Holidays
I have a stepdaughter who is 9 years old who cannot go on holiday with us without wanting to go home after 2 days. We have taken her twice a year in this country (UK) and all of us, herself included have a miserable time due to her wanting to go home to her mum. I have a daughter with my husband (stepdaughters dad) who is 4 and we wanted to take her abroad. Because of the nightmare time we have with stepdaughter wanting to go home and it ruins the holiday we decided we would take her abroad when she can go a bit longer without demanding to go home after two days therefore we decided we wouldn't take her on this trip. This clearly has not gone down well as she says she wants to come abroad with us. Her mum is taking her abroad twice this year, we have taken her on 3 holidays already in this country this year and my arguement is she is having twice as many holidays as everyone and should be grateful she is going away as often as she does. She is a very lucky girl who goes without nothing. She pretty much has anything she wants from us and bio mum and I can't help but feel my daughter gets less than she does because of two seperate families and I feel more sorry for her. I do get on well with stepdaughter but myself and my husband work really hard, long hours and I think we deserve a break without having it ruined two days in by her demands to go home. If this was the only time we would go away I would take her but as we take her on every other holiday we go on I don't think she is missing out. We have said to her that when she is older and can manage to be away from her mum for a period of time we would take her. But we pointed out that being in another country we would not be able to take her home and I think it would be worse as she knows she would be really far away from her mum not just a few hours drive. I would like your thoughts on this. Please be kind x
Thank you for your comments.
Thank you for your comments. I think I need to stop worrying, she certainly isn't going without and I think we have a right to do things without her and not feel guilty. She certainly doesn't feel guilty having a holiday without her half sister. Thank you.
I think 9 years old is way
I think 9 years old is way too old to start crying every time she is separated from her mother for more than 2 days. She's either doing this to manipulate you into doing what she wants to do, or her mother is raising her to be completely and totally dependent upon her. Either way, this will not improve unless your husband does something to change the dynamic here.
What does she do at home when he has visitation for longer than 2 days?
How often does he see this daughter?
If its often enough for him to actually be a parent he needs to start teaching her that she doesn't need to be attached to mommy by the hip at all times.
My SS had a great manipulation tactic where every time he was asked to do something he didn't want to do he threw a hysterically crying "I want my mommy" tantrum. It didn't matter how long it had been since he'd seen his mommy either. It could have been an hour ago or two weeks ago. It just meant he was told it was bedtime or time to brush his teeth or whatever and was trying to get us to coddle him instead of following through. This was met with an explanation about how his mommy would expect him to do the exact same thing we were asking if she was present and an explanation of the next time he could expect to see her. Any further "I want my mommy" wailing was ignored or caused him to lose things he wanted just like all other tantrum and manipulative behavior does. This happened when we only had weekends during the year. He doesn't do this anymore.
Now, this problem got more interesting when my SS came to us for the summer for 10 weeks straight. Immediately upon arrival he began screaming "My mommys gone! My mommy is dead! You took my mommy away!" He then reverted to this behavior every night when he was told it was bedtime. Now, its not just a kid being manipulative. Now its a kid with an abusive whack job of a mother who is trying to ensure he stays completely and totally dependent on her and that he is miserable whenever he's out of her sight. This was handled through frequent discussions about how could his mommy be on the phone if she was gone, and how could his mommy visit him at daycare if she was dead? Also some explanations of what lying is, and why its bad behavior. And some brief explanations of codependence and custody arrangements broken down to "mommytime" and "daddytime" that im sure he doesn't understand anyway. This together with occasional reminders of exactly where his mommy is even if he cant see her (and asking where the dog is when he cant see her, where his grandma is when he cant see her, where daddy is when he's at work) and most importantly congratulating him for doing things to take care of himself and showing how he was he was able to do all of these things for himself without mommys help. He's stopped this now too.
Does "I want my mommy" mean "Some feature of being abroad with you guys is not to my liking"? If it does it should be handled the same way as "I don't like british accents" or "I don't like teatime" or "I don't like airplanes" Or does "I want my mommy" mean "My mom is crazy and fills my head with garbage" which should be handled by teaching the girl shes perfectly fine without her mommy around.