I need the advice of those who understand these situations as well as I do.
My SD came into my life when she was 6 years old which was 21 years ago. I have loved her and treated her as if she was my own daughter, helped her when she needed it and have been kind to her consistently up to the current day. All while she was growing up we were close and loving although her mother told me that secretly my stepdaughter did not like me. My SD did not live with my husband and I; she lived with her mother. My husband’s ex-wife was a very hard person to get along with. I did my best to keep peace because I knew my SD would be hurt if I fought with her mother. At every turn throughout my SD young and current life, her mother has said negative things about my husband and I and did her best to be unpleasant.
Unfortunately my SD has taken on the narcissistic attributes of her mother. She has told some of my relatives and friends that her father and I did nothing for her and were terrible to her since she was a child. Everyone who knows us knows that this is not true because we are kind to everyone we meet. When she had her 1st child 3 years ago she wanted us to baby sit almost every weekend. The first year of his life, her mother barely spent time with her grandchild. We were in heaven spending so much time with our first grandchild and have grown very close to him over the last three years. She had a 2nd child about a year ago. A little while ago SD married the father of her children. SD has not worked for two years and her husband only works on and off. They all now live with SD’s mother because they are broke. SD is talking about having another child.
While they have lived with her mother her treatment of both of us has become more and more disrespectful and out and out mean.
The latest thing she has done is this. Since her young child reached about 8 months she told us that must have both children at the same time and we cannot have either of them one at a time. We had not yet taken the little one overnight or at our house because he was so young. The normal activity was to take the three year old on some Friday nights and then give him to the father’s mother on Saturday afternoon and she would take him till Sunday. My husband works a full time job and a part time job every weekend. I had the 3 year old even when he worked and I love the 3 year old very much. Since we are both getting older and I work 50 hours a week plus my hubby works 55-70 hours a week, we explained that having two children so young is very hard on us and we need to get some sleep on the weekends. We are happy to take them one at a time but not together.
This has caused a problem. My husband does not like to be bullied with being told that if we don’t do what they want we can’t have the children. It has caused a fight but he just is too tired to take two children on the weekend with me. I both don’t like being bullied either and don’t like to be treated as disrespectfully as I am. I miss the children, especially the 3 year old, and cry daily over the loss of my SD.
Stepparents, what would you do?