Let me preface by saying I have six kids from 17 years to seven months old.  

Wife has a friend she's known since she was a little girl.  We don't see her often, she's in poor health, but her extended family go to our church.  Her two older children from her first marriage (16 year old boy and eight year old girl) are best friends with my older son (17) and my 8-year-old daughter.

The two kids come to stay with us for the weekend.  Mom is remarried to a fabulously wealthy non-working trust fun kid in his late twenties, they have a three year old baby girl together.  Stepdad says that for Father's Day he wants HIS daughter and wife to spend it with him but not the two older kids.

The kids' real father is not in the picture, messy divorce, he wants nothing to do with them.

We bring the kids to our place.  The boy comes with my sons on a camping trip while the girl has a slumber party with my girls.  They are sweet, well-behaved and grateful for any attention in a way that brings tears to my eyes.  It almost reminds ms of rescue dogs, the way they soak up love and affection.

I got to chop up a bunch of fallen dead wood on my property and haul it to the campsite on my utility trailer.  Little girl comes with me on the 4-wheeler and smiles from ear to ear as she stacks kindling in the trailer as I cut it with the saw.  Wife and my younger kids go with the boy to his afternoon martial arts tournament and cheer him on.

The little girl tells me anytime I need help cutting firewood, she's willing to be my helper.  Wife brings kids back from tournament and I take the boys out to the camp site.  Halfway through the night the boy gets a text message from his birth dad.  Dad calls him a bastard and says he wishes the kid and his sister and mom were dead.  Kid is naturally freaked by this so he and my older son hike a mile back to the house and sleep there for the night.  I stay at the campsite with my 8-year-old son.

Sunday morning we come back for breakfast, my kids have all made me father's day cards.  Wife and I take all the kids out for fathers day dinner and the two kids have a pretty fun time along with ours. (Went to Hibachi Steak House).

I get up this morning and I'm drinking my coffee.  The little girl comes in and tells me she wishes she could see her dad on father's day, "...but he doesn't like to see us anymore."

Getting dusty in here.  I'm feeling a mix of heartbreak for these sweet kids and rage towards their dad.  Their mom loves them but their stepdad pretty much rules the marriage.  

I know, riveting tale, chap.

Great Father's Day but damn it hurts me to see how shitty some fathers can be.

Good on you for giving them a good weekend.

Anyone can be a father.  It takes a man to be a dad.

All of this ^.

Damn.  Some people are just fucked up.

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Damn

+1.

My Father's Day was okay...good day tempered by a funeral for the dad of three boys - 20, 13, and 7.  

Anyone who fucks over their own child like that is the lowest human imaginable.

TLDR.  -5 for no cliffs.

Just like clicking through tv channels and landing on a soap opera.  Click.

There are a lot of shitheads out there. Your kids won the lottery, others weren't so lucky.

I know where your coming from OP, I feel for you.

We picked up the 8YO grandkid from the Airport last night, his mom let him come and stay with us for the summer. His stepdad (which he calls dad) is good to him thank God, much better than what the biological one was. For the life of me I cannot understand why the one POS wanted nothing to do with him, he is a funny, smart, well behaved child who just loves his family. I'm not saying that because he is ours, If he was the other way he wouldn't be staying here.

I can't imagine how people can consciously act this way.
Both "dads" need to pull their heads out of their asses.

Damn what's wrong with "Fathers" now days!?!

Glad those kids were with a real Dad on Fathers day, you did good OP.

Terrible, just terrible.  

Thanks to you and your wife for being there.  You are giving those kids happy memories to look back on.

The world needs more men like you.  Friday night I took my son fishing.  One of his friends, who lives with his grandparents down the street because his parents are fuck ups, tried to invite himself.  I blew him off because I didn't want to deal with two kids on the boat at night.  The next time that happens, I'll think about your post.  Thanks.

 

You know, your actions towards those kids really gives me hope for this country. There are still a few good people left.

Good on you for showing those munchkins that they still have a dad in their lives, even if you are a "surrogate" and "unofficial" dad. You have shown them what a daddy is, not the piece of shit sperm donor that made them.

Get bent. (edited above to remove obnoxious post)

OP, It's a little dusty in my office after reading your story.  Good on you and your wife for helping out.

the world needs more good men like you.



one of my few regrets in life is not reaching out to one of our daughters friends I had no idea the pain she was going through.



Liz would be the first one to come to our daughter's sleep overs and the very last to leave, one day my wife asked her why she would hang out here when she had a beautiful mansion to live in with a maid and all the money she could ask for she replied "oh that is just a house, this is a home". her parents were very wealthy and traveled the world and she spent most of the time with her aunt who loved dearly but like many was not that involved in her life. when she was 21 or so her parents had huge family reunion cruise on a cruise ship, one night at sea Liz jumped off the ship never to be found.



I just wished I knew...

Yep.....click.

Good on you OP. Kids need love, period.

+87 on the "get bent" suggestion.

OP thanks for sharing...continue to make yourself available to those kids - they need you and your wife even if it is by proxy.

What kind if sick fuck goes out of his way to torment his kids like that?

