Hello. I am a soon to be step-mother of a 4 year old boy. I have been in a relationship with this father since the son was a month old, and have been close to this father for several years before that time. It has not always been easy, but we make it alright. We are planning on starting our own family once we are married in a couple of months so some things have been drawn to the light that I had overlooked before.

We only have my step-son every other weekend, a couple of nights weekly, and a couple of weeks during the summer. (Next year his summer time with us will triple.) While he is with us he does not have rules. He does not take naps and never has. He does not have a bedtime and never has. His dad has always slept on the couch when we have him because his son always gets up in the middle of the night to come to wherever someone else is. (Night lights didn't help. I know his mother use to allow this until she recently married, and at his grandparent's house he still gets to sleep in the bed with them.) My fiance's theory is the later he stays up the later he will sleep in and allow me to sleep. I know that when we have kids they will be sharing a room until we have completed our built house and so there will be issues with one kid not having a bedtime while the other does and just different rules. I have talked to my fiance about this concern and his response is that when there is another kid that his rules will change and he will have a bedtime. To me thought kids need structure, and it would be easier to start now then to wait when we have a baby there that could easily be woken up when someone is not happy about a bed time.

Another problem area we have is that my step son is spoiled to the core. Every Christmas and Birthday his father spends $300 and up just on a big gift...last year he got a four-wheeler for his 3rd birthday. This past Christmas he got an inflatable jump house from his grandma that we have only gotten out on one occasion because we just are busy with doing other things on the weekends we have him. His dad now tells me he wants to get him a large inflatable water slide for his birthday, in which the cheapest thing I found was $350. Now, we have a boat and lake house so there is only 1 or 2 weekends out of the summer he is actually at home and that is usually due to bad weather...I don't see how it would be used that much. Secondly, with paying for the party and everything else that already cost us an easy $100-200...to me that is just too much. We don't have any friends or family who go that far out for birthdays. When I tried to talk to my fiance about watching what we spend on my step-son because I will not be doing all of this for our kids later on, I was told that it didn't matter because we would already have it all. When I said we could still needed to get our kids some nice things, but not for every time a present is expected, I was told that they (our future kids) would just have to get over it.(Also, his grandparents are also getting him a iPod touch for his birthday...after he shattered an old cell phone after having it 30 minutes.

I do not mean to complain and gripe, but I do not know what to do or say in these situations. I know it is not the step-son's fault, and I understand why my fiance may do a lot of what he does because he does feel bad he can't be more active in his son's life...but to me my fiance and his parents have taken it too far. I do not know what kind of adult he will turn in to. Sometimes I think he is doing it because he feels bad, and then other times I think he is trying to win over his son't affection by out-doing his ex. I don't feel I have a place to say anything so I try to stay quite, but this eats at me more and more every day. If I didn't love my fiance with every bone of my body, I don't know if I could do this. I am worried about my future kids and what relationship they will have not only with their dad but their half brother and grandparents as well. Will they resent one or all of them because of seperate treatment or am I over-worrying and it will change some once we actually have a kid here. (He does agree that we will have to at least split what we spend between all the kids once there is more than one.)

I don't feel I have a right to tell them they "grandparents and fiance" doing too much, and no he is too young for that or why don't you wait until he is old enough to really apprecaite it...what do I do and how can I more easily handle this?

Thanks.