:?
So I'm realizing more and more that a lot of the frustrations I have with my step-daughter who is 3, stem from her absent-minded father. I love my fiance dearly and we all have a great relationship but he often is so clueless it frustrates the heck out of me. We have full custody of his daughter and she calls me mommy. Her real mother is not in the picture so we are the two who care for her all the time but I feel like I do a lot more than he does. He's even admitted on numerous occasions that he feels I put a lot more effort in than he does. He just doesn't even notice half the time when his own daughter is behaving badly. As a result I am constantly the bad guy because I always catch her when she's misbehaving. I just don't know how to tell him he needs to pay more attention without sounding mean. Sometimes it's even just things he forgets to do that seem so basic to me. He just doesn't check on her enough and often just doesn't even think before saying something to her and then I have to spoil everything by being the bad guy. Simple things like taking her rainboots off once she's home rather than letting her roam all over the carpet for an hour before I notice, not giving her soda or juice after 7pm or she gets hyper and won't sleep, feeding her dinner before giving her ice cream... I know he loves her and just wants to make her happy but as a result she often favors him and gives me attitude since she feels I spoil the fun. I just want an equal share in the fun as well as the discipline rather than it being so one-sided. So many of the things I do for her are all things that a mother would do for any child but these go unnoticed. I re-decorated her whole room spending half my tax refund on it along with about 4 hours of furniture building but she barely wants to be in there and she can't appreciate how much work went into that. But daddy hands her an otter pop and he's the greatest thing ever. I'm just feeling really bummed because I wish I could be her hero a bit more often and I really do try hard to make her happy. I just don't believe in raising a rude, bratty, spoiled child. She already runs to daddy when I give her an answer she doesn't like and I'm often overturned or he makes a compromise with her which totally negates what I told her previously. I also come accross as a pain since I often have to tell her to watch where she's going, to sit properly in her chair, not waive her utensils around where she could poke her eye... He often tells me I need to relax but she has had loads of accidents from doing these exact things which is why I am trying to remind her so they don't happen again. One time she rocked so far back in her chair that she smashed her head into the sliding glass window behind her and cried like crazy. I'm just trying to prevent her from getting hurt but it comes accross as being uptight... I guess I just can't win.