I'm a step-dad to 3 girls under 6. The eldest is still fairly enamored by bio-dad and while I won't go into the details; he's a man-child. The 3-year-old just follows the eldest at present, but I'm fairly sure that'll change in another year or two and she won't really bother with him. The youngest is 1 and barely even knows him, I'm essentially her dad as far as she's concerned.
My partner (his ex-wife) has obviously taken full custody of the girls and he gets occasional visits, wherein he allows anything and everything. Even if they do something wrong, say biting, he will tell them off. That's it. No timeouts. No loss of toys or whatever was involved. He's the "fun parent", there's no rules, no real consequences.
The 5-year-old mentioned the other day that "real daddy never gets grumpy with us" and while my partner and I are well aware of why this is happening, we're struggling to find a way to explain it to our 5-year-old.
Any suggestions on how we can approach this? Or are we better to just leave it and let her figure out that "fun parent" doesn't mean "good parent".