I'm a step dad and my wife feels like I love my bio son more than my stepson.
I have been married to my wife for 2 years now. I first met my stepson when he was 4 years old, and is now 7. I didn't think about all of the issues that come up with being a step parent when I married my wife. I just felt I would do my best to be a good husband, and a good step father. It didn't take long for my step son to start calling me daddy. Then we went through the stages of him talking about his "real" dad, and calling me his "other dad". Which that all bothered my wife more than it bothered me. I told him he can call me whatever he wants, and that I'm good with it all. As for getting along with my step son, it hasn't been bad at all. After he comes back from his dads during the summer, things take a while to get back to normal, but that's to be expected. (I came from a divorced family as well, so I know what it's like from the child's perspective.)
A month ago, my wife gave birth to our new baby boy. This was my first biological son, and being able to experience his birth was such an amazing blessing to me. My step son acted out a little bit with the new arrival, but took things rather well, and actually has been an amazing older brother to him. When my bio-son arrived we had plans in place for a big cookie cake to be delivered for him to the hospital while he was visiting, and he also got some new toys to play with from his mom, his new brother, and myself. We definitely didn't want him to feel neglected or left out.
Now there have been some issues of course, dealing with my step son's bio dad, school problems, and teaching my step son how to act and behave (I feel he was allowed to do anything and act however he wanted while it was just his mom and him). This new situation has really threw me for a loop though. I was trying to tell my wife that my step son seemed to really be needing some mom/son time. Since she is still breastfeeding it's not like she can do anything he wants to do like go out for an afternoon with her. So there are some smaller things that I recommend they do like read together, and play games at home together. What is happening though is she would rather me read with him (reading is considered working on his schooling because we may have to hold him back a year) because he doesn't focus on it with her like he does with me, and then both of their fuses are gone by the end of it. I have been trying to work on building his...lets call it self confidence up....because he can't seem to do anything by himself. He has to always be around someone, always has to have someone occupy his attention, and can never seem to play by himself in his room or backyard for longer than a couple of minutes (even before the baby arrived). I was trying to explain to my wife that it seems like she has me do things with him not only for us to bond, but that way she doesn't have to do it at all (the studying and going outside to play basketball in 99 degree weather for example). And that even though it's not easy doing his tutoring with him, it's important that she doesn't just have me do it all the time. Basically, what this has turned into is my wife now won't talk to me because she thinks I don't want to help out with anything, AND (this is the part that infuriates me) thinks that I love our new son and would treat him differently if my bio-son was the same age as my step son.
I can't stand her thinking like that especially after all I have done for my step son. No matter what we do, we cannot get his bio dad to help him with school work, and thinks we took him out of t-ball to keep him away from him, when we really took him out of t-ball because we needed more time study on school in the evenings, especially when he's gone for the whole weekend. I've always tried my hardest to make him feel like he was my first born son, and my wife has never had an issue with it until now. My wife has told me before how lucky he is to have a dad like me now that we were married. I love my step son, and I love my bio son. Having said that I do feel like it is a different type of love, but one in no way, shape, or form is one over the other. I feel like she doesn't understand my view, or doesn't care to try to understand it since she has never felt what it is like to be a step parent.
Is anyone else in a similar situation as this or have any insight, opinions, advice?
It would be an absolute
It would be an absolute rarity for anyone to love their skid(s) as much as their bio kids and putting pressure on yourself to do that is unrealistic.
I mean this in the nicest way - your wife needs a bit of a reality check on how this stuff works.
She does have a breast pump,
She does have a breast pump, but doesn't like to keep very much milk in the fridge. Most of it goes into the freezer, which is good long term, but doesn't keep any on hand for short notices. But yes that could be what she's doing.
She wants him to have some kind of activity to do each day. Like on Monday take him to the jump park, Tuesday go bowling, Wednesday go to top golf. Which I feel like he could find more things to do at home. Which when we do things at home it's usually with me playing basketball.
