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Is It Pointless In Trying To Blend Our Families?

shera's picture

My live in bf and I have such opposite parenting views and children.

My children were lucky enough to have two involved parents (now that my exh is with his mistress he sucks as a dad, but before that he was a great father). Dad worked, I stayed home with the kids and volunteered for everything and coached teams and was room mom, PTO etc. Exh and I didn't fight, we loved our kids, loved being parents and had fun as a family. We had high expectations of our kids behavior and grades and they met those expectations consistently. No behavior problems, easy kids, great grades and great kids you can enjoy being around.

Bf on the other hand, has a daughter from an exwife. She is an emotional hot mess. She needs years of therapy. Terrible behavior and terrible grades. Him and exwife have had years of battles with custody etc. Her BM moves in with every guy she dates, always on welfare and keeps having more kids. Bottom line his daughter needs stability and LOVE.

His other child is a 9 year old boy who we know is ADHD but we both suspect Bipolar as well. I also think he has Oppositional Defiant disorder. BM is not in the picture at all, in fact she keeps popping out kids only for CPS to take them away. She's not on drugs, so I think she gets them taking away because she is mentally ill, and I think her son is the same way.

Bf's parenting is very passive. Very "bury my head in the sand and pretend there are not huge fires buring". I have written about his son before stealing, lying, manipulating, screaming/crying all day, heck this kid smears poop on the walls! His expectations of his kids beahavior and their grades are so low. I can't come into this situation and fix it, they have had years of bad parenting! He treats the boy with kid gloves because he feels sorry for him. His son does just crazy over the top terrible things and bf does nothing about it. He wouldn't even let his daughter do this things, but when the son does it, it's no big deal.

We just can't seem to get it together. I flip out and get mad at his passive parenting. His son's behavior is so foreign to what I'm use to. He gets jealous of my kids awards, trophies and all the friends they have. Him and his kids scream and yell with each other and fight. My kids and are like best friends and never fight. We are just sooo different. I'm at my wits end!

bug's picture

Bad parenting doesn't help, but sometimes there is not much a parent can do. I had one child who excelled at everything. He was a straight A student and never got into trouble and one kid who ended up dropping outu of high school. The latter suffered from lead poisoning as an infant. When there is mental illness present it is best to see a psychiatrist and take medication. My youngest was an honor student on the proper medication, but when he became a teenager he refused to take the medication and then ended up in trouble and failing school and dropping out. Medication is the difference between night and day with kids that truly need it.

abonderczuk's picture

Get out while you still can. Trust me, these issues will not go away and they will only get worse. Your situation is a lot worse than mine and if you two are completely backwards on parenting styles, how will you ever get along? You are both raising your kids in the same home, there can't be different parenting methods.

Good luck to you. Blended families is the most complicated situation anyone could ever be in. I was warned before I married DH. Now I wish I had listened. I love my husband but frankly don't know if I would marry him all over again because of the skids.

Mommagpz-dk's picture

well thats intense. Unfortunately this is something you are BOTH gonna have to work on TOGETHER. Sit down just the 2 of you and clamly explain how you feel. make sure he knows you arent blaming him but you want to help the situation and in order to do that he needs to work with you. If trying to work it out calmly doesnt work and you still want to keep trying id suggest cousiling at least for you two if not as a family to try and work through the issues, but honestly they say 70% of all issues you have in the beginning are there till the end. I believe it. i dont know about you but every relationship ive had end i look back at the beginning and think man i shoulda known! Im grateful to finally be with someone im on the same page with. But if this is a serious issue and you cant work around it i would tell him to either step up or youre going to step out.