Newbie Here
I'm extremely new here so if I'm asking about something that has been discussed before, I'm sorry. Plus, I'm sorry for the long rant because I'm really upset & just need to get it off of my chest. I'm a BM to 2 DDs (DD10 & DD14). I've been divorced for 4 years & have been dating my boyfriend for 3 years. My DDs & I moved in with my boyfriend & his DS12 about 4 months ago. My boyfriend has a job that requires him to be away from home overnight a couple of times a week so I'm left with his son. His son primarily lives with him & only visits the BM on the weekends. My DDs get along with my boyfriend quite well. I'm not sure what to really say about his son & his relationship with me & my DDs.
Basically, his son is very lazy & won't acknowledge anyone. I thought that he was just maybe really shy at first but the son just absolutely ignores everyone. The only time he will speak is if he's ranting about something or he's really interested in something. Otherwise, he's in his own little world & most of the time won't respond back to whoever speaks to him. I've asked my boyfriend numerous times if his son doesn't like me or if he doesn't like it that we moved in because I feel like I'm getting the cold shoulder. His response is that his son just always acts like that. I've gotten tired of trying to engage him in conversation so I just totally ignore him unless I absolutely have to talk to him. My boyfriend did admit here recently that his son is ignoring everyone way too much.
Also, it annoys the hell out of me & my DDs when his dad will make his plate for him at every single meal. The boy is 12, not 2! I've mentioned it to my boyfriend several times that if my DD10 can make her own plate than so can his son. He stopped it for a little while but is back to doing it. It infuriates us because the son seems to "expect" someone to make his plate. He will walk up to the table & if his plate is not made & sitting in front of his chair, he will either just go back to his room or will stand there until his dad makes him a plate. I absolutely refuse to make his plate. He has 2 arms & 2 legs so he can do it. I learned the hard way one time about leaving my plate unattended for a minute when the son is at home because he grabbed my plate & started eating.
Most of the time, his son just lays around in his bed playing on his tablet. He is always losing track of time despite having an alarm clock next to his bed plus the time is on his tablet. I will tell him that supper is ready & it takes him an hour to actually get out of his bed to go eat. He also will wait until the last minute to take a shower before it's time to go to bed. His dad told him twice in one night last week to take a shower before me & my DDs came home from church around 8:15. He ended up having to wait until my DDs finished their showers. Last night, I told him that there was pizza on the stove. It took him over an hour to finally get his lazy butt out of the bed to eat. Then, 5 minutes before it was time to go to bed, he realizes that he forgot to shower. He showers real quick & then heads back into the kitchen to get more food to eat despite me telling him that it's already bedtime & he needs to go to bed.
So, I guess what I'm wanting to know is if I'm just going overboard with my ranting & shouldn't let my boyfriend's son's behavior get the best of me or what. Thanks for any & all advice.
I guess it depends on what
I guess it depends on what you really want? When my SD lived with us, she stayed in her room most of the time on her phone or watching TV or whatever. The rest of the time she was off at GBM or a friend's house. That was AOK with me as she and I didn't really get along. So the less I had to see of her the better. DH would do the same crap as yours... I'd make dinner, he'd dish up a plate for the 15!! year old and deliver to her in her room. It made me sick, but it was one of those things, I just decided to let go.
I decided to let a lot of things go for my sanity and the health of my marriage. Like SD nasty sty of a room. I would just shut the door.. out of sight out of mind. Any of her crap I found in common areas of the house, I would simply toss in her room and shut the door. If she had 5 piles of dirty laundry in her room, oh well. Not my problem. And let me tell you, once her stupid antics became solely DH problem? He got mighty tired of it mighty fast.
The only things I cared about were if she was doing something that affected our BS or if she was doing something that involved money that was potentially coming out of my pocket. Other than that? Didn't care. Not my kid not my problem. Maybe you just need to disengage?
DaizyD is spot on with her
DaizyD is spot on with her advice...
stop trying to engage with the boy and stop trying to be his parent. So what if his Daddy plates up for him? So what if he does not eat when Daddy is not there, not your kid and not your problem.