He gets tons of physical
He gets tons of physical activity. That's honestly all he does is sports. So much that he doesn't care about his school work at all. Which we think both are important for him. His tball team was just a regular city recreation team, nothing that was along the lines of recruiting kids or anything, but for 6 and 7 year old kids the coach wanted to have 3 2-3 hour practices a week and that didn't include game days. My SS was getting tired of it anyway since they were trying to teach them where the force is, instead of just hitting, catching, and running. We didn't take t-ball away as a punishment. By the time school was over, played with him since he had been in school all day, go over his books and words, make and eat dinner, then have him take a bath, we barely got anytime to just spend with him relaxing.
He's still in basketball, golf, disc golf, and works out with me when I get the time to at the house. I agree that if you take the kids away from her she really doesn't have anything else she really likes to do. I've brought that up before in counseling, but it really hasn't gone anywhere.
I want my step son to have fun and do all the sports he wants to, but I also don't want him to hate school. When he doesn't understand something he get's frustrated and shuts down. So that's why we are trying to work with him more on that in the time that we can. Between him getting overwhelmed at school, then the lack of help in that dept we get from his bio dad (bio dad is great with sports, hunting, and fishing), then you can only do so much in one day, and then it creates a rift between my wife and I since we are stressed trying to help him out. I know she wishes she could spend everyday with him, but she's not going to come between him and his bio dad. I've been able to talk to her about that. We even let his bio dad take him to football or basketball games on our time with him if we don't have any plans of our own with him.
T-ball is during the school
T-ball is during the school year. The bowling and jump park that I was talking about are during the summer right now when we have plenty of time for that. Sorry should have said that in the original post.
I guess I should have
I guess I should have clarified this whole situation in my original post. My wife has full custody of my step son. We do not keep him from his father at all. We even let him see him on our scheduled time. His father does take him to do these activities every time he sees him, unless he's out of town and is left with his dads parents. If I said previously that his father doesn't take him to do these things, then thats my fault, but he does. I also take him to do the same activities, because that's what he loves to do when he wants to play.
I haven't gone completely into the relationship of the father and my SS. I was asking how to approach the problem that my wife thinks I put my own son first and a priority over her BS. I feel like you are viewing the situation as us withholding him from his actual father. Which couldn't be further from the actual truth. His father can go two weeks at a time without calling a single time, hasn't picked him up for his regularly scheduled weekends and hasn't contacted us about not being able to get him, and still doesn't send a lunch or lunch money with his son to school with him when it's his time to take him.
Also, I do want to do these things too with my SS. I love that kid, and he is like my own child. I'm not trying to be his one and only dad. I'm not going to get in the way of their relationship, or try and take it over for myself.
No, she's not making it up.
No, she's not making it up. My wife made sure I have access to her phone and emails and everything, even though I told her I didn't want any of it. She even put my fingerprint on her phone so I could unlock it that way. I've read the messages from him, heard him on the phone, and seen the way he acts.
My complaint was more of her needing to spend time with her bio son as well as take care of the newborn. It's only been a month and I know the father is mainly there to support everyone. I just don't see how out of the blue she thinks one child means more to me than the other especially after all I've done for my step son.
His bio dad is very on and off. There will be a week where he will call him several times that week, but then he can go two weeks after that and not call/facetime/text. My wife calls him every evening when he is with his bio dad. Thats just being a mom to me, maybe a little much, but she loves him and just wants to talk. I tell her to hold off, because during FaceTime calls you can see him look to his dad to see if he can answer a question or not, and it may be as simple as "What did you do today?" They got into a big argument back and forth because it got to the point where neither one of them were answering each others calls. I tend to stay out of their relationship, but I stepped in and told both of them they're just hurting their time with their son, and making it harder on him. Which that seemed to get things back to normal if that's what you would call it.
I'm sure he feels cut off from his son. I would if I were in his situation. I've seen him lie about so many things I can't fully trust anything he says though. When he said they were disc golfing all weekend, we found out my step son was with his grandfather, while he was out of state bar hopping and watching golf. I just know if I only had a set number of weekends with my child I would want to be with him as much as possible. I'm not saying he's an absentee father, but he definitely isn't there all the time.
