Stepmoms Should Feel Comfortable Asking for What We Want--But it's Easier Said than Done

I strongly believe that we stepmothers have a right to be involved in decisions that affect us and that we have the right to speak up for what we want and need in situations that we’re a part of.

For example, if a change in your stepchildren’s visitation schedule means you’ll have to adjust your commute schedule or route, then you have a right to be consulted about that change. Or, if you’re constantly forced to clean up after your stepchildren’s messes, then you have a right to be involved in setting and enforcing rules which require them to pick up after themselves.

The trouble is that it’s often easier said than done.

First of all, we hesitate to insist on being involved because we’re afraid to look like mean, bossy stepmothers. Some conventional advice reinforces these fears by telling us things like:

“The children have been raised with a family pattern, and it’s not fair to them if they suddenly have to change [their lives] . . . it would be complicated for the stepchildren and this would present them with an opportunity to resent you—the reason for the change . . . The other members of your family have a previous history and their routines need to be modified to include another person. Sometimes you may feel awkward because you are the reason for all the adjustment and change.” (From 7 Steps to Bonding with Your Stepchild by Suzen J. Ziegahan)

Additionally, we’re afraid to insist on being involved because we’re nervous about upsetting our family relationships—and as I mentioned in a previous post, research has shown that women judge themselves by the success of their relationships. When we base our self worth on how well things are going with our stepchildren and husband, it can be easy to slip into a mode where we’re focusing on making our family members happy rather than considering our own needs.

I know when I first became a stepmom I felt like I was adrift in the middle of other people’s plans. I felt pressured to give up an exercise class with my co-workers in the evenings, I gave up seeing my friends on the weekends, and I canceled plans whenever the visitation schedule changed (which was often for a time). Meanwhile, my stepdaughter would scream endlessly at the top of her lungs, break things, and call me names. My friendships drifted, my anxiety skyrocketed, and I became depressed—but I was afraid to step up and change the situation because I was afraid of upsetting my husband and terrified of coming off like an evil stepmother.

It finally took me reaching the end of my rope before I realized what I know now: That no matter what our fears are, we stepmoms deserve to have ours needs met just as much as the other members of our families. We didn’t disrupt our family, as Ziegahan suggests. Things were already disrupted before we came along, and we don’t deserve to be punished for it.

Obviously I’m not advocating that we put our needs above those of our stepchildren to their detriment—just that we deserve to have an equal say in what goes on in our lives and our homes, and that we should feel comfortable and justified in asking for it.

Communication with the Bio-Mom

I’ve read a lot about how important it is for divorced parents to communicate with each other about their kids.

However, I’ve also heard a lot of frustrated stepmoms talk about how they seem to end up taking up the slack between non-communicating bio parents. I’ve read some blogs and forum posts where stepmoms talk about sending texts, emails, and phone calls to the bio moms, relaying information back and forth between their partner and his ex.

After reading and reflecting on my own experiences, I’ve been thinking about why we stepmoms decide to take this responsibility upon ourselves. Here’s why I think we do it:

1) We feel obligated to do what we see as “the right thing”
2) We think this is the way to be a good stepmom
3) We want to make ourselves look and feel like part of the family
4) We want to look good to the bio mom (i.e., involved and responsible)

All of this makes me think: how much communicating with the bio mom should a stepmom really do?

I’m sure this is going to sound a little controversial, but my opinion is that a lot of us stepmoms shouldn’t put much enegry into proactive communication with the bio mom.

Let me clarify. What I’m trying to say is that it’s not our responsibility to be reporting what our stepkids did that day, what TV shows they like, or what their new friend’s name is. It’s not our responsibility to send reminders about visitation times, appointments, or court dates.* That kind of thing is your partner’s responsibility, and if you do it because you feel obligated to, then you’re likely to end up feeling used and frustrated.

Furthermore, if you try and be a good stepmom by relaying information between your partner and his ex, you actually end up making yourself feel excluded. Rather than relaxing into your place in the family as a partner/wife and stepmom, you’re constantly holding yourself up between these two former lovers. It may only be an attitude, sure, but it can still negatively impact your happiness.

