Skids so competitive and jealous of my kids
I’ve had it with all the jealousy issues with my adult skids and how they constantly keep tabs on what their dad does with my kids (his skids) and compare it to what they remember their dad doing when they were growing up. I never knew there was an unspoken rule that you can’t do anything with your skids that you didn’t do with your biokids.
Dh has been in my kids’ lives for 9 years now. He’s really the only father they’ve known and they call him “dad”. My skids call them “The Replacements” or “Replacement SD’s Name” and “Replacement YSS’s name”.
Dh is semi-retired and works as a consultant from home so he has far more free time now than he did when his kids were growing up. He’s very actively involved in his skids’ lives.
Are his kids happy he’s enjoying being a stepdad? No they guilt trip him over it. Dh took my son camping, his sons bitch and moan about him never taking them camping when they were growing up. Dh coached my son’s baseball team and his sons bitched and moaned about their dad missing soccer games because he was working to support them.
SD is upset that Dh took to my daughter to dance recitals and dance competitions because he missed her dance recitals and she had to drop dance classes when her mom got sick because her dad didn’t have time to take her. So I guess according to SD my daughter can’t take dance lessons because her dad made her quit dance over 10 years ago.
If his kids didn’t live on the other coast and weren't holding his grandkids hostage with demands on what he has to do to see them then he’d be spoiling his grandkids. But he’s getting to be a dad to my kids instead. It's their loss.
Do adult skids over get over this? They’re still bitching over things that happen when they were 6 and laying the guilt trip on their dad. I'd ignore it but now any time my kids ask DH to do something special with them now I can see the cogs turning in his head trying to figure out what he missed with his kids that they’ll guilt trip him about it if they find out.
Sounds like they never do get
Sounds like they never do get over it! I thought my skids (20 & 25) were the only ones still keeping score. It's been a real problem for about 3 yrs now. I guess they don't like being adults and want a redo.
They (skids) can't seem to differentiate between their childhood and your kids' childhood. It's like they revert back to whiney kids. Your skids should focus on their lives & their childrens' lives instead of what their childhood may have been lacking. It would make them much happier adults.
I've tried doing that, and
I've tried doing that, and it's never worked. Dh is too involved in their lives now. He's also not telling me when he's meeting them. YSS was out here on a business trip and Dh went to go see him. I only found out about it because my SIL mentioned it was so nice that Dh could see him.
Dh's sisters have gone after him so badly for him not being involved in his kids' lives and attacking him for not knowing what's going on, not dealing with situations like his former MIL's illness or SD being in the hospital and skipping his son's graduation. The skids do everything possible to make him look bad and his extended family have been vicious attacking him as a result.
This is why I can't stand the
This is why I can't stand the internet and Facebook. No one needs to tell the skids anything. They see the pictures on FB and get jealous. Dh would never get off of there since it's his source of pictures of the grandkids and knowing what's going on in his kids lives.
I haven't spoken to SD in over 6 years now. I don't even remember the last time I spoke to either of the SSs. I'm a non-factor at all to them. They want to pretend their father is single and a widower who never remarried and me and my kids don't exist.
Hearing about all the things their dad is doing with my kids upsets their fantasy world.
I would enjoy knowing it's driving them crazy but it's impacting my kids now because I know Dh is distancing himself from them because of the jealousy issues and how the guilt trip his kids have been laying on him is impacting him. I don't know how to explain to them that now that they're getting the ages where their stepdad was completely absent from his kids lives, he's taking that out on them.
The problem is Dh completely
The problem is Dh completely falls for the guilt trip. He's so hurt by it. He won't tell them to STFU and forget about it esp since it deals with the time their mother was terminally ill and following her death when he had very little to do with his kids.
His sisters are even worse with the guilt tripping than his kids are. They're the ones who told him about all the crises he wasn't aware of when his kids weren't talking to him. If he told them to butt out and stop interfering, things would be so much better. He never would have crawled back to his kids if it wasn't for how badly his sisters were attacking him.
How old are these kids? When
How old are these kids?
When we got married (when a lot of this started), SD was 17 (she's now 25), YSS was 20 (he's now 29) and OSS was 23 (he's now 32).
Let's say that your DH did
Let's say that your DH did make mistakes with his kids, or could have done things differently. It's not fair to someone to constantly keep throwing their past mistakes in their face. If you feel what they did was really wrong, seek out professional help for yourself and/or cut the person you're having issues with out of your life.
And they should take a look at themselves too, and the crap they have contributed to this. To take it out on your kids is just wrong. They had nothing to do with BMs death, and didn't know them when BM was alive.
A good counselor would help them own the crap they contributed, and teach them how to build healthy, better relationships with their dad, and let go of their resentment towards you and your kids. These adults are carrying around so much hate and have been doing so for years. And they could make it better but choose not to.
Counseling has made things
Counseling has made things worse. SD's therapist was the one who told her she should refuse to have anything to do with her dad unless he would only visit WITHOUT me and encouraged the estrangement. The therapist made the guilt trip even worse since she told SD to write a long, nasty letter that detailed what a horrible father he was and how he was damaging to have in her life and she didn't want anything to do with him any more.
Her therapist also said that if she heard what was happening in their home when they were growing up, as a mandated reporter, she would have turned their dad in for child neglect even though they were teenagers because no one was with his teenage children overnight while he was out of state with BM at a treatment center.
