Biological mama drama
Hello, all!
Allow me to preface this post with the following disclaimer - I consider myself the luckiest lady in the world to have my partner's seven-year-old daughter in my life. It's like I got the best boyfriend ever... with a bonus!
That said, I'm not too crazy about kiddo's mom. I can set aside my own personal differences with her - such as the fact that she was gossiping about me with her friends for the entirety of her child's birthday - for the sake of the little girl we both love. I even do my best to look past the way she treats my partner - like an incompetent babysitter to his own child. However, I worry that some of her behavior negatively impacts her daughter.
For instance, take today. It's Memorial Day. We usually keep kiddo on the weekends, and this weekend we took her to see his family. She had a great time. However, we asked if we could drop her off on the way home and mom said she'd come get her later. That was at 10 AM. It's currently 30 minutes until kiddo's bedtime, and no sign of mom. This isn't an isolated incident. She pulled the same stunt on Mother's Day.
Don't get me wrong; I love kiddo, and I relish every moment I get to have her around. You can probably tell that I'm a bit attached. I don't have kids; she's like a daughter to me.
But I'm not her mother. This other person is. And this other person - a teen mom - seems to enjoy the "time off" from her kid every weekend too much to come get her at a reasonable time. She pretty much only sees her M - F in the mornings and M - Th in the evenings, considering she leaves her with a babysitter until 7 on schooldays "to let her play with other kids."
I worry that kiddo is getting the idea that her mom doesn't want her around, and I can only speculate as to the kind of emotional damage that causes. Further, this person seems to get pleasure out of the fact that her kid misses her. We see her at kiddo's soccer games (side note - mom signed her up and makes us take her all the way out to VA and pay for snacks, etc). Whenever it's time to go (back home with us), mom will pull kiddo aside and baby-talk to her. Then kiddo bursts into tears because she wants to go home with mom.
There is so much more I could vent about, but my chief concern is my worry that kiddo feels unwanted. If I could be her mother, I would in a heartbeat. But I'm not her mother. And I'm not in a place to tell her mother to get her head out of her ass and be there for her kid.
But I can talk to her kid when these outbursts happen. My question is this: What do I say?
Stick with the facts. It is
Stick with the facts.
It is daddy's time and you have to come with daddy and me. We want you with us during daddy's time.
Keep it age appropriate. As SD gets older you can expand on the facts and begin using them to counter TeenMom's toxic manipulative crap.
IMHO of course.
Good luck.
Thank you! Perhaps you can
Thank you! Perhaps you can help me with the other side of this coin. My SO gets really depressed when SD (see.. I'm catching on to the abbreviations...slowly) has these outbursts. I realize there's not a whole lot I can do...but is there?
We deal with something
We deal with something similar here. It takes until it gets to tears for the "I miss Mama!" to start, but yea... that's fun. Our home is a lot like yours, a bit more structured and not so heavy on the spoiling. If they see something they want, we hear "Mama will buy this for us," or "We went there with Mama!" I'm working on my zen there but trying *not* to roll my eyes is rather difficult.
For us, the advantage is that they are much better behaved for us. Ours would scream about leaving BM's at 2 and 3 but that seemed to wane when they were 4 and we don't hear much of it now that they're 5. Maybe it will just take a little longer? They could grow out of it... I hope.