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Step parenting
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I am insecure about her ex-husband……
21 Nov 2006 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
“I am involved with a woman I have known since our early teens. She was married and got divorced. She has two children and I love them all very much. My relationships (with them) are fine but I feel great insecurity about her ex-husband. I tell myself that I must be better and bigger. I don’t think this is healthy. What can I do to make the feelings go away? What can my partner do to help?” (Letter edited)
Rod’s response: Insecurity is both pervasive and generic. It will rear its head whenever its host is threatened or challenged. I’d guess you’ve had similar feelings stirring within you long before you became romantically involved.
Your partner can do nothing since your feelings are your business. Don’t try to make them her business. This is not about her ex-husband.
While you compete with her former husband, your new family (if you marry) will not know you for who you are. I challenge you to establish your unique approach to love and parenting without reference to the man with whom you may share parenting responsibilities.
Your feelings will not go away until you appreciate your unique contribution to the children and their mother, a role which, at its best, will compliment the ex-husband’s role with his children.
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How to identify a healthy family….
24 Oct 2006 by Rod Smith / No Comments
People in Healthy Families:
1. Are spontaneous, creative, courageous, and forgiving
2. Are full of humor and laughter
3. Put people ahead of careers
4. Readily face tough issues when they arise
5. Support each other in their endeavors, and want each other to succeed
6. Believe in each other and speak highly of each other
7. Are not overly focused on each other to the point that anyone feels overcrowded
8. Can get time apart, without falling apart
9. Place a high regard on integrity in every way
10. Resist jealousy
11. Resist rescuing each other
12. Are not afraid to give children loving discipline and correction -
Step-parenting, the problem of “too much, too soon” —
26 Sep 2006 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
I get a number of letters each week about stepparenting, gone awry. The theme is usually something like, “the children were wonderful in the beginning,” and, “I am the only father/mother they could trust” and, “now I am being accused of trying to take over,” or “he/she said I am invading his/her boundaries,” and, “this is the last thing I expected from what was a very cute and loving little boy/girl.” Please help.
While such scenarios are hurtful to the well-meaning stepparent, whose honest desire is to love, guide and care for the child who accompanies the new spouse into the new marriage, the potential problems must be seen in a context: the child has emerged from the ruins of something (a broken marriage or relationship of some sort).
The adults in the “new” family constellations must address some matters from the very outset by avoiding the “too-much-too-soon” trap. This is the temptation is to be “larger” to a young child than the length, or depth, of the relationship can realistically allow. (Don’t behave like the relationship is longer or deeper than it actually is).
If you are entering a blended family, do not be “more” to the children, even if they will allow it. Being “more,” “bigger,” “greater,” than a biological parent will almost always come back to haunt the well-meaning “new” mom or dad.
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A reader writes about step-parenting:
13 Sep 2006 by Rod Smith / 3 Comments
“I can relate to the stepmother of six children. My experience was very bad and a long haul. I also got to the stage where I just stopped caring and turned my cheek for the next slap. Where do I start perhaps with the your’s and mine scenario. I had two daughters and he had a son and a daughter and later on one of our own.
My partner was very strict with my children who were living with us and because it was his home I supported him and his rules. His son and daughter came to us for school holidays and weekends. His son was a very angry child and it seemed that he purposely would do things to upset me. I tried to be understanding and make allowances for him which was perhaps my first mistake.
My partner would actually send me to the bus station to fetch the children who live away with their mother. Their faces would show their disappointment at seeing me and not their Dad who was out when we got home.
His son openly blamed me for this situation. He thought it was my way of making sure his father love them less because I was stopping him from being with them.
During school holidays my children had to carry on with all the rules that had been laid and there chores continued. His children did not have to help out because they were on holiday. I started sending my children to my brother for school holidays because they started resenting the way things were. This was also the wrong thing to do but I wanted to keep the peace between everyone.
His son and daughter as they got older started telling stories to their mother and father. The mother would phone the father I would be judged and accused of victimising his children. On occasions when I defended myself he told me that I was the adult in the situation and his children do not tell lies. I had no support and as the children got older they realised this and both started manipulating situations. I wanted to leave but ever time I tried to he promised me things would change and I must please come home with our child.