Therapists take the skids side in this sort of thing. They don't believe widowed fathers should remarry without their children's permission. As soon as they hear what happened, they encourage the kids to guilt trip their dad for remarrying so quickly.
Depends on the therapist.
Depends on the therapist. Your SD's was/is a quack, for lack of a better word. If she were to find a different therapist today, she might get different advice.
I highly doubt SD is going to
I highly doubt SD is going to change. She's never going to get past what happened when her mom was sick/died or her dad marrying less than a year after her mom died. Her extended family wouldn't let her either. There's nothing in it for her. She has her life and she doesn't want me or my kids to be part of it.
I would like Dh to go see a counselor so he wouldn't be so hurt by all the allegations and all things in the past that his kids bring up. When we first got married, he used to say all the time about how well his kids were handling everything and how proud he was of how mature they were and now this whole mess...
Please ask SD to find out if
Please ask SD to find out if her therapist is a SD herself. It sounds like the therapist is using your SD as a tool for her own issues. Sounds sick but it happens.
Not sure but it doesn't need
Not sure but it doesn't need to be the case. The problems with counseling/therapy like this are very common when widowers remarry. I’m on several other forums for wives of widowers and therapists are usually women so they never take the side of men who decide to remarry.
Most women who lose their husbands take many years to remarry. Most men who do remarry, marry within 2 years. Many men move on very quickly and aren't sentimental like some women are. Dating within weeks of their wife dying is not unusual for many men, but society judges them very harshly if they do.
From what I’ve heard talking to other wives of widowers, therapists never tell the kids to respect their dad’s decision to move on. Most feel that for years following their mother’s death, the father needs to be 100% focused on his kids. Many encourage estrangement when fathers don’t do that.
It's sad how many times I've heard about adult kids choosing estrangement when their widower dads remarry.
What bothers me the most is that her therapist saying that Dh was neglectful and SD fully convincing her brothers about how traumatized they should due to their father dating so soon after their mother died. Not telling them that they have no right to judge how their father grieved or who he was dating or if he got married.
It's possible to grieve the
It's possible to grieve the loss of someone/miss them without using innocent people as punching bags. It's also possible to have issues with someone without using other innocent people as whipping posts.
I can sort of understand why your skids acted the way they did in the months/years immediately following BMs death. Grieving people often don't think or act logically. But I don't get is why they haven't used more recent years to examine their own behavior and what they could change.
my SF moved his girlfriend in
my SF moved his girlfriend in & then married her, within 6 mnths of my mom dying. Being a teenager it was very difficult to say the least. It was heartless of him and I think as a mom she should have been more sensitive but I still didn't take it out on her. He really owed me nothing and I was glad not to lose him too. We're still close. Her kids were cruel at times to me & my siblings. They are out of SF's life due to their own horrible behavior.
Oh they'll never blame
Oh they'll never blame themselves or even care about my feelings or my kids feelings. None of them have even seen my kids in 7 years.
But they still tell relatives all about what happened with my son who has ADHD and problems he had with SD when she was living with us in high school like it happened last week.
What happened was there was about a year or 2 where the skids were pissed off about the marriage, then SD left home and then there was less and less contact until it was a total estrangement. His kids chose to have nothing to do with Dh. He was dead to them. OSS got married and they made a big deal out of excluding their dad.
Then Dh went crawling back 2 years ago and begged them to talk to him and let him help them deal with a crisis. They dictated the terms - Dh functions as if he's not married to me or they won't speak to him or let him see his grandkids.
The skids proved with the 5 year estrangement that they don't care about having a relationship with their father or me. They were perfectly fine with never seeing their father again. Things would have been so much better if things had stayed estranged.
Pseudo science morons can do
Pseudo science morons can do damage all out of proportion to their tragically low IQs. smh
In my experience no therapist or counselor should be engaged without extensive vetting, only the best of the best should be engaged, and even then in the first session they must be told what they are being hired to make happen.
If i were your DH I would have gone after that toxic POS therapist with a vengence, destroyed their career, and sued them for malpractice. Manipulating a child into disrespectfuly direct conflice with their father is not within the purvue of any therapy or therapist. PERIOD!
Grrrrrr!
These dipshits piss me off to no end.
Just wanted to add
My two cents.
I don't think kids will ever understand the relationship between their parents even a little, let alone enough to maybe, just possibly think that their mother wanted their father to move on and be happy, that's what most of us would want I think.
Second, reading your original post, I would have swore that one of my stepbrats wrote a post to sound like me so they could show their dad how awful I am, until a few specific details ruled that out. I just helped buy my dd17 a vehicle to move out of state and go to college, skids hit the roof, they don't care that I used her child support money from her BD or that we have always given them everything they ask for, it's just unfair that DD (DHs SD) gets more than they got. Too bad their mom didn't pay child support and abandoned them but now they beg for her attention.
I don't think it ever stops, I've learned to disengage, and stop feeling guilty, obligated and depressed over the fact that nothing ever makes these kids happy as long as DH and I are happy.
I hope this gets better for you, or you can find peace with how to deal with it your own way, remember it's not your responsibility to make them happy and once they are adults, it's not DHs either, but he needs to come to terms with that.