I get frustrated when I tell him we may have to hold him back a year, and the next thing he says is "Ok" or "I'll bring him his ball from my house to use during warmups on Saturday before the game." Now this is just me, but I would have asked "Why?", "What's he struggling at?", or "Is there anything I can do to help him out?" I struggled in school, and I know his father did, too. And that's the whole reason I want to work with him on school stuff as well. I know teachers are there to teach the kids, but they aren't the ones responsible for raising them. I feel it's my job as a father to make sure he understands what he has learned at school, and to get better at it, just like I work with him on getting better at basketball or some other interest he has.
No one has sold me on the
No one has sold me on the father only being there for support, because I never thought that in the first place.
She put it on her phone while I was driving. I let her have my hand after her asking over and over and over. I don't go looking through her phone. You just assumed that. If she gets in an argument she will show me especially if the boy is around, because we don't talk about differences with the father in front of him. I don't want to look in anyones phone except my own.
I talk with her about his education because he gets help from me, too. I want to help him out when he needs help. The kid is 7, I'm not going to sit there and say, "sorry that's not my place" to a 7 year old kid who needs help, and will take it.
Although I'm not his biological dad, I am involved in his life. I'm not trying to raise him the way I will raise my own son. Like you've said before he has a mother and he has a father and I'm not him. I can help him out if he wants help, I can play basketball with him if he wants to play basketball, it's having fun with him, not trying to convert him over to my own blood.
We didn't check up on anything. We have friends who are mutual friends with his father that's how we found out. Haven't you ever asked your kid what they did a day when you aren't with them? Or what they did at school? Or is that too intrusive? Just because she asks what he did, doesn't mean she's looking for some kind of intelligence to use later on.
I can understand what you were saying about the child hoarding earlier on. I'm going to bring it up to her, because I had never really thought about it like that.
I don't care if you're nice about it or not. I left all my feelers in my sock drawer. Sorry to say no participation stars here.
This sounds like it has a
This sounds like it has a component of Dad of newborn feeling left out, doing all the peripheral chores while Mom breastfeeds. This is a temporary phase which of course will pass, and her appearing to hog the baby is really just the natural necessity. Once the kid.is off the nozzle you'll have plenty of time with him.
As I recall, my own experience in b-feeding two sons was that 1. It completely physically drained me and left me practically useless for anything else for about three months. 2. There was no point in passing newborn to Dad since baby screamed unless he was asleep or feeding. 3. Dad was helpful in taking baby for stroller walks to give me some peace because that kept baby asleep.
I see you have a complication with SS being a bit of an annoying attention seeker. Well done trying to get him reading, it is not easy with some kids, and you are doing something really useful in that. It could be you have more foresight about the importance of this being important than do his parents, since a lack of learning will come back to bite all of you later if neglected. Do it because you are a good man, with no thought of thanks from the bios.
All I can say is, be as flexible as you can in the chore sharing while in the newborn phase. Remember it takes 9 months to lroduce the baby, and takes almost as long for her body to revert to really feeling energetic again.
Just don't let the relationship flounder because you are having a difficult period where your partner is not really in a position to put her full effort into "normal" day to day arrangements. She may seem fine at times, but I'm sure she is sleep deprived and therefore not firing on full cylinders.
What SMforever said. Food
What SMforever said. Food for thought:
Well done on developing a bond with your SS. It's good he spends time with biodad too.
Your DW is 1 month postpartum. She (and you) are sleep deprived and the hormones haven't settled yet. Don't read too much into the situation.
Yes, she can pump some breast milk and take her DS7 to the park for a few hours when she is ready.
I appreciate your concern about his development. However the kid is 7. When I was growing up we didn't get homework until grade 4. I'm more concerned he doesn't have time with other kids his age. Is it possible biodad has a point about wanting him in tball? Unless he needs specific help with a learning disability I'm not sure what kind of "studying" a 7 year old is being asked to do.
Reading together at any age is great. If he especially enjoys this with you why not keep on doing it? Even as he gets older reading age appropriate books together or as a family can continue to be a fun activity.
