To parent or not to parent?
Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read this.
I’m (33F) and have been dating (43M) for 2 years and my SD will be 9 this year. I’m just gonna ask it straight out because I don’t know how else to word it. When it comes to parenting SD, what are you supposed to do if BD doesn’t seem to put effort into the parenting part? Sometimes it really seems like I care more about setting her up for success to be an adult for her to live on her own in the future.
For example, at BM’s house, she has chores and she goes outside and plays. But at our house, she literally does nothing but watch tv. She wakes up at 6am and watching tv/youtube until 7:30 when it’s time to get ready for school. And does the same thing after school, she goes homework -> shower -> tv again. She has 0 chores or responsibilities of any kind. She trashes her room and playroom with clothes, toys etc. throws her bath towel and clothes on the floor when she’s done showering and will make messes everywhere and doesn’t clean up because will BD doesn’t clean his own messes up either.
There’s more to it that I won’t bore you with, but as a step parent, I definitely feel a responsibility to help her grow up and help her become responsible. I am child free by choice and do not want biological children, but I’m not gonna ignore the fact that she stays with us at 50% of the time. It’s just frustrating sometimes because I feel like I should do more, but then I also chose not to have kids so I feel like it’s really his responsibility. What is the best way for me to approach this? Do I step up and start taking on the responsibility of giving her chores and getting her to start cleaning up and things like that? Or do I just let things keep sliding and let him deal with the consequences later?
She is a great kid very sweet and very smart and if I ask her to clean up, she will, but she won’t do it unless she’s prompted. And the worst part is when I find that he only tells her to clean up after he’s already been frustrated, and instead of asking her nicely, he just raises his voice at her instead of asking her calmly. To be completely honest, BD has very little emotional intelligence. He is basically a walking hypocrite because he holds other people to standards that he himself does not meet, and then gets upset when people don’t hold those standards. I’m just starting to get worried because I’m starting to see certain behaviors in SD that are not going to bode well for her in the future.
Any advice is appreciated!