Seeking advice from any step parents

[ChamomileTea]

I'm so bad about making these things... ugh.

 

Ok, so my Daddy and I have been together for a year now, and he is stepping in as a father figure for my daughter. The problem is, she doesnt like interacting with him because he is the disciplinarian and (admittedly) he has a scary voice. However, when he uses gentle daddy voice, my daughter ignores him.

 

There are a lot of factors that play into her behavior, including how her bio father was and the fact that we live with my parents, and how my Daddy was raised. There are 3 or 4 different styles of people in my daughter's life and it is hard for me. I know my daughter doesnt like to interact with my significant other except sometimes, and I'm finding it hard to find a balance between everything.

 

And this morning has been hard in particular.

My daughter is 4, and she got into the Xmas presents that were under the tree last week. We gave her a free pass because this is her first year learning about Santa and I understand that the presents are shiny and cool, so temptation was high. So, we explained that if she got into the presents again that Santa was going to come back and give her coal instead of presents for being naughty. She made it until today, when she opened a gift she picked for my mother "because [she] wanted a toy box for [her] dolls" but she already has one. She also lied about it 3 times (we have a rule that we give her 3 chances to tell us the truth or she gets pow pow or time out) and it upset us both. Now my Daddy says she only gets to watch people open presents on Xmas, and that upsets me, but I get it, too. It is such a hard dilemma for me. I want to use the excuse that she is only 4, but she understands at this point. I really wanted her to have a good Xmas but she made bad choices, and has to have consequences, and that is all we can come up with ;_______;

Daddy also gave her the choice between pow pow or giving a basket of her toys away to other kids for Xmas, and she chose losing toys. I feel like that evens out, but my Daddy doesnt, and I'm hoping he will calm down about it by the end of the day....

 

I could go on and on about everything, but I feel like I should stop there, maybe. My Daddy loves both my daughter and I, but I dont know if things are going to work out or be okay....

 

If anyone has any advice on step parenting or raising kids in general, I welcome it. I'm on the verge of an emotional break right now, but I have to keep going in my big life. I have to go to work in about 5 mins, as I type....

 

Thank you all for reading. I hope you all have good days.

[Guest ~*~Sachita~*~]

I work in a psychology practice that often sees children of blended families. The doctors maintain that the step-parent should never be the disciplinarian, it should always be the bio parent.

[LittleNerdy]

I'm a step-parent, my partner and I have been together for 10 years now. When we first got together, I was never involved with discipline, it wasn't my place to even if I didn't agree with something. As time went on, me and my partner discussed punishments, rewards etc and started making these decisions together, but that wasn't until we'd been together a lot longer than a year, her children were also a bit older. Even now (as the step-parent), even though the kids see me as more than a step-parent, I take the backseat (although all the kids are old enough now where discipline is no use as the youngest is 18). I only backed my partner up in discipline, if we made a rule, I helped keep it in place and if that rule was broken, I would help with the punishment for doing so, but I'd never be the one to decide that punishment was needed, I always discussed it with my partner.

 

The eldest has a child that we have raised for her short 3 years, but as we are raising her together, we both make rules and reward the good and discipline the bad.

 

Your partner needs to earn the respect of your daughter before he can become any form of disciplinarian. And at the moment, your daughter barely interacts with him. It's important for him to create a bond with her, and have a mutual respect between the two of them,so that he understands as you do, the force of a punishment needed to correct/punish a behaviour.

 

In my opinion, a child only needs to be punished once for something, especially at that age. And that punishment should be an immediate consequence so that they relate the punishment to the crime as it were. Dragging out a punishment, or enforcing a punishment a few days later, the child doesn't associate the two together.

 

I hope this helps a little, and I apologise if it appears I've rambled a bit there.

[Song`rim Redtide]

There isn't exactly an easy answer here. The background for my answer is my personal experience as a child who was adopted at the age of four and long drawn out conversations with my parents over the things they were forced to put up with.

 

To give context to my answer before I was adopted I didn't have a father figure and my biological mother was overly strict to the point of cruelty. This carried over into my adopted family. My adopted father became the hero and was quickly accepted as I never had father figure before him, whereas, my adopted mother became a villain in my eyes as well as dealt with the confusion of child having to accept a new mother. It took a long time for my adopted mother and myself to reach a point of understanding and her putting up with a lot of misplaced resentment but I learned quite a bit from listening to their wisdom.

