Young step mum to 4

[Poodledoodle134]

Hello, I just wanted to reach out and see if there were any other people in my situation and feel the same. I’m 24 and became a full time step mum to 4 kids when I was 22. My partner and I are healthy and happy, we are getting married next year and I couldn’t have asked for better Step kids. They are all different ages with the oldest not being much younger than I so I get to experience different parental relationships with them all (if that makes sense?).
Of course it isn’t always easy, kids are kids and as a child brought up with a step mum I’d like to think I know how it feels when times get rough for the kids.

However, sometimes I can’t help but feel lonely, as I can’t relate to a lot of people in my situation and being still quite young myself. We have a break from the kids as they go to their other parents house every other weekend, and when these weekends roll around I find myself grieving the person I used to be in my early 20s. I was in my 2nd year of uni studying to be a paramedic and I dropped out (which I regret massively), I lived in a house share that I loved and I felt I was in such a good place with my anxieties. I now work behind a computer with a job that suits around my kids school. Not my ideal job but as parents we make sacrifices and it keeps my family financially secure. Please don’t think I don’t want the life I have chosen, I wouldn’t change it, I just want to know that I’m not alone! I’ve googled groups in my area, even just for stepparents to go to and talk, but I’ve found nothing.

Any advice would be appreciated, thank you so much for taking the time to read this 😃

When the youngest is in school?

sorry but doesn’t sound like your partner is actually doing anything mothering wise. You sound like the nanny!

It's not so much that they can't, as that they don't. People are more interested in writing the first thing that comes into their head than, god forbid, reading the thread to see if it has already been said, or if the story has moved on in other ways.

I was in my 2nd year of uni studying to be a paramedic and I dropped out (which I regret massively)

Can you go back to uni? It’s never too late.

I lived in a house share that I loved and I felt I was in such a good place with my anxieties.

We can all grieve fun times we’ve spent in house shares when we were at uni. But the cons are: limited privacy, crowded and shared kitchens, shared bathrooms, relying on landlords to fix things.

If you’re in a healthy and happy relationship - you can still have a fun life and you can still get help and support for anxiety.

I now work behind a computer with a job that suits around my kids school. Not my ideal job but as parents we make sacrifices and it keeps my family financially secure.

They are not YOUR kids. Sorry if I’m mistaken and you have a bio kid? But if not - they are YOUR PARTNER’s kids. Your partner needs to find a job to fit around their schooling. Not you.

I think you either need to end this relationship and live the life you want to live.

If you don’t want to end the relationship then you need to accept that this is your life now. However, you certainly shouldn’t be accommodating your career around step kids. That’s your partners responsibility to do.

I wish you all the best.

Seriously, I would give up on this relationship as it seems like you’re probably there to help with childcare and stuff. You’re literally wasting your life away as your partner has moved onto the next stage i.e. dealing with Kids and stuff and you’ve just not lived. You’re gonna really really regret it at some point so I would cut your losses and run

Whose idea was it for you to give up everything?

What were the childcare arrangements before you?

Why couldn't that carry on & you continue studying?

You're being massively taken advantage of.

At the moment, OP, all you have invested in this is two years of your time. That seems like a lot when you are 24, but believe me, it isn't in the long run. You can get out of this and move on without any real lasting damage to your life. It's clearly the best option for you. Don't fall for the sunk cost fallacy and think it's already too late and you've made your choice. It isn't and you haven't.

Martyrdom starts young sometimes.

They’re not your children so not your responsibility. You shouldn’t have dropped out of university and be taking a job you don’t enjoy to fit it around the school day. Your girlfriend decided to have 4 children so she needs to pay for childcare or after school clubs.

You need to prioritise university and a career and having fun. You’re at very different life stages.

Quite honestly you are being a mug.

You gave up YOUR career to care for your partners children. Because they are not your children.

If your partner leaves you, as another pp has said you’ll never see them again, youll have no home and no career.

Unless your partner is paying you a salary - it is you who are getting the bad deal here.

Your partner has found someone she can foist her kids onto who is willing to do the grunt work (ie give up their potential career to take and pick up her kids from school).

What do you get out of this ?

You've no idea that he is "choosing not to bother". He may have consented, grudgingly, for their mother to remove them halfway across the country because she insisted that was best for them. He may be arguing for more than the weekends he gets and the OPs girlfriend may be refusing. Or he might not. You don't know.

