I'M A NEW STEP MOM and I hate it!
I have been married for about a year and a half. I got married after only dating for 2 weeks. I love my husband and he's a great guy and even though, I don't agree with how he parents; he's a loving dad.
The first time I met my SD, I couldn't stand her. She was 2 and 40 lbs and wearing 5T. My first thought: "Poor girl, she can't even walk without sweating or breathing heavily." but then she screamed and wouldn't stop talking for the whole 40-minute car ride. We get to the restaurant and she wants ranch on EVERYTHING. She's climbing under tables, she's telling her dad no, she yells instead of talks and still does.
THEN, her dad brags about sharing a 40 piece nugget meal with medium cokes on the daily! SHE'S 2!!
Flash forward to her birthday which was right around the corner. Her family started singing happy birthday and she screamed and cried and threw all her presents.
He was only getting her every other weekend but when we got married, I stayed home and so she would come over every day until her mom came and got her. 5 am to 6 pm. He would work and I would have to deal with her wild behavior on top of taking care of my 2 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment. Her mom would take her sweet time picking her up and then go home to post on Facebook about how terrible her behavior was. But bedtime is at 8 so really she only dealt with her for 2 hours.
It wasn't her mom or dad that dealt with her, it was me and my kids.
My kids have told me over and over again that they don't like her. They find her annoying and she breaks everything.
EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES BREAKS!
My husband will tell me, they are just things and I shouldn't freak out over things like that.
My husband went to court with her mom and won joint custody. So we get her for a week and then BM gets her for a week. I hate it. It's too much time with her and not enough time away from her.
She's loud, she's rude, she's messy, and I can't bear to be near her.
She loves her daddy and hates going to her mom's so I get annoyed with that too because the mom doesn't care that she doesn't want to be there and "wants to do what's best for her."
I feel like my husband's and his BM nanny and behavior specialist.
I don't feel like SM and if I discipline or anything, he thinks I'm too hard on her and brings my kids into it.
His own family told me my SD is a lost cause and I've done all I can do and if my husband and his BM don't fix her behavior, I'm never going to be happy.
Whenever she needs something, she just cries.
I have been a pre-school teacher on and off and I can't get this 4 year old to count, name out letters or colors to save her life. I can't get manners to stick in her head and I am running out of patience. I have been blessed to receive multiple teaching positions but had to turn them down because I'm too embarrassed to take her to work with me.
Whenever she acts like this, all my husband can say is, "My poor girly, she's so cranky."
Everything he finds cute, I find unbearably annoying. I wake up every morning and want to end my marriage.
My daughter who is 5 tells me she has nightmares of my SD breaking her things and taking them. She can't escape her.
After all this, I don't want to give up. I want to like her and be a happy family. I'm pregnant and want to fix this soon. I'm trying to try but it's so hard. Is this normal? I know overall, it's not her fault but I'm losing my mind.
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Comments
I'm sure many here will tell
I'm sure many here will tell you: your problem is not your SD; it is your DH. He is a lousy parent to SD and a lousy partner to you. As you know, small children need the structure and boundaries that good parents lovingly provide. As SM, you can't do more for this child than her parents are willing to do. Your DH thinks she is cute or just cranky when she is unruly? Fine! HE needs to be the one to be with her. If he isn't home, then he needs to find childcare for her. You are his wife, not his free childcare provider. You shouldn't have to turn down teaching jobs just because your DH won't parent his child.
!!!!
Okay first, is this normal? Her behavior is NOT normal, and your desire to escape it IS! One of the things I see over and over on StepTalk (and agree with) is you can't care more than the bio parent does. YOU CAN'T FIX THIS KID! Her parents will not reinforce and don't even seem to be listening. I really don't know how you've managed to stay as long as you have. I feel really sorry for your chilren and hope you will leave for their sakes becasue honestly this child will not improve, not with the parents both enabling this truly atrocious behavior. She will get bigger and the tantrums get nastier. She's young enough that if her parents both decided to step it up now, they could make some changes, but THEY have to do it. You can't fix it!
Please stop babysitting this child. Disengage. They won't step up as parents if they don't have to. And even if they have to...they might still choose not to and keep feeding toddlers cokes and 40-piece nuggets. Also, you can take a job and not bring her! Require her PARENTS to get her into a preschool! SHE ISN'T YOUR JOB. Why are you doing more for her than her actual parents?!
If you can, please seek therapy for yourself and your stress but ALSO you and your partner need marriage counseling. He has to be a responsible parent. And if he doesn't know how he needs to learn. You need to decide what your boundaries are and hold them. When they get crossed, hold that person accountable. This really, really will not get better unless the bio parents step up and do the work! Even then, it will be an incredibly hard road. I hope you have a good support system and can leave if you need to. Not divorce necessarily if you want to keep trying, but you need to have boundaries and a partner who can parent. Also, he's NOT a loving father. He is imperiling her health by feeding her that way and he's enabling horrible behavior. That's not loving. Loving is the excuse you're making for him. He's enabling a child who NEEDS him to be her guide in life and give her structure, nutrition and boundaries. he's failing her. Badly. And he's failing you, too.
"His own family told me my SD
"His own family told me my SD is a lost cause and I've done all I can do and if my husband and his BM don't fix her behavior, I'm never going to be happy."
That speaks volumes over everything else you posted, his family even knows he's a sh*t parent.
"I have been blessed to receive multiple teaching positions but had to turn them down because I'm too embarrassed to take her to work with me."
Umm no you go get that job and your spouse and his ex can find a wrangling pit for the feral child they are creating.
ETA: only two weeks and you got married, that's lust not love.
