i have 3 kids of my own. my boyfriend has two. one that he has custody of and the other lives back east with his exwife. they recently moved in with me and my kids. i love kids. never had a problem with any kid, until now. he's rude. he doesn't follow the house rules. he tries to start fights with my kids then acts like he did nothing. on the weekends my two older kids go to their fathers. so it was just my boyfriend, his son, my youngest and me. i wanted us to go out and do something fun. we went to a hand-on very kid friendly science center for a day of fun. the moment we got there he starts. "i'm hungry. i'm going to stay in the car if they don't have a snack bar. this sucks. i hate this place. i wanna go home." i keep quiet. my boyfriend tells him to stop and we're there to have some fun. the man at the science center is trying to show us around and explain what goes on. my boyfriends son runs off. comes back and announces he's bored and wants to go home. it just gets worse. he finds the gift shop and has a fit when his dad tells him we're not their to buy stuff. this has happened before when we've gone other places. we ended up having to leave because he's having such a fit. he's 8 years old. my 2 year old doesn't even act up like this when i tell her no she can't have something. the whole way home he's in the back seat bitching about how much his life sucks. how much he hates his dad. how horrible his dad is. i'm quiet but i'm starting to lose my cool. he unbuckles my 2 years olds carseat while we're driving down the rode. i'm mad now. we pull over so i can fix it. he's sitting there looking at me giving me the dirtiest look. i say to him. "you're very selfish. we were all there to have fun and you ruined it for us. next weekend i am not taking you with me when i go out to have fun." maybe i was a bit harsh, but his dad was ignoring him. we get home and instead of sending him to his room to cool off. my boyfriend goes upstairs with him and snuggles with him for FOUR HOURS letting him watch TV in our room. about an hour into this sunugglefest my 2 year old comes downstairs crying. why? because his son closed the door on her face. my boyfriend did nothing. this also has happened before. he tells me it's because he's the only person in the world his son has. this pisses me off. that separates everyone. makes his son feel like he's a loner. i told my kids we are all in this together, they are now part of our family. later in the evening when my kids get home. they are all outside playing. they found some filthy ball and i told them to put it in the garbage and not to play with it. my son went to put it in the garbage and my boyfriend son pushes him down. i lose all my cool then. my boyfriend does nothing. doesn't ask his son if he did it. doesn't ask him if it was an accident. my son is crying and bleeding. crap like this happens all the time now. i'm confused. i'm frustrated. i need some help with this. i want us to all get along. i don't want to fight over this. i don't want this behaver to continue. it's stressing me out more than it should. i need some help. some more ideas as to what i can say. how we can all work together on this.
Wow, that's a really awful situation to be in... I wish I had some answers for you, but I really don't I mean, obviously the son could go for some counselling or something (maybe his anger is about the divorce or whatever) but that won't happen as long as his father keeps ignoring behaviour. The thing is though, your responsibility is to your kids first...if this kid is hurting YOUR kid(s) then you have to do something, now. What that something is though, I don't know. Have you talked to your boyfriend about your concerns?
I have no idea having not a lot of experience with older kids but first thing I would be doing is collaring the "boyfriend" and talking to him about this. Sounds to me like he might need to have a few truths and realities pointed out to him, fair enough he feels that he is the only one there for his son but it sounds like you and even your kids would be too given the chance...I think if you could get his dadda to deal with the nasty situations when they were happening and not leave your little one to bear the brunt of his anger you would be doing a good thing for all of them. The problems your boyfriends son are having with relating to people will extend beyond the family borders in the future so it really needs you all to work together and to help hm to realise that you are all there for him and that he may even get some enjoyment from the new relationships in his life...maybe he is scared he will lose these relationships or something? sorry, I am not at all qualified to pass comment but it sounds like you are of level mind and have a clue so go the open communication channel I figure!
One of the perils of "blended families." This boy is VERY ANGRY. He is only eight. I understand you don't want him to be mean to your 2 year old, but really, it is up to his own father to talk to him. I guarentee he won't listen to dad's girlfriend. Therapy is a really good idea, before his anger becomes malignant. The problem with blended families is that the "step" has no control or opinion over the step children. That is totally the bio parent's territory. ANd the step kids usually have understandable resentment of the girlfriend or boyfreind of their parent. Your bf cuddled with this boy because he understood how HARD it is for this child to see his daddy with an other womyn than his mama. Harder for him, than for you. Most children this age still fantasize their mama and daddy will get back together. Divorce is hard on kids, and they had NO say in it. Most kids this young would rather be with their own parents fighting like wild people, and still together, than in a divorce situation. Not much you can do, except protect your own child, and leave the raising of your BF's children to him. You can ask if the child maybe could use some therapy, but other than that, you are the girlfriend, and have less pull on that man than his own child. This may well be true. I admire a man who stands up for his children. I am not divorced, and hope never to be, but if I was, my kids would ALWAYS come first over any date. That is what a good parent does. If the situation gets too bad with your two year old, maybe it needs a rest. This little boy may just NEED his daddy, more than anyone else needs him.
