and the child's dad have created. She might have got a better response then.

Just because I'm a woman, it doesn't mean that I have to behave kindly to another woman whose behaviour to a child is terrible and who speaks about a 3 year old in a terrible way.

Stop this ridiculous nonsense forced upon you that women have to be kind at all times and the absolute nonsense that telling someone the truth is also unkind.

There's zero remorse on the OPs part, least of all where she describes a 3 year old as nasty, mean and jealous.

I'll always support another woman where it's deserved but never when they cause harm unecceserally.

She is constantly telling me that she loves her mum and dad and her older brother but not me and not the baby

Isn’t this the heart of it? She’s frightened and insecure and she wants her mum.

Tell her that it’s ok. That you’re not her mum and never will be. That she doesn’t have to love you or the new baby and that her mum and dad really, really love her. Can she spend more time with her mum, for a while? Can she have time just with her dad and her brother? Step back and make it very obvious that you’re not in competition with them

She's 3 😭. 3 year old thrive on feeling loved and secure, consistency and praise. She currently has none of that.

Can you work on praising the good behaviour and ignoring the bad where possible. I don't mean allow her to kick the baby, but quietly move baby out of harms way, retrieve toys with mininimal fuss, praise her when she's kind, make a special permanent space that's just hers, even if it's a shelf with her special books and toys on so she feel permanent. She's lashing out because her world keeps changing and she feels pushed out, please don't prove her right.
Do you have a health visitor who can help? Our area have special baby and toddler groups with early years specialists who can help with things like this but HV needs to refer, might be worth asking. Also homestart charity might be able to help.
Ultimately although your OH created this shitshow, she will always be your children's older sister, the adults need to step up and make this blended family work. Good luck

The three-year-old is not the problem here! FFS. What is wrong with this man? He's only 35 and has already fathered four kids by three different women. His second child was born in 2020/2021, and his third and fourth are by a woman he met in 2023. Has this man never heard of contraception?

And apparently his three-year-old is "mean" and "nasty" for understandably struggling to adjust. WTF. I don't understand how people can read threads like this one and still insist that "blended families" are good for children.

She's lashing out because her world keeps changing and she feels pushed out, please don't prove her right.

This x1000. It's not her fault that she has been born into such a toxic and chaotic and irresponsible situation. Every adult in her life should be love-bombing her, and striving to provide stability, not trying to get her to "behave" and calling her nasty names.

I really despair sometimes.

Of course she doesn't love you. She has probably had teddies longer than she knows you plus you aren't her mum.

It takes two to tango. Did the OP use contraception?

Of course the OP should have used contraception as well, but at least she's not the one who already had kids by two other other people when they met. I'd say exactly the same to a woman who had four kids by three different men: take some responsibility for once!

What proportion or number of hours of this three year old's week does she spend

1. With her mum
2. With her dad without you there
3. With both you her dad there
4. With you but not her dad there?

I agree. And it’s also mumsnet. Most mums would feel immediately protective of a child in this situation and to me that’s a more natural response than just clubbing together as women even if our values or situations are miles apart.

Hmmmm the OP hasn't been back

Perhaps because she got her arse handed to her?

Really, please don't hector posters like this or call them 'a bunch of mean girls'.

People are reacting to the OP's post in which she shows very little empathy towards this small girl; even her DP who hardly seems to be father of the year, thinks the OP is being too harsh towards her.

Her concern seemed to be focused not on how to make the situation easier for the child but how to fix her behaviour to make things easier for her; to protect her own baby (understandable) and to avoid problems in her relationship with DP (even though she describes it as 'casual').

She specifically asked posters whether she was being too harsh, and on that basis most responded yes she is and the reasons why. I think many posts are motivated by upset at the evident pain of this child rather than any desire to be unkind to the OP for the sake of it.

For the record I wouldn't presume to judge the OP as a person. I get that she is pregnant with a small child which will make her feel vulnerable. She also mentioned she is widowed; without knowing the background to that I can believe it was very hard. I also think her DP has far more responsibility for creating this situation than she has, and it is mostly on him to resolve it.

Never in a.million years would I let a man be in charge of contraception.
Because at the end of the day, it's my body and men run away from the responsibility of parenthood more often than women ( not trying to stereotype here), so I'd like to be in charge

>> I really hope the adults in her life step up and don't make her the family scapegoat for the next 15 years

Yes! I’m glad someone pointed this out. It’s dead easy to scapegoat children, when they are small and behaving in ways that we would not allow adults to behave (but that are developmentally normal, even if not acceptable or pleasant). Guilty-feeling adults don’t want to face the fact that their own behaviours and choices are self-serving and cause damage, and they don’t want to deny themselves the things that they want, such as new relationships or babies. So instead, they blame the little kid for behaving badly, for being a “brat”. And they can, because the little kid doesn’t have a strong advocate (their father has split loyalties and needs to please the new woman he lives with, he can’t rock that boat too much). Little kids can’t defend themselves against an adult in an argument. Especially little kids in a chaotic, split household situation where no one is really keeping track of what’s happening to them.

So the kid becomes the “problem” because that’s easiest for everyone.

I’d bet my life that she feels like you (and the new baby) are trying to steal her dad. Or something similar.

My stepson is almost 8, but cognitively around 3 or 4. No other children involved as we’ve opted not to have any, for various reasons. But, we still sometimes get “that’s MY daddy,” or pushing away, and occasionally really convoluted efforts to have some 1:1 time when we’re all together for what he deems as “too long.”

To counteract that, and help him, we’ve built time in that’s just for them. They go to the park together while I stay home, bedtime is always just the two of them, they might go to the amusements or.. well anywhere really.

Their relationship existed long before mine and my partners, and it’s important to us that he doesn’t feel like adding someone into his life, involves losing someone. Even if we don’t feel like he is, he does and that’s what matters.

She is pregnant not debilitated

I don't often comment on Mumsnet threads but I feel so sad about this 3 year old child. I am a grandmother to a 3 year old and would hate for her to be in a situation like this. At this age children don't understand their feelings, they are learning. They can be challenging but they need to be guided with kindness not punished. Distraction, getting her to 'help' with the baby , given little tasks to do with praise. Children needs positive reinforcement not negative.

. This poor little girl has experienced a lot of changes in her short life, she is likely to be very insecure. It is quite normal for older siblings to play up when a new baby arrives. What she needs is one to one time with her parent and given reassurance.

To be honest the more I read these sort of threads to more I worry about children in these sort of situations. They bear the brunt of their parents' failed relationships. Step parents who resent them, father's who abandon them or dump the responsibility of caring for them on subsequent wives or partners and parents who have split up but don't put the welfare of their children first. I honestly think situations like this contribute to children in the UK being so unhappy.

I am a stepmother and step grandmother too so I know it's not easy to put aside resentments, anger and other feelings about former partners but putting the children first and co-parenting responsibility is the right thing to do.

I hate all this “step” business.

step grandma. Step uncle. Step cousin.

why do we play along with it all?

Did you miss the part where everyone here is upset for the little GIRL who is far more vulnerable than OP? Did you miss how OP, as a grown woman is calling this little girl nasty? Seems you have some very narrow blinkers on in regards to female support.