We had a serious discussion with the Skids about things. Prompted by a huge temper tantrum and meltdown. But the SS6 started crying "I want my life back! I just want my old life back!" Ah-ha, the clues. So ultimately, he admitted he wanted mom and dad and his brother to all live together again, and his BM has been telling him that DH left her, and it is (of course) all DH's fault. This is not true. In fact, DH tried desperately to save their marriage while BM had an affair, and tried to gold-dig with some former boyfriends. (Weird how gold-digging doesn't work as well when you are tacky and generally horrible). He stayed in their house for months after she moved the kids into a boyfriend's cabin on a lake. Regardless, that was three years ago now, and SS8 barely remembers it at all, SS6 only knows what BM told him. Of course we did not go into details, but DH did tell them that he never left BM, that she left him, and he asked SS8 (at the time only about 4.5 yrs old) who he wanted to live with and he said mom. We had a long, tearful talk about how sometimes people just can't get along, and need to be apart from each other, and now there are two families that love them, etc, and now that BM has a fiance and DH and I are getting married, there will always be two families that love them, etc. Then SS6 sobbed that "mom yells at you every day! She wouldn't yell at you so much if you stopped doing bad things!" Haha... So then we had to talk about how sometimes his mom is just very angry, and she lashes out. He said "i wanted to take you sledding, was that wrong? Was it bad?" SS6 thinks and says, "No." DH says " but your mom yelled at me right?" SS6 thinks, and then nods. A sort-of breakthrough moment, I think, since he calmed down a lot after that.
i suspect we will have to have this conversation many many more times, though. And after he drops them off and heads back she is bound to grill them and then call us screaming because of SOMETHING she thinks we did wrong. The kids had a good time, even though they drove me nuts. They were safe, happy(mostly, except for tantrums because we wouldn't let them be on a videogame of one sort or another all day), they loved the new dog (the dog was a surprise to them, but he's my dog. They loved him and he slept on their bed, but he is absolutely not *their* dog-lol). We never ever talk about BM with or in front of the skids, but she THINKS we do, and she will probably come up with some twisted way of taking something the kids say to mean we are talking about her. I didn't think DH should even get into the whole who left who thing, but it bothered him so much that his kids thought he left them. I am sure that will come back to bite him, but oh well. I am so glad they have gone home now. I have my house back. Time to do epic laundry and dishes and put shit away.
Deep breaths!