Split families

Re: Split families

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  Dcwtada member

  January 2019

  It is hard with blended families, especially being essentially a stepmom before you are a mom. My stepson was 7 when my daughter was born so he was a bit older and understood more. We were mostly nervous he’d feel replaced or resent the baby but he was so excited and loves all his siblings. The adjustment was mostly on me learning to parent him to be honest, adding baby almost made me better at it. I was a tad more relaxed and a million times more empathic. I wanted to be the kind of stepmom to him I hoped someone would be to my daughter if the situation was reversed. Not saying it was/is easy or I don’t fall short but I keep trying  
  
  No real advice because every child and situation is unique but we tried to keep most baby talk to a minimum when he was around and made sure to go out to dinner or do fun things with just him after the baby was born. 
  

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  ami500 member

  January 2019

  I’m going through this situation as well. My future step son is going to be 6 when this little one comes along. I had the same concerns as well. Especially because his mother thinks I’m replacing her as mom, which I’m not, nor do I even plan to. I have been keeping the parenting to a minimum because I don’t want to cause issues on the other end. I’m not sure if any of you would have any recommendations about that. We already do fun family stuff together and he’s excited to have a sibling coming, he actually told me before I even knew I was pregnant that I was going to have a tiny baby. 

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  firsttimemomma2019 member

  January 2019

  @ami500 with your question on the parenting thing. Do NOT be afraid to do so. You are a parent to your Bf’s son. One thing that has helped a lot when it comes to the other half for me is that my Bf stands up to his kid’s mom about me a lot and to his daughter he has told her she has to listen to me. I do time outs, I tell her when she has done something wrong or completely goes against what I’ve said not to do and my Bf stands by me. At first I would go to him and have him handle it but I was always in the room and eventually I was able to tell her what she can’t do or if she got a time out and he was in the room and stood by me. Currently dealing with his ex, well anything dealing with me causes problems but he still stands by me. She nags about everything that we do pretty much and critiques everything in my life such as our choice of waiting to find out what we are having (her response - ewww gross) and braiding her daughter’s hair makes her look like a baby (she leaves her hair down in her face all the time and I, coincidentally, have a dog named Sammie and it happens to be his ex’s name (her response - well that’s awkward). She began playing nicer when she got a boyfriend of her own. But she still is defensive or such if it specifically deals with me. It’s hard and I cry a lot and get frustrated but my BF is super supportive overall. He’s had to stand up for me to her a lot because I’m not allowed to speak to her.

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  firsttimemomma2019 member

  January 2019

  Also just reading these is helpful. It’s nice to just read that others have been through things like this. At times honestly I feel so alone. 

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  ami500 member

  January 2019

  @firsttimemomma2019 Thank you! I’ll talk to my significant other and see what we can work out. His son has been acting out lately, so we’ve been trying to deal with that. My SO has been trying to get his son to sleep in his own bed again as well. At his grandpas he’s always sleeping with mom or grandpa so he’s used to not sleeping by himself anymore. I was adamant like I don’t want my stepson to climb into bed with us and end up kicking me since he’s already done that to my SO. I’m not able to spend the night when he has his son but I’m able to spend time with them for family time per their parenting agreement. I have to wait til April when we get married until I’m able to live in that house without his ex having a cow that I’m there. His ex absolutely hates me because she thinks that I’m the reason why her husband left her, even though he had been asking and pushing for a divorce 2-3 years before he even met me. I think she’s just bitter that  they couldn’t resolve their issues and that he’s moved on. The other thing is that we’ve noticed was that they’ve been babying him over at grandpas like cutting up his food (which they haven’t done since he was 2-3), giving him sippy cups, etc. We had to tell him that what happens at grandpas doesn’t happen at dads and he threw a huge fit and wanted to get brought back. He’s slowly getting used to the fact that we won’t cave into all his requests like candy and ice cream before he has lunch/dinner like they do over at grandpas. We try and limit his sugar intake because that’s all he wants and he doesn’t get nutrition except for the pediasure shakes. Some days he’s okay and other days he breaks down crying because he doesn’t get his way. It’s a work in progress for sure. We haven’t had to discipline him like give him timeouts. We try and talk to him and get him to understand why his behavior was unacceptable. 

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  firsttimemomma2019 member

  January 2019

  @ami500.  Sounds like my BF’s ex to a T. She despised me for the first 6-7 months until she got a BF herself. I was a home wrecker in her terms. And we have had the exact same fight with his daughter with rules. Once I started only being able to sleep in a certain position we stopped her from sneaking into our room. She use to only come in when she had bad dreams but then it got to be a nightly thing when we had her and we had enough. Every time she came in we would tell her to go to her room. He had to be the bad guy on that beaus she refused to listen to me most of the time but eventually she learned she couldn’t come into our room at all even just to hang out. Our room is ours and it’s private. The food issue was a fight too. Every five minutes she would want something new and that’s not how I was raised and I am not planning on wasting food, also every time we went everywhere she wanted food even though she just ate so we make her wait and tell the family we are visiting that she just ate and she doesn’t need anything. It’s all about consistency. We’ve only done time out once because she was jumping from her headboard onto the bed after I told her cousin he wasn’t allowed to and she was right there, otherwise we talk but we are stern and she knows she is in trouble. We had the fight of “I want mommy” also and that was annoying, we sent her to her room if it got bad and she would cry because she wasn’t getting her way at all like she does at her mom’s, who also lives with her parents. But it’s definitely hard and a battle but after 6-7 months she has caught on. Now her tell- all if she is tired is that she wants her mom so we know when she is ready for bed lol consistency is key and it takes a lot of work and support from the SO. Mine also had to tell her firmly that what I say also goes a couple of times when she has tried to challenge me.

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  firsttimemomma2019 member

  January 2019

  I must also say that it is calming just to speak about all these things. It has caused a lot of stress while being pregnant because of how things have been going but speaking about it and reading responses has been a great relief!

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