What grade is he in? Boys really do not mature as fast as girls and many boys have done much better starting school a year late. I sometimes wish I had done so with my DS now 26. Do you think holding him back now would take some of the pressure off?
I've had 3 babies and this too shall pass!
I'm all for having him
I'm all for having him interact with other kids. He definitely needs more of it. Our decision to quit baseball was not 100% just on school. It wasn't fun for him anymore, because the coach was way too technical for a group of 5-8 year olds. He would get frustrated in practices because they were standing there listening, instead of throwing/hitting/running. All the other sports he is involved in, his biodad is involved with those sports as well, stayed in tact.
He is in 1st going into 2nd, if his tutoring goes well. He doesn't have a learning disability, but like a good majority of kids, he does not like school haha. The studies he had to do during the school year was mainly reading, but they also had spelling tests every week. A lot of the words were in the books they needed to read for the week, so it went hand in hand. He does have a temper, and it comes out any time we have to study. So where studying time is supposed to last maybe 30 minutes, it can take almost 2 hours sometimes. We try to brake it up into intervals so we don't burn him out though. We also don't want him falling too far behind, which he was pretty far behind where we were hoping to have him at the end of the year.
I think my wife is on board with holding him back a year after having a few months to think on it. We still want to see where he is at the end of the summer before we make that decision. We don't want to hold him back unless it's truly necessary, because it will take him further from some really good friends. I know he'll make plenty new ones, he's an extremely social lil man. My wife just doesn't want to do anything that upsets him, even though in the end it is probably going to benefit him greatly.
I don't love my stepkids like
I don't love my stepkids like I love my children nor should you. Tell your wife her son already has a father and you are the father to your son.
I think your wife is probably
I think your wife is probably hitting a bit below the belt in this instance. I remember not sleeping the first six weeks after having a kid, so she might be a little bit insane right now.
She can't do it all and is feeling the pressure to do it all. It's a rough time. I'd get practical with some things though.
1. Quiet time. While the baby has his long nap (hoping there is a long nap, usually it's around midday), the 7 year old can do something quietly. Reading, puzzles, lego listening to music, whatever. In his room or, if in a shared area, with the explanation that it is an hour (can work up to two) for the adults to be together and recharge. And that the adults will not be talking to him for that time, it is time for him to be on his own. Enforce this - it is the only way I am not still insane after having had my kid.
2. Reading together - absolutely wonderful! Look at your family routines and change the story so that reading together is a reward and a joy for everyone. I tell my kid that she gets an extra story when she's really fast to get ready for bed. Or if I'm working on her being more gentle with the cat, she gets an extra story before lunch and before dinner if she was gentle in the morning/afternoon.
3. Instead of basketball, an idea might be to take the baby and the 7 year old and go for a walk. Time for you and the 7 yo to connect, for the baby *and* mom to relax.
Look for the grain of truth in what she says, but remain a bit detached. She's got her own worries and agenda and is maybe not really aware of the big picture atm.
Your wife doesn't want much,
Your wife doesn't want much, does she? She's got a guy who totally engages in responsible and loving ways with her son, is a caring and supportive husband, and is delighted to have his own baby. But she wants more.
She wants him to take over all parenting of her "that new baby smell has worn off" older child while she cuddles with a squishy little new love.
Stop feeling guilty. You've done more than your share. You are not required to love your skid at all let alone more than your own baby.
Since she can only tell you you're not doing enough instead of appreciate you, tell her you're sorry you just can't get it right so you'll defer to her from now and won't do anything at all for ss since you're apparently not qualified. You'll focus on your own child. It's called disengagement.
Thank you all for the insight
Thank you all for the insight and advice, I really appreciate it.
Your wife is suffering from
Your wife is suffering from post partum psychosis would be my guess. Better to humor her and give it some time. You cant rationalize with crazy so don't even try.
Not that I have a clue what I am talking about in this situation. I have no BKs and have not been around a pregnant or post partum woman since my youngest brother was born nearly 50 years ago.
Good luck and congrats to you, your bride, and big bro on the new baby.
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