2 Weeks!
I am stuck on that part. You married after 2 weeks of dating??? Did I read that wrong?
Your DH and the BM needed a nanny who will deal with your SD's hellish behavior.
Love is not enough. I have read this on here so many times. I could not handle such a feral bratty SD. Looks like your DH and BM won the lottery with you.
"I have been blessed to
"I have been blessed to receive multiple teaching positions but had to turn them down because I'm too embarrassed to take her to work with me."
Let's get this straight - you have absolutely no reason to take her with you. She is not your daughter. It's up to your DuH and her mother to find a solution, NOT YOU. Please accept the next job that comes your way and land their daughter where she belongs - in their laps. She is not your responsibility. She has two parents and you are not one of them. Let them sort out what to do with her.
Not your monkey ...
Im sorry you are going through this
Theres a saying..."marry in haste, repent in leisure", I think this applies. You had absolutely no idea what you were getting into and what you were bringing your kids into. That totally sucks. But you made a mistake.
If you are going to stick it out no matter what, you MUST disengage. Your husband is a crap father and the bm is a crap mother, but YOU cannot fix this, so disengage and make the parents step up and take care of this kiddo. She might be autistic or have something that can be helped, but the parents are not doing anything about it. And rely on YOU.
Take those jobs.
You can't fix something you
You can't fix something you didn't break and don't have the authority to fix. That's the short and simple answer to this. Your DH and BM blantantly ignore her behavior and don't parent her. In addition to being a bad parent, your DH is a bad husband and partner because he only cares about what HE can get out of this relationship and not the torment it puts you through.
Stop trying to make a happy blended family happen because all you're going to do is stress yourself out and deplete your energy, which means you can't be a good mom to your own kids. Stop trying to parent SD and stop offering the perks that come to parents who parent a good kid and are a good partner (e.g. free babysitting). Look up disengagement and disengage. If you don't want to do that or don't think it will work, then that speaks to the inability of your marriage to survive.
OP, please help us understand
OP, please help us understand why you married this guy after two weeks - with zero idea what kind of parent he was going to be. And now your kids are being put through having to deal with this feral toddler that isn't being parented adequately by either parent. Your DH is the problem here, but honestly, so are you - this quick marriage was a poor decision. He's a terrible parent and you can't make up for that. And now you are pregnant, despite all of your negative feelings about being married to him.
I don't have any advice, I can't imagine this marriage will work long-term. And he's not a great guy OR a loving dad. He's destroying his young daughter with his lack of parenting, and ruining his own marriage. Nothing about that says "great guy" or "loving dad".
A little more insight
He was my friend for over a year. We decided to date and when we got married, that's when all the lies started coming out. He told me that no one has met his daughter (lie), he had his daughter all the time(lie), and he was hands-on(lie). Everything was great until we got married. I'm already beating myself up for this. I had just gotten out of a 7-year relationship with my BD and it was abusive and whatnot.
He is not a great guy. He's a
He is not a great guy. He's a liar.
He is not a great dad. He got you to babysit his child.
Frankly, he sounds like a master liar and manipulator. If I learned these things about my husband? He'd be my EX. ASAP.
Get away from the crazy.
Cut your losses. You made a mistake, several actually.
Your highest duty is to provide a calm, stable home for your bios. So do that. Get out, get your life back, and learn from this so you don't put your bios through this again.
There are far worse things in life than being a single parent.
I came to this blog for
I came to this blog for support. To let it out and find an escape.
I don't know if I'm hormonal or what but I find it to not be that way here. I KNOW I MADE A MISTAKE. Getting beat down by strangers for it isn't helping me.
It's good that you know you
It's good that you know you made a mistake. Unfortunately, not everyone who comes here knows that (or acknowledges it), which makes it incredibly difficult to offer actual support. We can parrot "that really sucks" to folks in bad situations, but it doesn't help. Plus, most of us are not in ideal situations, or we handled poor situations with good results for us that we want to share.
This is a site full of folks that tell you what you need to hear, and that doesn't always jive with what you want to hear. The unfortunate reality of your situation is that you will have to make some very hard decisions in your relationship if you want things to be different. The silver lining in that is these are decisions YOU can make, and the variety of decisions is fairly expansive.
If you are still around to read this, or another newbie gets this far, I am going to ask that you make the decisions internally now to decide if you want us to just feel sorry for you and acknowledge that we get your pain (we do), or if you want to make changes that better your life, even if they're hard. If it's the former, I highly recommend stating it in your blogs and generously deleting/ignoring comments that you don't like. If it's the latter, take 24 hours before reacting to posts and really think through what was said. Some advice won't work for you, but start piecing out the difference between advice that hurts and advice that is meant to be hurtful. Advice that hurts can help you grow, and taking some time to reflect on why someone might offer up that advice can help you see why it's helpful.
We don't mean to beat you
We don't mean to beat you down - we are trying to get you to accurately see the problem here, and what part you play in it (and therefore, what part you can control). I admit, it's shocking to hear someone say they got married in two weeks, but you now say you knew him for a year prior, which makes it a little less shocking.
People come on here saying their spouse is a "great guy" and a "great dad" because that's what they want to believe, but they go on to post, as you did, examples of not being either one. He's lied to you repeatedly, he doesn't parent his child, and he doesn't seem to care how that affects you and your kids - or even how it affects his OWN kid, whose life he is destroying with his lousy parenting.
You know it was a mistake, so what is your plan? You seem to be hoping somehow you can convert this mistake into the dream family you want, but without DH's help, that's not happening. And in the meanwhile, you are putting you and your kids through misery.
I'd suggest you get your own therapist to sort out why you jumped from one awful relationship into another one - and what you can do from here.
One word:
Annulment