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Step parenting
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Lies, bad language – undesirable habits, and your children
22 May 2006 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
Parents: don’t lie to your children. Don’t lie for them. Don’t lie through them. The world is confusing enough without you helping to muddy the waters. Young people have enough pressure to be deceitful without mom and dad adding to their confusion.
Parents: avoid bad language. There’s nothing cute or endearing about your toddler swearing like the proverbial trooper. To come out of his mouth, the words must first have entered his ears.
Parents: if you make your child get you a beer, or your cigarettes, you are training your child in habits most adults wished they did not have. If he can get your beer and cigarettes, he’ll be getting his own before you can say, “Where did you learn that?”
Parents: be financially, sexually, spiritually faithful to your spouse and you will teach your child better lessons about life than can be learned at the finest of schools. Let “I’m sorry” and “please forgive me” be words your child frequently hears and he too might learn to say them.
Parents: repeatedly remind your child that despite your many errors and failures, it is your child and your child alone who is ultimately responsible for making his life effective, creative and fulfilling.
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My partner’s son (9) is making our alternate weekends miserable
16 May 2006 by Rod Smith / No Comments
REQUEST FOR ADVICE: I am divorced. My son (15) and I live with my partner who is a wonderful man. Every second weekend our home is miserable because his son (9) comes to stay. I find my partner’s son very manipulative. My partner cannot see anything wrong and I am told I continuously pick on his son. I have rules in my home with which my son must abide and when his son comes to visit the same rules apply. Because I am blamed constantly and told that I don’t like his son, it is becoming a reality. I would greatly appreciate some advice. (Letter edited)
ROD’S REPLY: If your partner is so wonderful marry him. This will give you a legal platform for a relationship with his child and then you can legitimately refer to his house – your letter suggests you are living with him – as your home.
In the meantime I’d suggest you (and your son) find alternative accommodation every second weekend while you research what it is about you that a nine-year-old child can wield has so much power over you.
Adult behavior is very important in setting the framework for a child’s behavior. Neither adult is presently offering this boy a stable, trustworthy context and of course he is going to learn to manipulate!
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Son (13) comes home from dad’s house with bruises…..
14 May 2006 by Rod Smith / 2 Comments
Reader’s Letter: “I am divorced but live with a wonderful man and have a very stable and loving home environment for my son (13). My ex-husband and his new wife have boys aged 17 and 13. All three boys get on very well. My son arrived home from the weekend with his dad and showed me a black bruise on his arm. When I asked him how he got the bruise I was told that his dad had made a new rule: if the boys don’t brush their teeth by 9.30am, don’t pick up clothes, or use bad language, the boys are allowed to punch each other as punishment. So my son was punched in the arm by the seventeen-year-old for not brushing his teeth. I contacted my ex-husband about this and he told me to keep my nose out of his affairs how he runs his home. Your advice would be greatly appreciated.”
Everything pertaining to your son is always your business – keep your nose in it. Meet with your son’s stepmother, who will surely share your concern, and request this barbaric approach to cleaner teeth, rooms and mouths, stops! Such behavior among three boys can do none any possible good. But be wise; the children do get along. Be unrelenting in seeking your son’s absolute safety. “Running his home” is about who vacuums the house, who takes out the trash – abusing your son does not quite fit into that category!
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Should I meet my ex-wife’s new man?
28 Mar 2006 by Rod Smith / 15 Comments
QUESTION: My children (8 and 9) really like their mother’s boyfriend and I am fine with it. He is okay with the children and I know from a distant mutual acquaintance that he is a good father to his own children. The problem is that I think he tries too hard with mine and they say he is trying to take my place. I get all this third hand when the children come to me (most weekends). From your columns over the past few weeks I get the feeling it would be good for me to meet him. My ex-wife would probably not want me to meet him. What do you think?
RESPONSE: You have every right to meet any person who is sharing time with your children. You do not need your ex-wife’s permission. I’d suggest you phone him and cordially invite him to talk face-to-face. When you meet, don’t critique his relationship with your children, talk about your ex-wife or create any false alliance with him. Do not draw your ex-wife into this. He might choose to tell her about your phone call but that is something over which you have no control. Go well: you are being the man your children can respect.
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Seven “essentials” before marrying someone with children?
21 Mar 2006 by Rod Smith / 14 Comments
1. Plan several sessions of “hard” talking with your potential spouse. It is essential that you temporarily forget the romantic elements of your relationship to talk business. Blending families is one of life’s most difficult challenges, which is further compounded when both parties have children.
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2. Don’t try to be the stepparent before you legally occupy the role. Prematurely playing a role will create problems once you legitimately occupy it. It is essential you do not assume roles you don’t occupy. If a child (or future spouse) treats you as a parent, it doesn’t mean you are one. Troubles brew when people push themselves, or are pushed by others, into roles they do not occupy. (This is true even beyond families!)
3. Bridges are best built before they are needed. It is essential that you insist on multiple meetings with both parents of ALL the children before you consider marriage. These meetings will focus on methods of co-parenting in order to secure everyone’s best advantage. If implementing such meetings seems overwhelming to you, you are probably heading for a minefield of countless unexpected, unwelcome complications – that will seem (believe it or not) even too large for love to overcome! What is avoided (denied, glossed over, minimized) pre-wedding will rise like a rabid monster quite soon after the wedding.
4. Financial integrity is as important as sexual fidelity! It is essential that you look into every detail of all financial records of your spouse-to-be and offer your own finances for similar scrutiny — before you plan a wedding. Persons who cannot responsibly handle money are unlikely to be able to handle the pressures of thriving within a blended family. If a would-be spouse suggests information* about his or her finances are off-limits to you, wipe the dust off your feet and depart, no matter how much love you may feel. Authentic love, apart from having many other facets, is also measured in the degree of financial partnering* (not necessarily blending) is established between lovers. Resilient love seeks the wise, open use of combined resources. Because blending families also often involves complex financial arrangements (child support and so forth, divorce costs, education bills for children of a former marriage) hiding the details from a would-be spouse is exceedingly unfair to all involved.*
5. Flee “blamers.” An adult who blames their former spouse (or parents, or childhood, the new political order) for everything will also, before long, blame you for everything.
6. Avoid people who cannot engage in civil conversations with an ex, with their parents, or their children.
7. Getting Johnny (or Mary) a stepparent will not ease his dissatisfaction with the divorce, school, or his craving for a “real family.” It is essential to understand that getting married will not solve any but the most superficial current family issues. Blending families is likely to unveil and exacerbate more problems than it solves.
This said, and so much of it sounds negative, blended families hold the potential to enrich and empower all the people involved. Some of the healthiest, happiest families I have met in many years of meeting with families (in all manner of circumstances) have been blended families!
* A reader kindly pointed out that my column suggests finances ought to be blended. I do not believe this is always wise or necessary. I do believe the couple MUST be OPEN about the details or all financial matters. See comment here: http://rodesmith.com/2008/01/20/reader-comments-on-blending-finances/
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper.
Life inside the Smith household
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