Husband treating his boys different than our daughter....Help???
My husband has 3 boys from a previous marriage, well 2 may not be his but nobody wants to confirm it as it would not matter. We met when my daughter was 4 months old, she is now 6. Since her biological father was never in her life, my husband wanted to immediately take on the role. She only knows him as her dad and he tells everyone that she is his daughter, always has. His 3 boys and her know one another as brother and sister.
Well, there has been a lot of things that have been bothering me for the last year. His family does not acknowledge her at all. His parents try to but you can see the differences, or at least I can. I had brought it up to him and he remedied it thus far. I know it has to be hard for them to adjust knowing she is not "technically" his child, but if he is so adamant about being her father then she should be treated equally. We had separated for a few months and he begged me not to take her out of his life, which I never would, but it shows that she truly is his daughter.
However, I feel like he treats her different than he does his boys. All of her school functions, he never went to because he was working, even when she asked that he be at her graduation. However, he will at least attempt to go to some of the boys school events. She was in dance and the only time he saw her was at the recital. Yet, he goes to all of the boys sport events. He always goes outside and plays catch with his boys, but not when she wants to. She will try to go and play when they are playing but he sends her home. He says "she has the wrong mitt", or "its a hardball", whatever the reason may be. Why cant he just roll the ball to her then? I don't get it.
One weekend, we were all over at his parents house and the boys and "their" cousins were staying the night. Yeah, they are not her cousins even though they are his sister's children. Well, my daughter and I weren't planning on staying, but my daughter was crying that she wanted to stay as well. So, I hear from husband and his mother that there isnt enough room blah blah blah... However, his mom said it was fine of course to try and not exclude her, but my husband was trying to talk her out of it by saying " Well, if you stay the night, then so and so would have to leave as there is no room.." Well, I just said fine she will sleep on the floor then and it was fine. I just do not understand why she is not included with the boys as well if my husband truly considers her his "daughter".
Now, he just brought up to me that he has tickets for a sporting event and was going to take the boys this weekend. Umm, why not your "daughter" as well? Naturally I flipped out asking how he could think that was fine? It is one thing if he would then take her to do something with just him, but he wont. He said he wants to take "his boys" to the game. Of course my daughter wants to go.. She would go to a cat pissing contest, seriously.
I can see this as fine if he was her stepdad and had that role, but he wants to be her dad plain and simple. However, it feels like he does separate her and the boys. If someone has 4 kids, you do not just take 3 of them and not the other. It is one thing to have one on one time, but not take 3 and leave 1 crying. I am sooooo angry right now. I have no idea what to do.
I tried to explain to him where I was coming from on my view. I told him that even though his boys are not mine, I always include them in any fun activity I might want to do, where it is vacation or anything else, and they are not even MY KIDS. I also said, so if I come running into the house and say " Yeah I have tickets for the football game, I bought 3 for me, you, and our daughter"..all right in front of the 3 boys, that would be fine? He says no. However, that is exactly what he is doing. Yet, the boys are not my children so I do not technically need to involve them. However, since he is adamant about our daughter being equal with the boys, then he has 4 children and I have one child.
I am at a loss of what to do. I know deep down he considers her his daughter and never would think of her differently. Yet, his actions are different. I do not know if it is his subconscious or what, but something isn't right. Even stranger is that his is about 99% sure his youngest boy isn't his, but he is treated the same as the other boys.
Sorry for the saga, just looking for advice. Maybe I am just completely insane and wrong, I honestly do not even know anymore.
yes, I wondered if it was a
yes, I wondered if it was a gender issue too. Lots of men just arent entirely comfortable with their girls and their events because they just dont think they can relate to them. My dh is great about doing girly things with our girls and he goes to all the kids events equally-but I know lots of dads (good dads) that arent real interested in their girls cheerleading or dance, but are all over the baseball or football.
But whatever the reason, it is not appropriate for him to exclude her. If she wants to go to the game he should take her-it might be nice if you all went. Now if she's not interested and would enjoy some "girl time" with her mom then I think that's ok too-but if she is wanting his time and attn and he is not giving it then he needs to remedy that.
I completely get you about
I completely get you about leaving a kid out. See my post today! However, it also might be a gender thing too. When we found out we were pregnant with our first DD, dh was nervous. He said he didn't know what to do with a girl. So I've had to teach him! If dd asked for her daddy to do something girly with her I'd have her ask him- Daddy, will you go to my dance class? Daddy, will you have a tea party with me? Daddy, can you play barbies? I mean, what daddy would say no to that?! He does still have hesitations about doing 'boy' stuff (baseball, football, wrestling, etc) with her because he's afraid of hurting her but he just goes easier on her and has to be gentler. Maybe your so just needs to learn how to deal with a girl. That doesn't always come naturally. Plus it is easier for dads to beinvolved with their son's things because thy can relate to it. It's easier for a dad to watch a baseball game than to watch a girl's dance class you know?Also, there IS a time for just boy things. My dh took ss and bs to a baseball game trip this summer. Just the boys. I don't want it to be an ongoing thing where they leve dd out but on occassion it is fine. Sometimes dd and i do just girl things. Maybe encourage him to spend qt with her now and then- storytime at night or an ice cream date or watching a show together. Hth!