Finally, if you try and make yourself part of the family by being the reporter and coordinator, then you actually end up feeling empty despite all your best intentions. Even though coordinating information with the bio mom can take a lot of your emotional energy, it’s not actually doing much to build a bond between you and your stepchildren. At the same time, you feel frustrated to have put so much energy into the stepfamily situation without receiving the reward of affection back from your stepkids.

Instead of being the information exchanger, I think stepmoms should put that time and energy into building a relationship with their stepchildren. You don’t need to worry about what the bio mom thinks of you. (Although I know this can be difficult!) Truly, the important thing is what your stepkids think of you, not their mom.

This is my opinion, of course. And I'm sure that there are some stepmoms who have great communication with their kid's bio mom. What do you think? How much information sharing with the bio mom do you feel is appropriate? Have you had any bad experiences? Good ones? I’d love to hear what you have to say.




* I’m all for answering questions that the bio mom asks you (reactive communication), and I certainly support proactive communication in any case that would involve ensuring the safety of the child.

terminology tidbit

I'm taking a quick moment to pop on here with my morning coffee. My fiance's family and friends arrived from England last night, and today we're knee-deep in last-minute wedding errands and projects.

In the last week several people have asked me, "how do you feel about becoming a stepmother on Friday?" One person said, "gosh, on Thursday you'll be a single girl and then on Friday you'll be a stepmom."

These comments all came from people who know about my situation--that my fiance and I have lived together for the last several years and that we have my stepdaughter about every other day. I was a little irritated with the implication that it wasn't all the love and care that I have shown my stepdaughter, all the kisses, diaper changes, band aids on boo-boos, time outs, swimming lessons, and hugs that made me a stepmom to them. No, to these people I become a "real" stepmom on Friday when the judge signs our marriage certificate.

In each instance I let it slide; I think it must be a hard thing to understand if you're not a stepmom yourself. What do you think--did you receive any comments from the peanut gallery when you became a stepmother?

We use a different part of our brain to process stepfamily members

According to a recent article in the the latest issue of the journal Neuropsychologia:

"Scientists found that relatives and self-lookalikes are processed through a self-referential part of the brain. Friends and strangers who look nothing like the viewer, on the other hand, light up entirely different areas of the brain, those linked to making important and risky decisions with respect to the self."

After reading this article I thought, no wonder stepfamily relationships are so hard--we're using separate parts of our brain to process different members of the same family!

Stepmoms: You Must Control Your Venting

Everyone needs to vent sometimes—especially us stepmoms. We get frustrated about something our stepchildren or their parents have done and the next thing we know we’re going off on a tirade to ten different people.

Even though complaining feels good in the moment, studies show that it actually leaves us unhappier afterwards. I know this seems counter-intuitive, especially because a lot of us grew up being taught the catharsis hypothesis: the idea that it’s healthy to express and expel our negative feelings.

University of Arkansas psychologist Jeffrey M. Lohr, says that, "If venting really does get anger 'out of your system,' then venting should result in a reduction of both anger and aggression. Unfortunately for catharsis theory, the [study] results showed precisely the opposite effect."

Lohr explains that, "people fail to realize is that the anger would have dissipated had they not vented. Moreover, it would have dissipated more quickly had they not vented and tried to control their anger instead."

At the same time, we all know that completely holding in our frustrations isn’t healthy, either. Bottling everything up has been shown to lead to depression. Plus, complaining is how some of us ask for help.

Striking a balance between these two extremes is an important part of being a happy stepmom. Here are seven tips to help you take control of your venting and make it a productive experience:

1) Set a time limit. Tell a friend, “I want to tell you about something that happened today, but I just have ten minutes to talk.” Call right before dinner or on a break if you have trouble enforcing the limit.

2) Don’t vent the same story to all of your friends—just one or two.

3) Don’t let yourself go over a single incident again and again. Get your friends on board if necessary. Give them the OK to gently remind you if you start rehashing a story you've told three times before.

4) Get used to telling people that you don’t want their opinion. Sometimes our friends are the ones who stir us up—they egg us on or drag out the details. To avoid getting drawn into a lengthy session, tell your friends, “I have something I’d like to talk about—I’m not really looking for any input, but I just need to get it off my chest.”

5) Figure out exactly why you’re complaining. Look for the root of the problem so you can figure out a better way to address the symptoms. Maybe you’re frustrated that the kids never pick up after themselves like you ask them to. Is it possible that you’re more angry that they don’t respect your authority in the house?

