Priorities straight

Forums:

In my own language ( not a native english speaker) I only read articles about how the kids come first in any situation and we should all expect that.

I wonder :

Is it general ignorance or who makes these rules because putting kids first no matter what, just doesnt work.

Is it a fact that the rel should be first?

What do they tell you on

What do they tell you on airplanes? To put on your own mask first and then help your kids with theirs. It's the same with families - if you don't take care of your relationship, who will help the kids when they need it? Kid come first when we are talking about needs. However, their whims and wants do not trump your couple.

First in what way? Their

First in what way? Their needs, yes. They should be fed, sheltered, hygiene attended to, given medical attention, support and care.

their wants? No. They want to choose where to go for vacation? They want to have junk food for dinner? They want the latest pair of designer sneakers? They want daddy to break up with step mommy? No. They don't need to be told no on all things, but they're not adults and don't get to make all decisions for themselves. Adults sacrifice a lot even for kids in terms of time/money/energy to take care of them which IS putting them first a lot of the time and truly is how it should be. But they don't rule the house. And parenting decisions shouldn't be made out of fear of losing a child's love.

Yeah.

That was my confusion. Whats the difference between needs/wants.

But what you do if you have a step kid playing the victim role and calls in because wants to spend time with daddy of all the sudden. Isnt that a need? Should you be able to say no as a parent?

Even with a visitation schedule, lets say.

Parenting decision

Yes the child needs comfort from a parent but also guidance. IMO if the child is trying to play both parents against each other, eg 'I want to go to Dad's house because Mom is mean' than it is a judgement call for Dad and he can say no to avoid rewarding the bad behavior.

If there is a visitation

If there is a visitation schedule, it should be stuck to. A child's whim doesn't trump that unless there is a risk of danger of any sort (not just the parent is mean so I want to go to the othe parent). IF you start to deviate from that, it will be the beginning of the end...

Sometimes parents can get

Sometimes parents can get torn between kids wants vs. needs. I think that is a common struggle.

It is important to see your marriage as a "living and growing thing" as well. It needs time and attention.

If a kid has their needs met- Food, water, shelter, clothing, care- then it is OK to take a date night!! The kid can get mad but what the kid is really getting is an understanding and example of a healthy relationship! Which, this day in age, is priceless!

I always try to remember ….

I always try to remember that in blended families, as in any family, that each person has different needs and different wants.

Court ordered visitation schedule, or not, the mates come first. Yes, kids should have regular and quality time with the NCP. However, that does not trump the needs of anyone else in the blended family.

It is perfectly okay to say no upon occasion. Even to court ordered visitation. If... you are on the NCP side of the CO. The CP can't deny visitation, and, has to retain and care for the kid if the NCP does refuse their visitation.

Those on NCP side need to remember this. The plans and schedules on the CO side have zero influence on the NCP side. The spouse of an NCP has a ton of influence over kid visitation frequency, format, and duration. Within the the CO visitation stipulation.

"First in what way? Their

"First in what way? Their needs, yes. They should be fed, sheltered, hygiene attended to, given medical attention, support and care" - by the biological parents though.

Oh yes. Not my job.

Spouses are the #1 priority,

Spouses are the #1 priority, but kids are the #1 responsibility. That means that kids' needs trump the wants and lower-priority needs of a spouse at a given time (e.g. a kid in the hospital trumps a spouse at home with a cold). A spouse's needs and wants, though, trump the wants of a child.

From a practical perspective, this is what it looks like:

A parent needs to provide their child with food, shelter, security (emotional and physical), guidance/parenting, healthcare, and education. How the parent does that is up to the parent, so long as how they're doing it is not detrimental to the child. A kid can WANT to go to a specific school, or live in a specific house, or take a specific vacation, but those wants are at the discretion of the parent.