Idk about chainsaws! But he
Idk about chainsaws! But he brought up a good point. Your dh could teach her things he does know or like. I've always wanted to knowhow to really throw a good football pass. Maybe he could teach her how to play baseball or something? Take her fishing. Teach her about cars. It will help them bond AND teach her vluable lessons that can be used later.
Yeah, I had thought about the
Yeah, I had thought about the gender issue as well. I brought that up to him and he gets extremely defensive. I explained to him that I knew he wasn't doing these things on purpose and maybe he does not realize what he does, but his actions are obvious.
He loves baseball, it runs in the family. All the boys play baseball and it started when they could walk. My daughter is actually a pretty natural at baseball. Even when she was 2-3 she could hit the ball, 8 out of 10 times which was really interesting actually. I tried to sign her up for softball this year as she is now old enough, but it was canceled because there were not enough girls in her age group signed up. She always wants to play catch with him and the boys, but prefers just batting. She is an extreme girly girl, but yet she loves to get dirty and play sports as well. If she had it her way she would wear a dress, tights, and dress shoes every day all the while playing outside in the mud.
Every time she tried to go out and play with them, he sends her home with whatever excuse and she is always crying. He gets nervous he says. I can understand this. Yet, he will not sit with her and play girl games either. He feels strange playing barbies, evidently. I just do not know of a remedy. She is going to start to notice this and how is she suppose to feel? My husband also favors his older boy as well...He is on an all-star team and one of the best in the league. I do not think my husband can relate to anything beyond sports. That is all he does, watching every game, fantasy football, playing baseball, football, basketball... He is the one who brought up the idea of softball for our daughter, and I let her try out any sport because when I was little I did pretty much every single sport their is. Yet, I knew deep down that even if she was on the softball team that he probably would choose to go to one of the boys' baseball games over hers.
I am just frustrated.
This is one of the many
This is one of the many problems in my step situation as well, only it canNOT be simply attributed to gender-related differences since my H and BS6 are the same gender while my SD stb 12 is not.
H has been BS6's "Daddy" since BS6 was 10 mos and is the only Daddy that BS6 has ever known, but H DOES treat BS6 very different from SD stb 12. Unfortunately this is not in a way you might expect considering the gender and age differences, but rather H treats SD stb 12 "BETTER" than he treats BS6. When I suggested this was because BS6 is not H's biological child H got very upset and said he treated SS19 the same way as a child. Well recently I had the opportunity to talk with SS19 without H around and all I did was ask about how his Dad treated him as a child and he did confirm that he was treated pretty much the same way as BS6, but that H treated SD stb 12 better than him too!
Well okay, so even if it doesn't have anything to do with DNA differences it is still UNACCEPTABLE to treat SD stb 12 like she's "BETTER" than the other children (there's nothing "special" or remarkable about SD stb 12 - she is just an "average" stb 12yo girl), and although SS19 had no choice but to put up with it because his BM was not around to stand up for him, I will no longer stand for this - especially in MY Home!
For the record though, I have no interest in coming in between the relationship between my H & BS6 (like you, we broke up before and H still came and picked BS6 up for visits just as he would if BS6 were his biological child), but in the long run I worry about this negatively impacting BS6's self-worth if he feels he is somehow less worthy of Daddy's time, patience, attention and love than SD.
I don't see this as a gender
I don't see this as a gender issue... how many times have the majority of us all said that it is IMPOSSIBLE to love a step child as much as you love your Biological child?
It is like comparing apples to oranges. I think that your hubby truly cares about your daughter, just like most of us SM's care about our Skids but when it comes down to the nitty gritty of it, she is not "his" so I think that is where he is acting differently.
I would be happy for the things that he DOES do with her, at least he is making an effort.
Good Point! Where I would
Good Point! Where I would draw the line is MISTREATMENT, which does NOT appear to be the case here.
Some guys will vehemently
Some guys will vehemently deny that they have any kind of gender bias (or reverse gender bias with "daddy's girls") but then blatantly show it with their actions.
Such is my DH, who does WAY more things with SS15 than he does/did with SD17.
I don't think I saw anywhere
I don't think I saw anywhere whether the boys live with you or if you have visitation?
If your hubby only gets to see the boys EOW or something, then I could see how he might want to take just them to the sporting event to make them feel special.. guys night out.. guy bonding thing. I would use it as night to do something fun with your daughter.. maybe a mommy daughter pedicure, a movie or something "just for girls" so she doesn't feel left out. I understand that at her age, she just wants to be included in EVERYTHING and it's hard for her being the only girl. I bet it's easy for her to feel excluded strictly because of her gender!
I'm not really sure about your SS's ages either? Is there quite an age difference between them and your daughter? As far as the overnight, I am guessing that your hubby was trying to discourage Daughter from staying to make it more fun for the boys so to speak. If there IS an age difference I can tell you that my step brother and I were a day apart in age and my step sister was 5 years younger than us. We HATED including her in things we did, not because we didn't love her, but just because, she was younger, which meant she was more immature, didn't have a clue what we were talking about half the time, would whine, would tattle etc.