Sometimes I need to come first
We have my boyfriend’s 9 year old daughter staying with us for three weeks. She and I have a very good relationship overall but sometimes it drives me crazy how much he lets her dictate how everything goes. I am dealing with a very stressful situation with my job and asked him if I could have a few minutes to talk to him in private about it. About 10 minutes into our discussion she threw a fit which instantly ended the conversation. This is after she had interrupted already on two separate occasions wanting him to finish up and go back in the living room. While I understand that his kids will always come first, there are times when I feel like I need to be prioritized and tonight was one of them. I am really struggling with the work situation and the fact that he didn’t see it fit to draw that boundary with her has left me feeling very resentful. Am I overreacting? As another note, he gets home several hours earlier than I do from work because I am working two jobs. I reference this because they definitely get time alone but when she is here, he and I don’t. In fact, she will not sleep upstairs by herself because she is afraid so he has to sleep in the other room up there which leaves me sleeping downstairs in our bed alone so we can’t even talk before going to sleep.
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Girl, get this all worked out
Girl, get this all worked out before you decided to marry this man with a mini wife.
It's not ok. None of it. Not him allowing her to interrupt. Not him sleeping apart from you because she's "scared".
ETA: Sooner rather than later; why waste life on someone that is not a "true partner".
^^Every word of this.
^^Every word of this.
You're in for an interesting
You're in for an interesting future with your BF if this enabling continues. He's not teaching her basic respect and allowing her to dictate everything will impact your life in the long term. If he doesn't remedy this please reconsider continuing a relationship with this man that has not set any boundaries with his daughter.
that doesnt really work long term
It certainly would bug me. When Im speaking to my DH, even when I was "just the girlfriend", it is an adult to adult conversation, and when munchkin sd would interrupt, I would politely say: " sweety pie, I need a moment to speak with your father, we will just be a few moments", and that was that. SO-now-DH would back me up on that, unless it was a "now" thing like the dog just barfed on the carpet. The kid needs to learn by example how to respect others. Munchkin has taken to interrupting conversations between adults when we are out, and we simply ignore her until the person is done speaking. It was worse when she was younger. She would interrupt constantly with things that were of interest, in addition to things she wanted to interject. Mostly when it was a group of our friends that we were conversing with.
Munchkin also used to "co sleep" with DH before me, and would also be afaid to sleep alone. It didnt help that her mother would co-sleep (and I think at 13 still does!) but what we did at our house was we had a "routine".
According to things Ive read, when a divorce happens to a young child, they need reassurace. They need routine and consistency (I think they need that anyway, but especially in the case of divorce/separations). So what we did around bed time was "tuck time", and sometimes she would ask me to read a story with her. But we made a big deal out of good nights, along with reassurances. She also had a night light which helped.
Also, if she slept with the door open that might help. along with night lights in bedroom, and bathroom and hallways.
Your relationship definitely needs more closeness without kidling. I mean you two need to sleep together. Plus, this is the beginning phases of your relationship, so this is an indication of how things are going to be with these two. Time to watch, read this board and evaluate the long term.
So similar
Our situations are very similar. His little one sleeps with her mom at home and has just recently started sleeping alone when she comes here, they were cosleeping as well. The thing is, it wasn’t coming from some parenting philosophy, it was coming from laziness of not wanting to go through the struggle of getting her to sleep alone. I had been suggesting a behavior chart for the last two years but we finally implemented one and it worked perfectly. She has actually just completed her first week of sleeping alone. She sleeps with the TV on, something I am not a fan of but you pick your battles in life, LOL. She has a awesome moon night light as well as a star constellation projector type thing and she does sleep with the door open. The next step will be for him to sleep in our room and I can be patient about that because I know it’s a work in progress but not being able to get 10 minutes alone without her interrupting and throwing a fit is unacceptable. That’s not about fear, that’s about jealousy and he needs to set boundaries. She really is an awesome kid and I see the issue more being that my boyfriend isn’t setting limits. She’s just a kid doing what she is being allowed to get away with but I need to know that when she’s here, especially for a long periods of time, but if I need time alone with him to discuss something important, he will do what is necessary to provide that. It’s just a frustrating situation. It’s very early in the morning so hopefully this post makes some sense and isn’t too jumbled, LOL.