I agree, group counselling is a good idea. I didn't mean for it to come off like they should send him off alone at all. I'm not trying to say an us verses them kind of thing, just that she needs to be careful if she thinks her boyfriend's child is hurting her child. That's all. Just because one child is obviously having some problems doesn't mean that the needs of the other child(ren) should be ignored.
Sounds like your bf needs to take control of his son a bit more. Sounds like the little boy is needing that daddy to set h im in his place a little more.
If dad doesn't start acting like a parent, then I would take action. I too am in a step mom situation and it hasn't been pretty. I caught my bf's daughter trying the suffocate my child who was 8 or 9 months at the time. What we had to do was send the so called "problem child" to her grandma's for a while. She got spoiled rotten there and because she was lacking attention from her real mom, I actually think it helped out the whole situation to take a break for a while. She began to miss us and my now two year old. She was only gone for about 2 months, but I think this was long enough to readjust appropriately. We have had tough times with her here and there but now it seems that she has grown up a lot and dealt with whatever it was that was bothering her. We thought about counseling, but we cannot afford a good one. We did make every effort to nurture her growth without ignoring the problem. My bf was inactive at first but when he saw where things were leading to, he took action and I greatly appreciated it. Not only for me but for the safety of my own child. You may think this sounds bad, to send the child off, but sometimes it's good to get a break to work things out. Eventually I had to do the same with my bf. It was short thank goodness, and when he came back, things actually had changed. We gave it a lot more effort and the kids noticed and matured a bit.
Plus we took the tv away from everyone in the house for awhile. It really put perspective on the situation until we could fgure it out. It was like punishment but not really ya know. It made sense so we could all spend more time as a family.
You need to talk with your bf - about what behavior you don't like, why it bothers you (even if why it bothers you is pretty obvious) and how you all can make things better. Post back if anything comes up, we're here for advice when you need us.
ok, now for my two cents... i have older boys adjusting to a 'stepdad' so i know more of what you're going through. it was rough for a while, cuz it's always been me & my boys as a team and now there's this guy tryin to butt in... it's gotten much better as time went on, with work. and actually it wasn't anything that i worked out with my boys. my hubby and i had to adjust, and re-adjust, OUR parenting techniques. we decided we were going to be a family, so we have to present a united front - just like in any family. we discuss things behind closed doors and try to figure out what's working and what's not, then WE change things together - supposedly since we're the adults, we're in charge of the situation, right? well, sometimes. i guess the hardest part is being able to be critical of the situation without critisizing each other, TALKING about it without letting it become an argument. that's really hard especially about something so close to a parent's heart - their children. anyways, what seems to work best for us is that i am the heavy, the one that metes out the discipline since my boys have no doubts of me, but we both decide when disciplining needs to take place. basically i guess it's gonna be up to you and your bf - not the kids - to get together on this one and work on your strategies - are you going to be two families under one roof? that's gonna be very hard, there will always be two standards and kids don't understand that. and chill~mama, sometimes time out of the family is very beneficial, i agree with you there. my boys go scouting and even a weekend away makes them appreciate home. i sent my boy to overnight camp for a week and he came back with a changed/better attitude - i'm sure we get on our kid's nerves just the same way they get on ours!!! lol!!! we ALL need those sanity breaks.
insanejester for one thing, this was my bf's child, not mine. and getting space is actually a sign of good parenting because i made a decision to not jeopardize my own child's life. if i didn't see it as a matter of life or death, at the time it was, i would have tried to deal with it. but unfortunately it was not my problem. this child's real mother was in jail for drugs and alcohol again and was taking it out on my kid. she kept saying things like "kill baby" and the like. she never gets to go to her grandma's because she lives far away. so it was good for grandma and my stepdaughter. she even remembers now, over a year later, that she did this and feels remorse for it. besides, the visit was only supposed to be for a 2 week period. then grandma decided to take things into her own hands until the real mom got out of jail. we threatened to take her to court. so it's not like we didn't miss her desperately. we did! even my kid did. now i am having another child due in june. we are going to have her go stay with the grandma again then so i can have a break to recoop. do you think this is wrong too? do you have kids? do you have stepkids? do you value the importance of space? how about grandma's? sure her grandma is great, but when she came home, she was glad to be back.
