Thats is so digusting to teach to achild. To not share their toys...its awful! Its one thing is you dont want to share because you know that child will break their toy but another thing for what this BM and her bf has done. Can you imagine, they are playing nintendo and your kids just have to sit and watch? How F' cruel is this? DISGUSTING.! I would have told her on the phone, you want it, come and get it yourself! and explain to your son the dirty selfishness yourself! I would have also told my SS this: If you can't share what you have, then dont play at all:. Those are the rules in my house. All the kids, ANYONE, cousins, anyone has to share the game station. If they can't...they dont play. My friends kids came over to play and they were fighting...i shut the game off. Too bad! such is life. I also do not buy big ticket items like this for kids of certain ages , as to not give them power. My SD asked for a very expensive item, i refused to buy it....she tends not to share and we police in our house when the kids do play to make sure all of them have their fair share of time playing. My SS plays with a hand held game device of my DS. i dont mind. As long as there is respect of the items. If he ever was to break things and continually do so is when i would just put it in the closet when he visits..but i've never had to do that. He is really good with not breaking things and respecting others property. This is a big moral issue from my perspective. I think you should enforce yoru belief under your household. As for sharing, other things, if the child doesn't want to, i wont force dolls or any car item...but gamestations are different in my household. All have time with it or none.

It's so funny how I KNOW everything you're saying but how different it sounds coming from someone else and not myself. And you are 100% correct that she tricked him into it. BOTH times. 1st was for marriage, the second was the first talk of divorce. I know how important it is for him to plan our "trying." I've been on pre-natals since November but we've pushed it back from this past Feb. to this coming Sept. I am willing to compromise to whatever his needs (reasonably) so that he is 100% ready for it to happen if/when it does. And he's voiced how excited he is to try for a girl - he's an amazing dad and I know she'd be a total "daddy's girl" which worries him that I want my own baby so bad and she'd be more about him than me *LOL* :) I know part of my issues are jealousy and part are this insecure part of me that doesn't like to be new at something. I'm the youngest and vividly recall feeling stupid for not knowing information or how to do something that the older kids could. I hear people talk about the life changing "wow we have a baby; what now?" affect. My friend was talking about how she and her husband were married 5 years before having their oldest. She said they wanted it, tried for it, but still came home from the hospital, put him in his bouncy chair and just looked at each other like, "now what?" It really bothers me that he will never have that "let's figure this out together" thing with me. He already knows what to do with a baby. It's even more upsetting as a woman that my husband could answer my pg/baby questions. It's actually nauseating to me. The other part is that I can't even confide in the one woman I never felt stupid "not knowing" around - my mom - because she passed away 6 years ago this June. I'm close with my MIL, she's a lovely lady, I just miss what I had with my mom. I think that's why I want a girl so badly. My sister and I are very different people but she understands me and also had her 1st after the death of our mom. I know she will be there for me (and she's had two girls and is a SM of a 15-year-old boy.) It's nice to have supports (you all included!) Jessegirl, I actually had such a difficulty adjusting to my whole situation (5000 mi. away from anyone I know, stay-at-home mom from previous working woman, dealing with the emotions of "step-mom" "second wife") and wondered if I really want to "start over" since they will both be in school next year. But then that thought angers me; That I'm burnt out on being a mom and I've never felt a baby kick. I already gave up on the possibility of multiple kids of my own but really feel that I NEED a baby of my own. I think I deserve that. Fortunately, so does my DH. And it will be amazing to create life from love instead of manipulation. I just wish I could OWN what you all have said. I know I'm the mom here and I know I'm the one the boys will think back to and I know I've been put here for a reason and that those boys need me. And I need them...it's just so strange the way the head and heart have this strange disconnect feature between them, y'know? MIL is a twin and sometimes I hope to have twins myself because I KNOW that will be different for him! How juvenile is that?!?!?! Well...Thanks for listening guys... The in-laws arrived safely and I must return downstairs. The puter' is in our room, which is theirs for the next two weeks so my apologies in advance for not being around much! J

I think SM. AS to anyone who says that they treat SKids the same as children, I have real doubts about that. As I have said before a person can not even the notice the difference in his/her own facial expression, tone of voice, etc. The child might. OP doesnt have her own children. So many variables here. I can accept that OP is tryng to be good and helpful, maybe a parenting coach could help. And when a parent focuses on trying to get control, rather than trying to help a child develope self-control (yes, even for a 3 yr old), I think that is the harbinger of greater problems.

This may or may not be applicable. Dunno. My wife has a BM that has a, shall we say, hit-and-miss relationship with reality. Not dangerous per se, but she tends to be very selective about her memories, and is only occaisionally reliable in crises -- unless you count being unreliable as a strange form of reliability. My wife is 30 years old. She's known her mom for...well, 30 years. However, she gets suckered into trusting her mom on a semi-regular basis during critical situations, and nearly every time, she's burned all over again. Why? I think that my wife has confused the job description -- "Mommy" -- with the real person, let's call her "Ms. X". "Mommy" is supposed to be able to do the occaisional favor for her grandchildren -- say, be able to pick them up from a bus station on time. "Ms. X" on the other hand, runs out of gas on the freeway after misplacing luggage in the station. (I'm making this up, but you get the drift.) People shouldn't be forced into having to "handle" their parents. However, this is the situation your SS is in. Life has given him a BM that needs to be treated like a bank -- "it sure would be nice if my check was processed in the next 3 days, but I need to plan like they're not only going to take a week and a half, but also like they're going to lose it at least once in the process." He needs to be able to separate his expectations of the job description from the expectations he should have for his specific real mom. And he needs to learn the hard lesson that if people act the way we expect them to act, then any problems we have with that are our own lookout (to the extent that he as a 10 year old has control over his own actions, and his contact with his mom). All of the above are ways to help him understand his situation, and to protect himself from inflicting further probs on himself through selective memory or "maybe this time" kinds of thinking -- I really don't have any useful advice about "how to make him happy". Maybe he *needs* to be unhappy with it, in order to avoid repeating these behaviors with his own family sometime down the line. Maybe he should draw up a real description of the duties of the job "Mommy", and see if he'd hire his BM for that job. If not, see if someone is already doing the job. (Like, say, you.) If there's any lack, maybe you could offer to subcontract. Or see if there's any other available subcontractors.... I'm being facetious, but only a little. Your SS *knows* he can't trust his mom. He should be angry over it, but realize that life sometimes stinks. He needs to figure out how far she has allowed herself to be loved, love her just that much if he cares to, and no more -- or if more, to realize and accept the consequences he's buying in to. And he needs to realize that 'momhood' does not reside only with her. It can also reside with you, or with other folks in his life.