Enter a new spouse. The spouse should be able to cover their own needs as listed above (and the parent should be able to provide that for themselves, too), with the addition of bills, debts, and investments/retirement. Because the spouse is a contributing adult to the relationship, their WANTS on where to live, what house to mutually buy, and what vacations to go on are more important than those wants from a child because the child is not contributing but instead learning how to contribute in the future.

There are times when wants and needs get murky, though. For instance, to maintain good relationships, the parent NEEDS to interact with both their child and spouse independently. A child may WANT to spend all their free time in the evening with their parent, but the parent needs to figure out how much time has to be devoted to the child's needs first (e.g. bathing, cooking, laundry, homework). Then, with their remaining time, they need to identify how much time their spouse needs from them to operate the household, talk about upcoming events or current problems, etc. After that, whatever time is left over needs to be divided into "child, spouse, and personal" time. That may only be 1 hour per night, but that allows 20 minutes with the kid, 20 minutes with the spouse, and 20 minutes alone.

This does get a little trickier when you're talking about sharing custody because there is less time with the kid. In those cases, the spouse and parent need to work it out where the spouse isn't neglected during weeks/weekends with the kids, but their time will be truncated to accommodate the kid's need AND want to spend time with their parent. If we're using the 1 hour example again, it may mean the kid gets 40 minutes while spouse and parent each get 10. It should balance out during non-kid times since the kid isn't around and their time is forfeited.

The big thing to realize is that there are no hard-and-fast rules. A kid who has a soccer game and wants Dad to be there trumps Stepmom who wants to go to Ikea with her husband at the same time. The soccer game has a scheduled time, and Dad should prioritize that game over Ikea that is open later in the day.

Alternatively, a Stepmom who is having surgery and needs her husband to bring her home and care for her afterwards trumps a kid who has a soccer game. Now, it's still Dad's responsibility if it's his parenting time to find someone to take Little Billy to and from his game, but keeping the kid home for a single soccer game because the Stepmom needs help is the acceptable outcome.

Part of the reason these forums exist is because these situations are tricky, and folks want an outside perspective to see if the situation was handled appropriately or not. Kids do not always come first, but their needs matter more than the needs of a spouse because the spouse is an adult who can take care of themselves. The real hierarchy is Personal Needs -> Kid Needs -> Spouse Needs -> Spouse Wants -> Kid Wants. Personal wants also get sprinkled in, but that gets even more murky because, in theory, everyone is following this dynamic so your wants are being prioritized by your spouse (and if they aren't, that's a whole other discussion).

ETA: A need is something required in order to survive and thrive. A want is something that enhances your life experiences. Things can be both a want and need, and the intention of the thing makes the difference. An example is breast reduction surgery. It is a need if you're doing it to relieve pain and correct posture that is affecting the spine. It's a want if you just do it because you want smaller boobs because you think they'd look better. In the context of kids, let's look at switching schools. A kid may NEED to switch schools due to bullying or needing a different learning styles. A parent should accomodate that. A kid may WANT to switch schools because their friend from basketball goes somewhere else.

Wow

I had to read that twice. Thanks lieutenand dad.

In theory sounds good, but who the heck does it in real life. Real life people are full of flaws, walking around unconscious.

I wonder if this really works for everyone. But very complete answer. Thank you!

It's a framework, and it most

It's a framework, and it most certainly can work in real life. Most (happy) intact families and successful marriages follow some form of this.

A big piece with this, too, is compatibility. If a parent is child-centric but their new spouse is child-free-by-choice, that has the potential to not work well together because the two have competing priorities. Even if both are child-centric, that means different things to different people. Do they share parenting styles and outcomes? Do they agree on how to handle adversity? Do they agree on when childhood ends and adulthood begins?

The framework is easy to implement when the couple is compatible. Often, people just aren't compatible, or they're not willing to compromise. They're also not willing to forgive when their spouse missteps. You're right in that real life people have flaws. As real life people, we have to learn from those flaws and figure out how to correct them or make them workable. If someone can't or won't do that, they have no business being in a relationship with someone else. And if we find we're in a relationship with someone who won't learn or compromise, we have to love ourselves enough to leave for our own wellbeing.