Come on OP you know this isn't right, you are already having regrets. You have sacrificed a lot for to be a nanny for someone else's children. Have a good long hard look at your life. You are 24 FFS, go back to uni and finish your course. As a PP said you should still have credits from your course so should be able to pick up where you left. Please read the responses, they are right.

*The problem is I also had vacant parents that dumped me in afterschool club and childminders.

They 'dumped' you there or did you go because they had to work?

I guess I’ve been looking at it like when youngest is old enough I can go back to my career, and enjoy what I want to be doing

She saw you coming op. Got herself a free nanny by the look of it.

You must be nuts.

I’m 25 and about to have a 4th child of my own. I don’t mean to be nasty but the way you keep referring to them as your children is making me cringe, just because you’ve been in their life for 2 years doesn’t make you Mummy no.2, especially when one is by your own admission closer to your age. I do however think you sound too kind for your own good and that you should seriously reconsider your life choices. I am longing for the day that I can get back into studying and start my own career, but until I get all my kids to a school age I can’t do that. Don’t tie yourself down and give up your whole life for another woman’s children. It’s absolutely ridiculous to me that you’ve had to give up your goals to suit this older woman’s needs. If it was a male partner you had everyone would be on here saying the same thing, you’re being used as a nanny and it’s not right.

They aren't your kids and you're not a parent. Please run a mile from any partner who let you take this on! They don't care about you.

How long were you in a serious relationship for when you agreed to move in? What would have happened if you had made it clear to your GF that you didn't want to meet their Dc for 2 years and you wouldn't be moving in until the youngest has left home. Would she have been happy to continue the relationship or said 'well that's no good for me, I need someone who can look after them full time' and dumped you for a live in nanny.

She’s 24, not a girl, and not silly. Her partner is a woman.

She’s fallen in love and has been carried away with family life. She has put 4 children’s needs ahead of hers and that’s commendable.

She may now be regretting it and wishing her life was different, but she wouldn’t be the first person to do that.

@Poodledoodle134 Look into getting back to the education you gave up. You can’t be expected to be the only adult in this equation who has given up their career for these children. It’s great that you see them as important to you, but it’s up to their parents to make sure they are cared for.

What financial security do you have until you’re married? Seeing as you’ve given up your own career to support her children whilst she builds her career?
You sound really lovely and it’s amazing you care so much for all your step children. But you’ve also sacrificed so much for them when it should have been their birth parents making those sacrifices. It worries me that your partner has even allowed you to quit uni to care for her children. She should have been encouraging and supporting you to finish your degree.
I wish you all the best but please please think of yourself also as you sound as though you’re putting yourself in a very vulnerable position.

He really saw you coming.
A young, single, childless woman with your whole life ahead of you and you dropped out of uni and became lumbered with someone else’s 4 kids?
Why on earth would you choose this?
Really take time to read through the step parenting threads on here and the likes of reddit, r/stepparents to see what may lie ahead for you.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stepparents/s/Lm6bfWgu90

My goodness you have made some terrible choices! Luckily you aren’t married or pregnant yet.

Dump your partner and get back to uni would be my strong advice. Why on earth do you want to ruin your life with a stack of step kids, who have nothing to do with you. You are too young to throw it all away.

1. Dump your partner
2. Finish your degree
3. Work, save money, invest in your own name
4. Find a new partner who is unencumbered and start your own nuclear family

The older partner is a she not a he.

They are a same sex couple.

As a mother of four myself , (and I was a teenage mother) I find it absolutely incredulous that the parents of these children are expecting you to pick up their slack in this way. What are you all thinking?
You are positioning yourself as a parent way too young, way too soon. This is complicated for the children as much as anything.

This is going to sound brutal, I don't want to hurt your feelings as you are clearly very loving and empathic, but the truth is that anyone who truly loved you, would not allow you to make the sacrifices you are making.

You are an amazing, kind & caring person. You deserve to be looked after, to be cherished, to be the center of attention. You deserve to be important in your own life.

You may feel a bit lonely by yourself, but you can & will figure it out, you have time.

Finding someone to love you, starts with loving yourself. For truly empathic people, this can be hard because they feel everyone else's feeling so much.

You are so young, work out who you are first. Would out how to love yourself. You will then figure out how to expect better for you.

Good luck.
This is not your mess. If she loved you, she would have walked away.

You are still very young, finish your degree, you need to focus on yourself aswell, what if this relationship/ marriage falls apart in 10 or so years which wouldn’t be an unheard of thing to happen