House rules are easy, shower time 19:00, dinner 19:30... if SS is not there for dinner so be it, you simply clear the kitchen and pack away the food, if he comes down later for food and does not clean, guess who's going to get some cold water early morning in his face to go and clean... either SS or DH, not your responsibility to clean after him and not your daughters responsibility...
Another good house rule - internet will be switched off 22:00 every night, Friday and Saturday 23:00. Also only be switched on after home work is done
but remember, SS is not you kid and not your problem, what ever his Daddy wants to do for him, none of your business, you have no responsibility teaching this boy anything, disengage...
Thanks for the info DaizyDuke
Thanks for the info DaizyDuke & Acratopotes!
I have been slowly disengaging for a while now. When the meal is done, I just leave the room to either spend some time outside or I go to my bedroom. I've just gotten really tired of seeing him lay out his son's plate, cup & utensils for him like if he's royalty every single time. I usually wait until his son is done eating before I eat at the table because I can't stand watching him wait on his son hand & foot like if he's some sort of servant to his son.
I plan on putting up the food ASAP after me & my DDs are finished eating. He's very lazy so if he has to actually get the food out of the fridge to fix his own plate when his dad is away at work, he might actually get his butt up off his bed sooner, but I highly doubt it.
When his dad is at home, he tries hard to be a little saint. But, on the nights that his dad is at work, he waits until the last minute to take a shower when he really should be going to bed. I'm waiting until the right time to talk to my boyfriend about it because I don't want him to think that I'm "tattling" on his son about every single thing that his son does wrong. I don't need his son's behavior to create issues between us.
It's kinda hard to control the internet thing because my DDs have to use it to do their own homework since all of their assignments are on-line now. I did unplug the internet this past Friday when he spent the night & his dad was at work. He was suppose to go to bed at 10 like everyone else but he wouldn't listen to me & stayed on his tablet until I finally had enough & unplugged it at 11 pm. I was waiting for his dad to say something about his son sleeping so late but he never did because he ended up waking him up early to take him to his BM.
Your SS is getting close to
Your SS is getting close to the age where he should be starting to decide for himself how late to stay up. If he's tired at school, tough titties, I guess he'll have to figure out that he needs more sleep. It works as long as he's not allowed to skip school.
Why not send him to his
Why not send him to his mothers house when dad's out of town?
One thing you might want to
One thing you might want to consider doing, if you are waiting for "the right time" to talk to BF, is write the offenses of the little"king" as they occur in case his HIGHNESS tries to "rat you out" to dad first, so he can't claim you made it all up because you're mad.
As others have said, tell him when dinner is ready, if he doesn't come out then, the rest of eat put everything away. I, personally, have the rule that if you don't have the courtesy to eat it when it's ready, You Don't Eat At All! Unless there is a medical condition (I assume there's not or he'd eat at mealtime) he won't die if he misses a few dinners.
Don't try to engage him and if he tries to engage because he thinks he's missing out, avoid him til you're done then ask if he wanted something. If you are going to do something fun with your girls, you can either make sure he knows what you are doing and not invite him, Or if you can keep him from knowing just what you're doing, and can just call for him to come out (presumably to invite him along,haha) and when his doesn't respond, it's on him. After a time or two being left out from being rude he might(I said might) catch on. Working with developmentally disabled people, I've learned that seeing others getting praise or being rewarded can inspire one to "earn" what others are getting. Too bad the same method can't be used on DH's, lol.
Take care of those that actually want and need your care, yourself and your girls! Best of Luck!
Is this boy on the AS? sounds
Is this boy on the AS? sounds like it.
'It will take considerably
'It will take considerably longer than 4 months for all of you to adjust to this new arrangement' This is true. Aparently it takes 7 years for a family to 'blend'. I think that actually means it takes that long for all the drama of disagreements of living styles and personalities to pan out and for you to be left with the rubble of how it actually will be.
