My boyfriend and daughter dont get along

I have been the child of many dads and I can tell you that it sucks. I did not think I should have to take orders from a temporary person living in my house. It really seemed unfair to me. Hopefully I never have to expierence the other side of the fence. I think it almost feels like betrayel from the childs point of view. They have been in your life from their birth and here this new person is that is trying to tell them what to do and your letting them. It is hard for her to accept. I do hope you find a happy medium, I just wanted to share an opinion from your daughters side. Good luck. :-)

Letting your boyfriend be disciplinary is a no no. I grew up with my mother having various boyfriends and I would hate the men she dated, and when they tried to to discipline me I would get very upset, since no one could replace my father, I saw other men as scum compared to my "daddy". You can't give your significant other those powers, only if you were married to him should he have more control, if he is not a part of your family by religion or law then he should not tell her what to do, and even if he was her step dad he would have to ease into the position of a disciplinary figure. I am not a mother, but I am a daughter and I know how she feels about it. You just have to let her continue hating him until she is mature enough not to, the more you push it the more she will have hate. If your boyfriend gets upset over not having a father's power then he is not worth it, she comes first. YOu just have to have a talk with him and a separate talk with her perhaps. Happy mylotting and have a great day or night.

I don't believe the boyfriend should have disciplinary rights. She should be respectful of him, certainly. But he isn't her father and he never will be. He's YOUR boyfriend. He's not even your husband, so to her he's just some guy that comes to hang out with you. He's nothing to her. And she will not accept any form of discipline from him, any more than she would if it were some stranger on the street. You're better off explaining to him that if she needs disciplining, you'll handle it. His role is to support you and be with you, and to try to get along with her. But ultimately, he'll never be her father and any attempt to try to be on his part is going to fail. The only way it could ever work is if she loved him like a father, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

I think that it all depends. Like on how old is your daughter? How long have you and you and your boyfriend been together? I know that it is very hard for a teenage girl to all of a sudden accept a new figure into her life. I think that your daughter and boyfriend need to form a relationship on their own level. You can't just throw this situation at a child and say here now deal with it. I definately think that your daughter has to have a certain level of respect for him as her elder but as a parent I know it would take time. So maybe if you explain to her that he needs to take a roll as a disciplinarian because he is an adult and not because he is trying to be a dad that might work. Good luck.

I don't think you should let HIM be the disciplinary. You wouldn't want any unpleasantness to escalate, do you? By the way, how much of the time are you around when HE and your daughter are in? What's their age? What happen that need disciplinary? Do you believe that children automatically know when the parent really have their interest and well-being on mind? Even if the child cannot accept the stepfather initially, as long as he is sincerely caring, doesn't need to do disciplinary to be caring, given time, the child would accept him.

Your child comes first. Please do not ever side with your boyfriend instead of your child. This is a betrayal. You cannot replace her bio dad because no one can ever fill that role. She is very young and the best thing you can do is find a good counselor for yourself to discuss this rather than letting emotions cloud your judgement. In the meantime if your boyfriend is a mature, responsible, decent person he will understand and respect this and step back a bit. Also, because you made more children with this guy and they are lucky enough to have a dad she may feel second to the other kids because she does not have her dad around. Make sure you show her plenty of love and support and are a good listener for her. It is not his job to discipline her and things can quickly go sour when she becomes a teenager if you try to force the stepdad discipline thing. I have a friend who went through this and she ended up running away a lot. Also second relationships have a higher percentage rate of failure and you guys are pretty young so don't assume anything. Get your daughter some counseling if neccessary to find out if there are any other underlaying issues you may not know about.

I read through some of your replies to other people and I think that you are in a very tricky situation and you have my sympathy for that. I honestly wouldn’t know what to do if I was in your shoes. If your partner has been in your home and in a relationship with you for five years, that is different than just a boyfriend who may come and go. So, it does need to be treated differently. Since you said your daughter and him don’t really get along the greatest, I would probably wait on letting him discipline her, because it just may upset her more. I would personally wait and take it slow. Possible give him a little bit more responsibility, but in ease. This may make the transition easier for her. My parents divorced when I was 17, so I don’t know how to look at it from the standpoint of a 9 year old who lives with another person besides her biological father. Even at 17, I wish my parents would have gotten back together, so your daughter will probably always have some hope that her family was in tact. That may have something to do with it. I would encourage them to bond and do more fun things together as a family. Once that has been done, then consider letting him take a stronger role in laying down rules.

This is a toughy. I guess for me I couldn't let him disipline my child, but then you run the risk of her stepping all over him. I have had a lot of stepdads and it always hurt when my mom took their side over mine. I guess that if your boyfriend is there for the long run then he should be a part of the disipline, but I think that the rules should be the same from you and him so that she knows her limitations where both of you are concerned.