Is it normal?
Is it normal my wife to treat her sons father like a saint? My step son, 5, never sees his bio dad. Infact, he calls me dad. His fathers sister had him over night xmas eve and didnt even see my SS. My wife didnt even ask bio dad why. But if I tell SS to go to his room for talking back, or say no treat bc he didnt eat all his dinner (we had to do that bc other wise he wont eat unless its mc donalds - Ss Is spoiled rotten and thats a,different story) she calls me a bad step parent and says im too strict, blaah blaah blaah.. She yells at me for discipling him, meanwhile bio dad used to call and promise him a day out and never showed and my wife would excuse him everytime.
Why is this? Am I over reacting? If I had kids with somebody id tell them to get fucked and stop hurtin my child.. But maybe im a jackass I guess :?
Sadly, the answer is yes,
Sadly, the answer is yes, this is normal. It shouldn't be, but it is; hence this website. Welcome!
Yea true, but ive seen him
Yea true, but ive seen him with SS and be acts so uninterested and is very short and snappy at him. As for me doing the.disciplining I only started bc when she cant control him, she uses getting me as a threat. When I follow through, I get yelled at. She asked ne for ny olinion on how to get him to eat so thats when I said "instead of metting him eat potato chips and cookies all day, make him real food and if he eats it all give him.a couple cookies" maybe that.is harsh to some, but as I said he only wants food if its out of a.deep fryer and comes with a toy. Besides, there are times where if I dont step up and say "ill take your DS if you talk to your mom lime that again" he degrades her..
its messed up bc she does let him get away with murder. No dont force him to see the kid, but I wouldve asked him why he didnt bother to see his son on xmas or his birthday.. She says she cant be bothered arguing.
One thing I secretly started to do was write notes of every time his dad contacted.him. Might seem messed up of me, but she said she wants to get full custody and from past reasons I knew doing that would help in court. She knows I do it now, bc she took it to her lawyer and she write in it.too. We have a year of info.down now.
You are allowing the
You are allowing the situation to control you. Becoming obsessed (keeping notes) and letting it consume your thoughts. We have all (mostly) done that. But, if someone would have explained to me, in the beginning, that it would lead to nowhere, I may have saved my energy for more important things.
You, sir, need to DISENGAGE. This woman has decided that you have zero parental rights. So, claim your other rights instead. Rights as her husband, as the owner of your home, as the man of the house, whatever. And don't allow her to take any of those. Furthermore, when she expects you to act like a father to this boy because it's convenient for HER at the time, casually decline the invitation. A simple, no thanks. You should just call his real father, would do nicely. She's got it coming.
Agree with this completely.
Agree with this completely. Driving him places, buying him things, signing permission slips - sorry, DW, I am not his parent in any sense of the word so that is your job. Let me know if you want to renegotiate at some other time but i am late for XYZ now. Bye!
FDH made it very clear to the
FDH made it very clear to the boys and me that I was basically another parent. With the boys, it was they had to respect me and listen to me like the do him. With me, it was that I had the right to act like a parent. Most decisions are made together, but I have the ability and his backing to discipline them when I see fit. Our styles are quite similar, so there are rarely issues. I've had kind of the reverse problem - like he's so supportive that this really should be easier than it is.
If I didn't have the support, I would totally and utterly disengage. As it is now, I sometimes get overwhelmed and back off a bit. I have no children of my own (except a 10 year old cat and a 3 year old English Setter) and a 5 year old and 8 year old can be a bit much - and we're about a year into it already.
You need to either tell her, you back me up or you do this on your own. There isn't a way to effectively parent if she's undermining you constantly. Even when the two of you are on the same page it's hard. Really hard. Not working together makes it impossible.