Thanks for all the
Thanks for all the responses!!! Sorry this is long, but I wanted to try to answer everyone in one post.
My boyfriend is a fireman so he works 24 hours on, 48 hours off. The reason his son lives with him during the week is because BM lives at the opposite end of the county & is too lazy to make sure the boy goes to school. If she has the boy during the week, she makes every excuse in the book as to why she can’t take the boy to school. BM is completely worthless. My DDs don’t go to the same school as his son so I drive them to school every single morning. The reason we have a set bedtime for everyone is so that everyone can get up on time in the mornings so that his son can catch the bus to his school & I can take my DDs to their school. I don’t have extra time in the mornings to take his son to school so he has to ride the bus plus my boyfriend isn’t at home 2 out of 3 mornings at the time that he needs to get up & catch the bus. Before I moved in, his son would go to his grandparents’ house a few doors down when he was at work. But, their health is rapidly declining so they can’t help him with his son anymore.
I’ve decided to just put up the food as soon as my DDs & I are done eating. If he’s hungry, then he can figure out how to make his plate from the food in the fridge. I’m not going to wait on him hand & foot. The reason that I’m complaining so much about how my boyfriend fixes his plate & lays everything out for him like he’s royalty (almost all the way down to putting the napkin in his lap) is because his son is expecting me to give him the same “royal” treatment when his dad is at work. His son will either sit or stand next to his spot at the table waiting on his dad to bring him his plate full of food, his cup full of drink along with a napkin & utensils. When his dad’s at work, the boy will just stand there watching me from his spot & then will ask me where’s his plate. I am not fixing his freaking plate!
During the 3 years that I have dated my boyfriend, if his son was actually at the house when I was there, he mainly stayed in his room & played by himself. I figured that he was just shy or that maybe his dad told him to give us some time alone. Most of the time I didn’t see his son because during the week I was busy with my DDs & their activities because I had them during the week & every other weekend. I’m not the only one that has complained about his behavior. His grandparents complain about the same things that I do.
I agree that there is some major adjustment to adding 3 females to the household. However, they have had numerous roommates live there over the years plus my boyfriend had a previous girlfriend live there with her DD so he should be use to having other people live in that house besides himself. At BM’s house, they have 7 people living there. When we moved in, we barely made any changes in the house other than cleaning out the spare room for my girls. Everything else in that house is exactly the same while the majority of my things are stored in our storage shed. If it takes 7 years for a family to “blend”, then almost all of the kids will be out of the house by that time including him.
I don’t know what you mean when you say “Is this boy on the AS?”. Can someone please fill me in?
Autism spectrum. Just
Autism spectrum. Just wondered because what you describe sounds a lot like my SS.
also I think you have a valid
also I think you have a valid point about the 'food plating' thing. When you have a group of children living under one roof you really have to treat them equally as much as you can and him treating his boy like royalty or a baby I would say is a problem in a blended family.
Has he talked to his son about all the changes? The problem is frequently that children think or are led to believe that 'nothing will change' but that is impossible in this situation. There will be changes and all children need to realise this. They have to learn to adjust and need a lot of help and guidance to do so.
Sit down with your DH and thrash this all out about how you are going to compromise to make this livable for everyone. If your DH is not willing to put the work in then you have a hard time ahead. Disengaging helps but its not always possible.
As far as I know, he's never
As far as I know, he's never been diagnosed with any sort of problems including autism spectrum. But, he's never been tested for anything like that either.
When my DDs see my boyfriend making his son's plate & laying it all out for him like royalty, they automatically think that his son is lazy & say that he must be a baby if he can't do something like that himself.
My boyfriend talked to his son numerous times before we moved in that there would be some changes going on because there would be more people in the house on a regular basis. According to my boyfriend, his son never had a problem with it. But, I'm wondering if his son even heard any of the conversations that his dad was having with him because it just seems to me that most of the time the son zones out when he's being talked to.
For right now, disengaging seems to help.....at least mentally for me & my DDs. I can tell from time to time that it bothers his son that we are disengaging because he tries to get our attention.