and thanks gr8fully deadicated at least someone appreciates space. when you are parent, you lose this freedom. and from time to time, you actually do need it. i just offered it because no one else had. i guess i am a martyr that way because i have always done things where people had some opinion about it. i also want to say, that we have fought for custody of this child, spent all of our savings on it. in the state we live in, the mother gets all the rights, even if she is a methed out alcoholic that's always in and out of jail. you can about imagine what this little girl has been through. we didn't just give into grandma right away either, we waited two months until grandma offered help. it's not like i tapped the first resource after the first incident. it was after my child was almost unconscious from having a pillow suffocating her while i was in the bathroom. we have really went to bat for her and it's a damn shame because we really are her "family unit' persay but who said life was fair?
In a way, in my familiy we have a similar problem: We are four kids, between 15 and 22 years old. The Oldest three are all grown up, I live on my own for university, my brother has joined the military and my sister lives with my father in yemen, as he is stationed there. Only my little brother is forced to live with my mom and her new husband. None of us (nor of the whole familiy of my mother) like this guy. And as I mentioned our litttle brother is forced to live with them, due to multiple school problems he has to attend a german school. This ended up in super horrible fights between stepdad and my brother. The problem is, both are thick heads, and my brother has sort of all his life just been dragged along us other children, instead of being parented properly. He barely had to take the consequences for his actions, was even at the age of ten out at night (ok, back then we used to live in a small farmers comunity, with barely 800 people living there.... there is nothing at night... but still, I was at 14 allowed until 11!) So this man started to force consequence on him. Generally, I would say, ok, better late then never, but the way and even more the circumstances this happend under, are totally wrong. Kids in Puperty have problems with all kinds of authority, plus the fact that this man took our mom from our dad, or our mom left our dad for THIS guy, no matter how one sees it: this guy takes up a position that was not his. This ended up in horrible fights, and thank god they never got violent, even though both said, if the other one started, he would kill the other. So this really escalated. My brother got even worse at school, he only had Ds and Fs, even though he had despite of his dyslexia, the add sort of thing, and other motivation problems always a C average. He was always saying that he would run away, or kill himself, if he would be forced to live with this guy under one roof. The thing is, this guy acted in a negative way as a autority, but never in a good one. They are building their new home, basically renewing an old farmers building, room by room, but the first room that was done was the supposed family room, where they would eat, and my mom and my her husband sleep in, not my brother. He had to sleep in a tent. It took more then one year, until his room was done properly, that he could at least sleep in there. The tent was heated, and it was in a barn, but it was a fucking TENT!!!! So my brother moved in with a friend. But the fights continued and got worse. So to make a long story a little bit shorter: My brother ended up in boarding school, due to his own wish, and the others. Now he's better in school, gets proper help there, and is only "home" on weekends, and the fights have almost stopped. So what i was trying to say, is that sometimes only distance is a solution, but her in our case, it was consent with everyone. If a kid doesn't want to go... maybe that could be a trigger. I still have the feeling that one should never sent a kid off without consent. This would be like: "You have to go because I have now a new family, I don't need the old one (which you are part of) anymore." The thing is, a divorce is bad enough for kids, and new partners are even worse. And often I believe, that the new partners take it a lor easier then it really is.
Your brother had to sleep in a tent? That is awful! If we only had one room, my babies would all be in there with me, no matter who I was married to. I would never put a child into a tent.
First of all, you need to explain to your boyfriend what is happening. Then you need to get your boyfriend to get his son help. You need to stop this problem before the children end up adults in jail (all of them will have issues) and your boyfriend needs to help you do it.
doesn't matter now. i talked to them both privately. nothing has changed i'm so stressed out by this and another thing. we've decided to go our own ways. i should have gone with my gut feeling 2 months ago before they moved in and gone to live elsewhere.
I am sorry to hear that things have gone like that Boogabaah, I was reading what you wrote and everyone wrote and thought how it must be such a common situation for people these days with so many varieties of families...I hope that you are ok and hugs to you and your little one...
