Needing some advice
This is my first time on this site and I'm so glad I found it! Here's a little background: I have two girls ages 10 and 12 and 7 months ago we were granted full custody of my SD's who are 10, 13 & 17. All of the kids get along for the most part. The problem is that I feel like I've taken the responsibility on with little help. I make all of the meals, keep schedules,get the four younger girls up and staying on track to go to school, I take the younger two to school every morning, take them all to doctors, dentists, orthodontist, make all of the appointments, make sure they all have what they need when needed and I've picked up a lot of the additional financial responsibility. Discipline, I'm more authoritative and DH is more permissive. We made rules together but I'm the only one who ever enforces them... With BD's! I verbally correct SD's if they are being mouthy or disrespectful but I don't discipline them because I feel like it is DH's responsibility. His 10y/o gets away with everything and any time I bring it up to him he turns on me and we end up fighting. No matter the topic, if I'm upset about something he just doesn't get it and either turns it around on me or we fight and I just drop it. I feel like I'm good enough to be needed, to do everything for everyone, but not to be appreciated or respected. Sometimes I feel like I'm not even allowed to have feelings or an opinion but it sure is ok for me to do everything for everyone! 
I don't know how to fix this? We can't even communicate effectively, and I'm trying so hard to make it one family but there are separate rules....Confusing and frustrating!
Thank you for your replies.
Thank you for your replies. No I don't discipline his children. He and I sat together and wrote out house rules and we discussed them as a family. I am the only one who has enforced them with my BD's. DH and I both work full time but I do everything for all 5 kids. I realize "He"has custody of them, but for all practical purposes "WE" do. Like I said, I do everything for them. I registered then for school, made/make all appointments, the 17 y/o drives my car that I pay for and we bought another family vehicle. I'm trying to make it our family and not have separate rules and expectations. I do agree with pp who suggested counseling. We've only been married for 10 months, and I know we are all adjusting and these are big changes but man! I do need his support and backing and what was the point of going over rules with no intention of enforcing them? When I mention it to him he gets mad and says what do you want me to do? He gets mad, accuses me of being bossy and controlling. I feel like someone has to make sure there us structure and order. It's my home too, I feel like I should have some say. Idk maybe my expectations are unrealistic?!
Not sure why just seven
Not sure why just seven months ago Dh got custody but now that he has custody, he has to be a father. He doesn't get to just bring in three children the ages of 10-17 and say 'here new wife, raise my kids for me'. On the other hand, he also doesn't get to just bring in these three kids and let them do as they please nor get angry at you for bringing it up.
He either parents his children who are now living in the household, or he STFU and lets you discipline/correct all the kids in the same manner. No way can you have five girls between 10 and 17 living in one house with different rules and expectations...talk about a set up for a nightmare. "What do you want me to do"? Well for starters you want him to start parenting his children or at least back you up in assuring everyone is following the same walk and talk so to say.
While the bulk of appointments setting and school enrollment ect are primarily an adult duty (his, yours or a combination of the two), why are YOU doing all the work around the house? No. No. No. You work fulltime (as does he) and you both have a total of five kids who are quite old enough to take on some of the routine daily/weekly household necessities. Kids can take turns helping with kitchen duties, main living area tasks blah blah. They all can be doing their own personal laundry, their own bedrooms, and picking up away themselves. DH and you can take turns doing things like grocery shopping or running out to get what kids need for school assignments or whatever. Or assign one parent does this, one parent does that. Whatever works for the two adults.
Yu have a household with two adults an five pre-teen to teens in it. Everyone must chip in. Everyone must cooperate. Hell, if you'd of wanted five children all on your own you'd of had five not two. He wanted three children, he got them. Now he truly has them and living with him. Nope. Daddy doesn't get to check out or toss up his hands and say 'what do you want me to do?' indicating he can't handle his role.
Counseling my help. In the meantime he is expected to not only help with the household duties and children's needs, he is also expected to see to it his children are meeting their expectations. This marriage nor this household are going to last if only one parent and two children are pulling all the weight and following the rules. He either has to step up or he will in the end find himself raising three kids all by himself some place else. Blending families isn't easy, lots of bumps and sudden hic-ups but it isn't going to work at all unless he and his kids do their part to try and make it work.