Pray for good parents...

Especailly dads that stay and be decent...

Sounds like you have 2 more kids to show love too.

On a more positive note; How was the hibachi?  I love me some hibachi.

Theres an awesome small chain in South Carolina that does hibachi "fast food".  Same great food that you get at a traditional nicer hibachi place.  But way cheaper, more casual and faster.  Went there at least once a week while I lived there.

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cant believe that text.... that is really going out of your way to be a complete pile of trash

good on you for showing some kids love when they probably needed it most

this

Then beaten to death with a rubber hose.

Any dick can be a biological father...it takes a real man to be a dad.

This was a special father's day for me as I got to celebrate it with my 2 1/2 y/o daughter for the first time.
She came from the state foster care system and has no father and her mother gave her up to state upon birth.
My wife and I have been fighting the state, foster system, court, etc. to adopt her for past 18 months.  She is now living with us full time as we are her legal guardian and her foster parents.  In another 3-4 months adoption should go through and we will be her legal parents...God willing. She's a real treasure for me and my wife.  Our 8 y/o son loves her too.  

On her wall above the bed I wrote these words for her to see everyday:

"YOU MAY NOT BE OF MY FLESH AND BLOOD BUT YOU ARE OF MY HEAT AND SOUL"

Step dad and bio dad both need to be beaten savagely.  What the actual fuck is wrong with such people?

Good on you o.p.!

I advise you to engage in a physical impossibility with a cactus. In a roundabout.


OP, thank you for taking those kids in. They will remember it.

Tag

- Clint

Good on you OP. I'm sure those kids will remember it for ever, just like how my brother's and my friends still remember all the things that my dad did to include them and show them love they didn't always receive from their own family's.

You can't make a man love what they helped create, but you can always help them feel loved. Once again, outstanding OP.

I consider myself to have pretty thick skin about all the bad stuff in the world today.

But, since having my own two awesome kids, I gotta say:

- stories about kids getting hurt just really get me down like never before.  Who the F-   would intentionally hurt an innocent kid that way?  Especially their own biological father??

I just do not understand some people.

Hope you spelled it right on her wall

Wife was there to spell check my writing

That about sums it up.


Good on you OP for doing what you can.

I would mention to the boy that he is entitled to get a restraining order against that POS, if he doesn't already understand such things. And, that he doesn't have to tolerate bad behavior.

If you did not already have so many you could add two more.

Amen

lol, no kidding.

OP, I am glad you were nice to those kids.

OP, you are certainly one of the good guys.  Raising your own is hard.  Opening your heart to others takes a good heart and great character.

My surviving son called me on Father's Day.  Saw my daughter on Tuesday.  Highlight of this month and likely months to come.  Father's Day is when I give God thanks for my son and daughter.

It is also the start of the 4 week march to the anniversary of my 17-year-old son's death.

My dad is gone.  Died when I was 15.  

My wife's father and her father-in-law (late husband's dad) are gone.

At 58, I am the oldest man in the family....and I'm an import.

It's a bitter sweet day.

I'll feel better when July 2nd comes and goes.

WOW

Damn.


Good work OP.

Childhood scars can last a lifetime and have massive consequences later in life (also water is wet). Good work trying to give those kids some kind of good memories from their childhood.

You gave them something they will never forget, good on you for that.  If your kids get along well with the other 2, I would seriously consider taking them under your wing.  Not take them over from the family, but have them over for a weekend and teach them some life lessons while having fun.  

Should have put this in team to weed out moron responses like this.

As a step-father, I will never understand step-fathers who treat their step-kids as anything other then their own. I have 6 kids, the oldest two are step-kids. The younger of the two has pretty much always known me as dad, but the older one was 4 when I came into her life. They day she first started calling me 'dad' was one of the coolest days of my life. I love them just the same as if they were my own.

Shitty fathers is what is wrong with the world. Keep up the good work OP.

This. Just continue to try and be a positive role model in their lives for as long as you can.

We have them over at least one weekend a month, if not more.  They're going to spend most of the summer with their maternal grandparents on the west coast.  They are good, kind people, I just wish they were closer.

Our house is the house all our kids' friends love to visit.  It's not the most expensive or largest house, and it might get messy sometimes, but the kids are always welcome.

I don't tout myself as a perfect dad, I get annoyed with my kids when they wake me at six am asking if they can have ice cream for breakfast.  I get frustrated when my boy breaks the lawn mower.  I get frustrated when I want to go online and surf ARFCOM and my daughter is on some girly website.  But I love my kids and spend as much of my free time with as possible.  

I'd adopt these kids in a second if I could.  In any case, I love having them around, they're awesome kids, I just can't comprehend parents who don't want to spend time with them.

I would go ahead and add the mother too, if she won't stand up for her kids to step-dad she should not have married him.

I have a great respect for a dad that raises kids that are not biological his, My grandfather did this for my mom, he had one son from a previous marriage and my mom was only 2-3 years old when he married my grandmother. He always said he had two kids and 4 grand-kids, "one grand-kid by his son and my moms three boys.