 

First I learned that being disciplined by a person you don't truly accept as a parent or someone of authority is always counterproductive. Second, this is based off what you are saying but it seems like your child fears your S.O. and if she obeys him it's because you told her to and her own fear of him. Next, you have good reason to be concerned as your S.O. here is frustrated and it's showing by him not believing that the already established punishment is enough that's never a good sign. Frankly, he needs to take a step back from this and cool down. His frustration will only make this worse and whether y'all realize it or not your daughter will pick up on that frustration. He needs to be patient and earn her trust and maybe one day she will accept him into the role and things will go from there; however, it's also possible that she won't and he will have to learn how to accept that and not let that become an issue for him. Third, as Sachita put it from job experience and I personally agree with it based on life experience you need to be the one to discipline your child. As I said my mother became the villain to me as a child and this lasted well into mid teens. I didn't accept my adopted mother as my mother until I was 16 and every time she disciplined me it just added on to my misplaced resentment of her. Sadly the reason why I finally accepted her as my mother isn't something that will work for your daughter as it's different for every person and furthermore it only worked for me because of my own reasoning skills that I gained through life experience from talking to numerous psychologist on my state-mandated visits, my mothers perseverance and willingness to sit down and talk to me despite her fear, and learning how to let go of my anger. My mother is an absolute angel and is someone that earned my respect for what she did for me.

 

Back on topic, this situation isn't easy. There are thousands of parenting books out there because of that. There are parenting books specifically for step parents because of that. Try looking into those at your local library. and consider seeing a counselor or a psychologist. Perhaps look into talking to a psychologist that specializes in child psychology. Just remember it's going to take a lot of patients and there never really is an easy answer to these things and there needs to be clear communication on all sides. And sometimes you just need to take five and let yourself calm down. I wish you the best of luck and maybe there are a few more people here that can help give you different perspectives.

 

Oh, also you did a good job staying logical about all of this but don't neglect your own feelings and emotions regarding this.

 

[hisangel]

At age 4 there is no point in carrying discipline over many days like this. The lesson behind it will be lost entirely and it will cause even more resentment then she already has towards him. I would tell him that you are not allowing him to enforce this with her. A 4 year old child does not really have impulse control at all. A very good example of this that comes from personal experience. My now 15yo son has autism. and one time my now husband bought a box of donuts and left them on the dining room table. Said autistic then 11yo child stuck his finger in every single donut to see what kind they were. He still has almost no impulse control. Now how do you think a 4 year old child would react in that same situation?

[Alaskan Daddy]

I am not a 'step-parent' but I am a parent. First of all in my opinion your daddy should not be punishing your daughter, except in certain circumstances.

You or her father should be the only person that does it. He can give input to you and it should totally up to you how she will be disciplined. Your daddy has to understand this. The emotional health and physical heath of your child comes before any relationship you have with your daddy.

Your daddy needs to understand this also.  Your daughter needs to learn impulse control, but you can also take away the temptations that she has by putting the gifts away until it is time to open them. Also it sounds like your daughter is going through some very tough times in her heart. Your daddy needs to be patient with her and allow her to warm up to him on her time scale. He is the adult and needs to remember that. The punishment I would give her for opening the presents and lying about it is some type of time out  and loss of sweets for a few days,and try to get her to talk about what other feelings that are inside her.  this behavior is not the end of the world, nor should it be treated as such. Try to find a positive solution that she can learn from with out killing her spirit.

I hope this helps

[Inmylittlespace]

This is your daughter before his and I understand that is stepping into a role of a father figure, and you're trying to not make him feel like a step-father, but, I think there needs to be some bonding between her and him done. She doesn't seem to trust him, and there is fear installed in her of him. 

She's four years old. She is old enough to know that you tell her not to do things, and to behave, but she's also going to need time to grow the maturity it takes to keep them. 

 

Blended families are tough but the ultimate thing is that everyone needs to respect how YOU want to raise your daughter. 

You need to sit the adults in the house down and tell them that this blended style of parenting isn't good for your daughter and she needs straight outright rules. Make them together, talk to your daughter about them when you have all decided and work on that as a team. Talk to your daughter, see why she isn't listening to him. She will tell you if you let her trust you. 

 

And she's trusting you to keep her safe and happy. 

[Guest CharlieFPG]

I'm going to endorse the opinions previously expressed here. While I am not a step-father, I am a father and I come from divorced parents.

 

Under no circumstance your partner should discipline your daughter. This is something you must do; you can, as previously mentioned, take input from him and seek his collaboration on your decision on how to discipline your daughter.

 

Also, the DD/lg roles should be separated and limits properly drawn between the moments and places for role-play and the moment to be adult partners in charge of an underage girl.