When his son was 15 he came and lived with us permanently because his mother decided it would be best. Once again I was told what was happening and had to go with the flow. Until his son left school he caused a lot of conflict and pain for everyone including his father. His daughter left school and wanted to live with him but told him this would not have happen unless he get’s rid of me. I was not aware that his daughter and me had a problem so this came as a bit of a shock.
His exact words to me were “he thinks I should move out for a while with our child and give him and his daughter time to bond”. I was angry and told him that he should have bonded with his daughter while she was growing up.
I did move out and decided that it was over time to move on. He came with his stories again and I ended up going back because our child needed a mother and a father. His daughter was openly rude to me.
His son’s 21st came and I arranged a small party for him and his friends. The son gave a speech and thanked me for every thing. It was the first nice thing he had ever done for me. I could full you in on all the gritty details but it would take way to long.
My conclusion:- Although my daughters were brought up in a strict environment and they did resent it they have benefited from it.
I spent a lot of years blaming his son and his daughter for my problems with them but have since realised that I should have been more firm. His son’s anger was not really directed at me, he was angry because his parents split up. He thought if I was out of the way his parents would get back together again.
My partner and his ex-wife are in my opinion one couple who should never have divorced but they did and they blamed each other. They used their children as pawns in their war zone causing the children un-necessary pain.
I allowed myself to become every ones whipping post.
I should never have allowed his son allowances for his behaviour in the first place.
I should have shown him and his sister that it was my home as well as theirs.
I should never have sent my children away to my brother for holiday’s.
I should have firmly designated the chores between all the children.
I should have been a stronger person and stood up to my partner.
Lastly I do have a relationship with my own children we are very close and although I feel guilty about allowing them to be treated as they were whilst growing up I know I never failed them or his children for that matter. My eldest daughter has a child of her own and just the other day told me that she wants her child to be brought up exactly the same way that she and her sister were brought up. She wants her child to be solid and have roots.
His children have grown up somehow I have managed to bond with them and have a relationship with them. His son told me in March this year that if I left his father now he would understand why and wouldn’t blame me. The daughter comes to me with her problems and relies on me for a lot. Neither have a good relationship with their father or mother. They love their parents very much but do not go out of there way for them. I find this very sad.
I now have anger towards my partner I feel like I have always been second best. I have distanced myself in our relationship and although I have no intentions of leaving I feel like all the years I spent being the children’s caretakers not wasted years.
I do feel I should have counted for something in the relationship. I have thrown myself into my career where I seem to get solace. I do not want to be bitter and harbour resentment. What has happened has happened, I can’t undo it I have to deal with it and carry on my youngest child is now seventeen. My child has her own scars to bear from all the trauma over the years.”
Letter submitted by Email an dpresented in full
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A few thoughts about step-children…
07 Aug 2006 by Rod Smith / 15 Comments
I have had several requests to write about stepchildren and stepparenting…..
1. Growing up within an intact, stable, biological family is already sufficiently challenging. Adjusting to a “new” family, with a stepparent, makes something that is already difficult – growing up – even tougher. Difficulties are compounded when both parents remarry within a short time of each other. (The child is dealing with two “new” families and the trauma of the loss of the “original” family).
2. Stepchildren have, by definition, experienced monumental trauma. Its power to destabilize the “new” family should not be underestimated.
3. Stepchildren who say “we didn’t ask for this” (divorce, weekend visitations, or death of a parent, remarriage) are usually right.
4. Children innately want to live with their biological parents and will not necessarily welcome the arrival of a “new” adult. Knee-jerk rejection of a new significant other is to be expected and resistance to “intruders” can be expressed in cunning, even cruel ways.
5. Stepchildren can have a heightened awareness of what they might see as fraudulent adults who often display pseudo-closeness.
6. Adults who try too hard, who are overly focused on getting to know the children, or try to “lay down the rules” or “show who is boss” are setting themselves up to fail at an already difficult task.
7. Stepchildren will not automatically love someone just because their parent does.
8. Embracing stepsiblings is difficult even for the most understanding and welcoming children.
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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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