All because many people are bad at doing this doesn't mean that people shouldn't strive for it. The practical answer to what we do as SPs when we're relegated to second-class citizens in our own homes and can't get our partners to find middle ground with us is to 1) lower our expectations and settle, 2) be unhappy and settle, or 3) leave. We can't force others to care more about us or change how they behave.

Good stuff LT.

One piece that I think trumps all else is behavior. Kids who choose to not deliver to behavioral and performance standards live a life of declining importance to the adults at the center of the blended family. If that is not the case, it should be IMHO. Age of course as a significant influence on this.

Needs and wants are of course important. Somethings that often forgotten about are the demands of a spouse. A souse has every right expect their demands will be considered and met. Regardless of everything else in play.

Couples who can establish the unassailable priority of reach other and their marriage, establish and enforce standards of behavior and performance for kids in their home, and coordinate their demands on each other succeed, the kids raised by them succeed. At least far more often than is the case in the alternative scenarios.

Great stuff. Thanks for sharing it.

Now

Wow, again so insightuful, felt like talking to my own dad. Thank you.

Ps. I left, option 3 for me.

You divorce, you feel like a

You divorce, you feel like a failure, but hey, at least you can still be a good parent, right? You do that by always putting the kids first! The evidence that you are still a good parent, the best parent even, is that the kids always want to be at your house. You make it always fun at your house and make sure they always feel happy there.

You don't stop to think whether or not keeping them constantly happy is good for them long-term, because you're too stressed for that by trying to be a single parent and doing the ever-increasing amount of work it takes to keep the kids from threatening to call your ex to pick them up. Plus your new SO keeps giving you crap about how you don't give them enough time/attention/privacy/etc., and you're starting to suspect they secretly hate your kids. You'd better give your kids some extra attention or maybe a shopping spree to make up for that, too. Maybe let them sleep in your bed again like in the old days when you were newly single, since you can't keep your nagging SO happy anyway.

Yep, just like that.

Unfortunately for some people its always gonna be like that. No amount of anything helps them change and if they do, well you're still the loser who put up with it for so long.

I got married and had kids

I got married and had kids young, and divorced after 10 years but was still pretty young. I had those thoughts early on, and it took my cousin who had no experience with kids to get me to think and eventually see things differently. I was talking about how i always put the kids first (it seemed to make me feel better and somehow more righteous to say that), and how i tried to get the boring things done when they went to their dad's so time with me could be more fun. He was quiet for a minute then asked "But how will they learn patience? How will they learn life skills, or be bored so they can get creative?" It really made me think and i changed my parenting ways because of it.

I'm so happy for him now, too, because he and his wife finally had twins in their 40s after years of trying. I know he will make a good parent. I think that, as the stemom or step girlfriend, your SO may not take you seriously, though. You are too involved in the situation. It will either have to come from a completely impartial person who he respects, or from him himself through maturity and experience. He may never get there.

needs 100% should come first.

needs 100% should come first. feed, clothe, medical, shelter, ACTUAL emotional needs should come first. if the child ACTUALLY has depression, they NEED to get help, their appointments HAVE to come first before taking you out to dinner. making sure that they have adequate clothing that fits and is not tattered should come before taking you out shopping for a new outfit. If you are going out to a resteraunt, YOU get first choice over the child when it comes to where you wanna go. If you and your SO made plans for christmas, but kid throws a fit and wants to visit someone else, TOO BAD.

Remember, opinions are like

Remember, opinions are like ass holes. Everyone has one. Also remember, just because someone consliders themselves to be an expert, even those with recognized qualifications, does not mean they are adequately intelligent to even offer a viable opinion.

You are absolutely right. The adult relationship has to come first. Kids are the top adult relationship responsibility, they are never the top priority over the adults and their relationship.

At least in successful marriages.

IMHO of course.

Your English is great by the way.