Twoviewpoints: Thanks for
Twoviewpoints: Thanks for your response. Prior to him having full custody they lived with their mom and we only had them every other weekend since she lives an hour away. Due to her moving all of the time, drug use, not keeping a job etc.. We filed for DH to get custody. They are absolutely better off with us. I do have a chore board and the 3 older girls do dishes one day a week and they all fold and put up their own clothes. The oldest washes her own sometimes and once a week they help with other chores. I think just being mom, I stepped into the role. I'm trying to show all of the girls what moms are supposed to do and give them structure and stability because they've never had that. So today we got into an argument and I decided I would just stay to myself the rest of the day. My two are at their dads so, I made lunch, did some picking up and laundry but am leaving him to tend to the kids. I just hate that I feel frustrated, angry and often resentment toward him and his youngest. Sometimes when I say something to her she just ignores me and doesn't answer. Well I think it's very disrespectful and truthfully, as an adult, I expect a child to answer when spoken to! When I ask something of any of them, I always say please and thank you, I treat them the way I expect to be treated! The older two almost always say thanks for dinner or whatever but the 10 y/o, rarely and if she doesn't want to speak she doesn't. DH says it's just her, I can't make her talk! I think...YES you can, you don't deliberately ignore an adult!
I think just being mom, I
I think just being mom, I stepped into the role.
No, don't take the blame for this. That is not what happened. This happens by design. Dad finds "new Mom," marries her, and goes after custody. He is using you. Doesn't mean he doesn't love you, but he is using you.
Thanks for the reply
Thanks for the reply onthefence2. I'm going to step back some and he'll have to take charge with the kids. It's hard for me to do that since I tend to be more of a take charge person. I have to though or things will never get better. We will have to go to counseling too!
Wow Sueu2....As stated, I am
Wow Sueu2....As stated, I am looking for advice and suggestions. Venting and seeking advice, I thought that was the point of the forum?! It's a new situation for me so I wanted to get advice from others who may be in a similar situation. Thanks for your input!
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for your reply.
Skeeter: we do have a dry
Skeeter: we do have a dry erase board and the chores are listed there. I rotate the bigger chores between the 5 girls once a week but washing dishes they have set days. The 3 older girls wash M-W and I do the rest. I never really thought about including DH, just assumed since he doesn't cook he would at least do dishes but that doesn't happen unless I get frustrated when he doesn't just do it on his own. I'll have to bring that idea up. Thanks for the suggestion.
Sorry, but "I'll have to
Sorry, but "I'll have to bring up that idea" no no no no no.
TELL him - listen buddy, there needs to be some changes around here, step up or this family is going to fall apart.
This is what I NEED from you going forward:
1. SD10 - you NEED to make her be respectful - that means pulling her up everytime she is rude or ignores me - you would not allow her to ignore any other adult this way, it should be even LESS acceptable to you that she treats me like that.
2. The rules. YOU and I sat down and made the rules, and they were explained to all the kids (did you also discuss consequences if the rules got broken?) I NEED you to start ensuring that ALL the children are following the rules. We have two options here - I am currently doing what all the step-parenting and blended family experts advise, which is parenting and disciplining my OWN kids and bringing it to your attention for YOU to deal with YOUR children. If I have to discipline your kids as well that will cause resentment and further issues. But by the same token WE set the rules and its not ok that only some of the kids are expected to follow them. So, when I discuss with you "adult equal partner to adult equal partner" that there ahs been an issue I NEED you to listen to me respectfully and then deal with the problem, NOT get angry with me.
3. Household division of labour is currently unfair. YOU need to step up and take on more of the household chores. here is a list of what I currently do. I propose that from now on you will be responsible for items a, b and c.
I WISH I had listened to Sueu2 3 years ago when I first came here. My rs is now over. Badly over, and I spent 3 years in hell hoping it would get better without doing the confronting stuff of demanding my OH respect and support me. Yes - she's blunt
and a lot of the people here can't get past that. But on the whole she speaks the truth.
Thanks Luchay! Yes, we did
Thanks Luchay! Yes, we did discuss consequences at the same time and we (I) explained that when they receive a consequence they need to own it and if they're mad, they need to be mad at themselves for their choices and make better choices next time. I do stand up to him and that's when we fight. He never gets where I'm coming from and thinks everything has to be my way. In a way that's true because currently I'm doing pretty much everything therefore I have a right to expect and ask for help. Right now I'm doing some disengaging and stepping back so he has to step up. Next is counseling!
Breaking it down a little
Breaking it down a little here so bare with me.
You both work full time, however it sounds as though you are married to a man that despite you working full time expects you to be responsible for the general "family" organisation and housework. From my point of view it seems a lot of your frustrations are coming from the fact that you feel that you are alone in dealing with running your household, taking care of 5 kids and trying to maintain your own work on top of it.
My fiance and I have totally different ideas when it comes to housework, he is quite happy to leave dishes out over night, heck even a day or two and it really doesnt bother him but me? I like the kitchen tidy before we go to bed.
We also both work full time and one of the things we did when our schedules were hectic was we made a chore list for ourselves, it might sound childish but for us it really helped. It was essentially the same chores but split over different days for each of us.
If you have a chore board already for the girls, theres nothing stopping you having one for you and your husband. (Our is just a simple print out with two columns thats stuck on the cupboard)
When it comes to managing getting to school, appointments etc that can be more difficult with a blended family as it depends what hours you both work. If you are both home during that morning time then he 110% needs to be up and helping farming the kids out. However if he is already at work or works night shifts and has just got to bed at that time then its not all that unreasonable to want you to handle that.
