ADVICE NEEDED should we tell her who her daddy isn't?
:?
I have a sd7 who has never met her bd and doesn't know it. My DH has raised her his whole life and when he and her bm split up he continued to care for her as his own. As her non-official sm i love her as my own! After a year and a half she calls me mommy! But she has no idea that now the 2 people who are raising her are NEITHER of her bio parents. I just feel like the longer we wait to tell her the harder it is going to be for her to take. She is SOOOOO smart too, asks me all sorts of questions. I give her honest straight forward answers and she is very mature and observant and i could go on and on about how great she is, but the fact is... I was raised KNOWING that my bd was out of the picture but there was no question to who he is. So i want to tell her, but I am not her bio parent and my DH says not to tell her unless she asks. I play in my mind a million times over what I would say if/when she asks me anything about it. Her cousin knows, he is a few years older. He's probably going to tell her...
any advice?
I believe that kids should be
I believe that kids should be kept abreast of the facts in an age appropriate manner. 7 is old enough to process that SD is loved by her dad and by you and what the difference is between a Bio Parent and a non bio parent.
When my SS was about the age that your SD is we had to deal with related fallout from a visitation he had to Sperm Land. He came home with some toxic drivel from Sperm Grandma that upset him. SGM had told him that I was not his REAL dad and that I was only his Step Dad. He knew he had two dads. Dad(dy) (me) and Dad(dy) (Firstname) – Bio Dad.
I explained to him that a Bio Dad is the dad that made him with his mom and that a Step Dad is the dad married to his mom. More importantly I discussed with him what a REAL dad is. A REAL dad is the dad that goes to work every day to make sure he has a nice house to live in, safe cars to ride in, a safe neighborhood to live in, good schools to go to, good food to eat, warm clothes to wear, teaches him to read, write, use the toilet, ride his bike, coaches his little league team and his swim team, reads him a bedtime story at night and tucks him in bed and night and most importantly the dad loves he and his mom very much.
He looked at me, smiled and said “Dad, a step dad sounds like a real dad to me. Can we go outside and play?”
We did have a few more discussions about REAL dads following some toxic crap from Sperm Grandma but the factual foundation that we established when his mom and I married and that we built on over the years kept SS very well prepared to process and deal with the challenges of his blended family situation.
We kept my SS-21 abreast of the facts regarding his Sperm Clan and his mom being a single teen mom from the beginning. I was the first person he very called daddy and I am the only full time dad he has ever had. When his mom and I started dating he knew Bio Dad primarily as a picture on a wall. His mom and I started dating when SS was 15mos old and married a week before he turned 2yo.
Over the years being informed allowed us to minimize the toxic manipulations of the Sperm Clan and as he got older being informed allowed him some protection against their vitriolic crap when he was in Sperm Land on visitation. When SS aged out from under the CO when he turned 18 the Sperm Clan pretty much cut interface with him. Because his mom and I kept him informed he has been able to deal with the abandonment of his Sperm Clan pretty well and has become a viable self supporting adult in spite of their intermittent and manipulative interface.
It worked for us. More importantly it worked to protect my son from the shallow and polluted end of his gene pool.
Good luck.
I will never understand
I will never understand adults who fuck with kids heads like this and think it is Okay. Holy fuck.
What is your DH's plan when she finds out and is faced with the fact that she was raised on a foundation of lies and deceit of the most intimate kind? How will he answer when her trust and faith in him is forever gone? How will he handle her rage??? He better plan for that now.
DH is my fiance BM is a
DH is my fiance
BM is a scumbag who stashes her children with her teenage sister
SD calls me mommy because I take care of here while BM doesn't bathe or feed her properly
I am not her friend, I am her step mother and she loves and respects me.
Fiance won't adopt sd7 now that BM has left him and held adoption papers over his head while not allowing sd7 to visit him when sd5 was court ordered to do so.
Thanks for the comments
Thanks for the comments everyone. I know the conversation will come up eventually. And since I am the one who does most of the talking with sd5 and sd7 I know I am the one who will be asked the question. See... Sd5 and Sd7 have different last names. SD7 is like mommy and sd5 is like daddy. That's what my skids say. That's what they have always said to me in regards to why they have different last names.
Last weekend i was talking to the skids about history.... christopher columbus... indians vs. native americans... then it migrated to African and African American history.... THEN SD7 says something along the lines of "I am part black, look how dark my skin is." BM is Italian. Sd7 has darker italian features than her (half) sister sd5. I explained to her that she is NOT black but that her Italian heritage left her with a darker complexion. She wanted to know who from her family was from Italy, i told her to ask her Nana on her BM's side for answers.... I didn't mention anything about dh's side of the family who are Irish, French Canadian, German....VERY fair skinned...then SD5 asked "what am i??" So then I talked about her being Italian too, and also Irish like dad, which is why she is a bit more fair skinned. I ended the conversation with "we are all different"
But I say, eventually SHE WILL ASK. She asks a lot of questions... I can't imagine exactly what she will ask... but i feel like deep down she already knows and soon she will be able to verbalize it and ask. That is, if a relative doesn't tell her first. BM was 4mo preggers when they got together, so his WHOLE family knows... the 8yo cousin is who shouldn't know and will probably end up being the one who tells her.
I didn't mention it before, but her mother was a teenager who got knocked up by an older guy who was like a scumbag 30 something druggy who lived with his mother. he's not in the picture. I've never heard his name.