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SS2 talking about BM.. advice?

sunny_skies's picture

Now that SS2 is almost 3, and his speech and constructing sentences is getting better, he is starting to say things like  

"mommy and me made a cake yesterday" ..inside, SO and I are like (eurgh, I don't care!) but we reply "ohhh that's nice" while hating every second of it..

or the other day, I was drawing pictures for SS, and I said, "what shall we draw sweetie?" he said things like "daddy's lawn mower" and everything was fun, and totally fine.. then, he asked for me to draw "mommys car" ..and I said in an upbeat voice "why don't we draw daddy's car instead" ..he replied "yehh!" and it was all fine, but.. hmm.

or something else that happened, he was playing make believe with a toy phone, he went to hand SO the toy phone and say "it's mommy on the phone, do you want to speak to her?" ..he said in a nice voice "no thankyou SS" ..SS2 then tried to give me the toy phone and I said "no thanks sweetie" as well.. he just carried on playing make believe and "talking to mommy" on the toy phone without us.. we always join in with make believe when he "talks" to gram and gramps on the toy phone, I'm just wondering if he might notice at some point that we don't want to hear about BM.

omigosh I just realised how stupid and petty all this sounds, this child just wants to play games with us and we're saying no if it involves a particular person, eurgh I feel so ridiculous, but I really hate this, and so does SO.

ok.. I mean, part of me (and SO) are trying to be the adults and want SS to feel comfortable talking about BM, but on the other hand we really don't want him to say a word about her eurgh!!!

we don't want to make SS feel like he *shouldn't* speak about BM, but want him to.. erm, how do I put this, gently discourage him from talking about her, without actually letting him realise we are discouraging it. (we don't want him to know we dislike BM, everything is civil right now, big fake smiles all the time)

Ok basically our ideal situation: as SS2 gets older, we don't want to hear all about what he's been doing with BM, or hear about her when playing games or whatever.. *BUT* we really want SS to feel he can talk to us if he has a problem with BM, or a worry that concerns BM (this is bound to happen, she's a total idiot)

Maybe the best way to do this is ignore it? Like when children are playing up, you don't feed their bad behaviour by giving it attention? So if children don't get attention when playing up, they get bored and stop doing it? Maybe this could be same sort of thing?

So maybe if we just don't give any feedback/ encouragement/ response to SS talking about BM, he will get bored and not do it?

How do you deal with hearing about BM from skids? Do you react to it? Ignore it?

Comments

tryingmom's picture

SSstb10 talks constantly about BM, its like his life is lived up her butt. Most of the time I do not react at all, just smile and not get into the conversation. I once tried to say, its not polite to talk about someone who isn't here, went right over his head and kept on going. DH asked him if he talks to BM about us, his response, yes, but BM doesn't want to hear anything about us. (PAS much?? lol)

Last weekend they were over SSstb10 announced that BM and her BF are getting married in November. (ummm, she kind of has to get divorced from her estranged DH first, but ok, we'll roll with it) The skids are going to be in the wedding, told us their roles and asked all kinds of questions about it, we had no answers for him, just responded that he'd have to ask BM. The best, he asked if we would be going to their wedding... :sick:

MotherTrucker's picture

If you want your SS to be a part of your life then I think that you will have to accept that his BM is a part of his. He can't NOT tell you guys about the things that he does with BM because he will be not letting you in on an important part of his life. Trust me, I cringe everytime SD starts to talk about her BM, but I listen and reply with the polite responses just as you guys have. I think what you are doing is right. If you look at him and tell him that you don't want to hear about BM, he may hold that against you in the future.