The same goes for after school, what time does he finish work? What does he do when he gets home?
My fiance has a heavy psychical job so when he gets home all he wants to do is sit down and have an hour or two chill, have dinner and then sort things out. Which is fine, when theres no kids around, reality is you cant do that with a housefull. So if your husband is happy coming home and leaving you to cook dinner, sort out and he just chill then frankly he needs a serious reality check.
You can try having another sit down conversation with him, lay it all out to him, that you dont have a problem helping with his kids but the point of this marriage is for you two to be a partnership and it feels that you are baring the brunt of the responsibility and you dont like that. Point it out to him about the chores and not following through with consequences but try to keep the conversation calm, people get very defensive and it can quickly turn to an argument. Remind him youve only been married a year, this should still be part of your honeymoon period yet you are feeling somewhat isolated here and you dont want to be.
SecondGeneration: You hit the
SecondGeneration: You hit the nail on the head. I've said to him a few times that I didn't sign up to be a single mom of 5. We both work during the day, he has to be at work at 7 and I at 8. We both get up at 6 and now he let's the dogs out then goes to get ready for work and we don't see him til he's on his way out. I usually can't get in the shower until 6:45 and the girls and I leave at 7:15. I like the idea of writing everyone's chores down including ours, seems like that might make things easier too.I think I'm going to start telling him so and so has this appointment or whatever it is and just tell him to take her, he can start figuring it all out!
So ever since I wrote this
So ever since I wrote this original post, I decided to sit back a little and just see how things would go if I wasn't as involved. Sunday night we had chili and he and the girls watched the Superbowl and I watched a movie in our room. Monday night we had leftovers and instead of serving up everyone's plate I had them get their own. The girls aren't allowed to have any food in their rooms and I asked at the table how everyone was doing with keeping candy etc out of their rooms. Initially they all said good so I said that's great, no one has food in their room! A little later his 10 y/o admitted she did but that she would bring it down. OK good, she was honest finally but bottom line she still broke the rule. DH did nothing and didn't say a word! The three older girls take turns with dishes and last night was the 17 y/o turn and she didn't do them yet was sitting around watching TV all night. So this morning I asked DH, do you know why she didn't do the dishes last night and he just said no. I said hmm, well they only do dishes one night a week... He hasn't said anything to her about it. Then right before he's ready to walk out the door to go to work she tells him she needs him to put air in the tire. So he does and now he's late for work. I said to him, didn't you just show her how to do it and tell her she needs to put air in it either at the gas station if she's out or at home? He said yeah and then I said but you're going to do it anyway when you're going to be late for work? He didn't respond and I just walked away. This stuff is really making me mad!! I just want to call her out and be like seriously! You're 17 y/o. But at the same time it's his fault and he is enabling her and babying her. I'm all for dads helping and bring a gentleman etc....but at the same time girls need to be able to do things for themselves! I'm trying to stay quiet and see how things go but man is it hard!!
Time to turn off the TV when
Time to turn off the TV when the teen has tasks to complete and keep your foot up her ass until it is done.
With my SS no matter what was on TV if he had tasks he would zombie any time he saw the screen. He would go into a trance like catatonic state just standing there staring at the screen. So either his mom or I would just turn it off until he walked away and then we would go back to watching what we wanted. TIVO is a great thing.
He used to get so irritated with us for turning it off and we would tell him that he was not nearly as irritated as we were that he was dragging ass and procrastinating.
We never let him "forget" a task. He did it either of his own initiative or with us ridding his ass. Either way he did it and he knew there was no getting out of it when it was supposed to be done.
I have zero tolerance for this crap with kids, particularly with teens. So, I win. Every time. Regardless of how much drama is caused by my forcing the issue. Better the drama caused by action than the soul rotting frustration of ignoring issues and suffering the same crap day in and day out.
IMHO of course.
Time for a ammendment to the
Time for a ammendment to the rules agreement. Grab DH by the short and curlies, sit him down with copy of an ammended rule list with a new opening line ***BOTH parents in this home will discipline consistently regarding the enforcement of all rules on this list.****
Both of you sign it then point at the rule that is currently being violated by one of his spawn and say "Get up and address it immediately!!!!"
Going forward if DH is not home then you discipline all violations of the rules regardless of the biology of the violating spawn. If DH is home you grab him by the short and curlies and he disciplines his and you discipline yours.
Of course if DH is home alone he enforces the rules on all present spawn. But, since he rarely does then you foot up his ass will provide the consistenly required when you are both home.
In these situations the more structured and assertive parent/partner must drive the action and force the participation of the other partner or the more engaged parent/partner just stews over the clueless inaction of the other partner and the entire family ultimately rotts from within.
IMHO of course.
Good luck.