6) Ask for help directly instead of complaining and hoping that people will offer you advice. Mention the situation in a short, neutral way and then move on to asking for help with how to deal with it.

7) Go to therapy. A counselor can help you better understand the situation and provide you with tools to deal with it more effectively.

When Older Step-Children Act Out

A lot of what I’ve previously written about stepmothers and how to handle bad behavior applies mostly to very young children. Younger kids often act out not because they are reacting to their parents’ divorce, but just because they are, well, kids. All young children go through a period where they learn to “use their words” rather than hitting, to “use their inside voices” rather than yelling in the house, and so forth.

Older kids, though, may act out because they’re struggling with the stepfamily situation. Going through their parents divorce may have left them feeling powerless and adrift. Besides having endured the painful process of their parents’ separation, stepchildren may have also been forced to move, to change schools, and to be pulled away from their friends and activities.

Suzie Hayman, author of Teach Yourself Successful Step-Parenting, says that,

“One thing children lose when families break up is control. It wasn’t their choice for their parents to separate nor their choice for a parent and step-parent to get together. What is happening around them can make them feel completely powerless. This can lead to their trying to gain control and exercise some choice in their lives, often with drastic and sometimes confusing effect.”

As I mentioned in my last post, step-kids often act out towards step-parents when they are angry at their bio-parents.. Step-kids may feel angry at their bio-parents but be afraid to express it to them; they may think that in doing so they might anger their parents to the point that they might lose contact (or further contact) with them.

On top of that, children often don’t know how to pin down what they’re feeling and express those emotions in words. They may act up and misbehave because that’s the only way they can manage to express what their feeling.

So how do stepmoms best deal with older kids acting out?

Just like with younger kids, you should always react to stepchildren’s feelings in a respectful way—and never with anger. No yelling, even if they yell, and no making labeling or judgmental statements.

When it comes to older kids, Hayman beleives the best approach is to diffuse the situation with a discussion about their feelings, your feelings, and how the situation can be resolved between the two of you.

Hayman suggests that stepparents use language like . . . “When . . . (describe the situation) . . . I feel . . . (describe your feeling” angry, sad, etc) . . . because . . . (why you feel that way; for example, you feel disrespected) . . . So what I would like is” (describe how you would prefer the situation to be). The author also advises step-parents to ask their step-children, “What are we going to do about this?” and encourage them to actively participate in coming up with a solution.

Another good way to approach misbehavior like yelling or arguing is to counter with a statement that summarizes their emotions and why they might be feeling that way. For example, you might say, “It sounds like you’re really upset about this and I’d like to understand. What I’m hearing is that you’re mad because of (describe the situation here). Is that right?”

The key is to make the child feel understood, involved, and like they have a say in the situation. The idea is that by acknowledging a step-child’s feelings and fulfilling his need to have some control over the situation, he will then be more willing to cooperate and less likely to act out.

Stepmothers and Cognitive Dissonance

I think a lot of stepmothers get tripped up by something called cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is the stressful feeling caused when a person tries to hold two opposite ideas simultaneously. I’ve also had this described to me as the reason people feel upset when they act in a manner that isn’t in keeping with how they see themselves.

The other part of cognitive dissonance theory says that people can’t handle this stressful feeling for extended periods—and as a consequence, our minds end up adapting by modifying our existing beliefs to reject one of the two ideas.

Meaning, we have these ideas about ourselves and expectations about what our step-children and partners will act like—but then we end up getting confused about ourselves when reality doesn’t match up with our expectations and self-perception. Maybe we act differenly than what feels natural for us because we think that's the way stepmothers are supossed to act, and then we think, "wait, this isn't me." Or our stepchildren disrepect us and we start thinking, maybe aren't the loving, capable, fabulous people we thought we were—because surely our stepchildren would respect loving, capable, fabulous people.

In my experience, I started out feeling a like a pretty together girl. I had control over my life and how I spent my time. But after I became a stepmother, I suddenly felt like I’d lost control over where I went, who I saw, and how I responded to problems like getting punched in the face with a sippy cup.

My stepdaughter visits about every other day, and for a long time I let my fiancé stop me from leaving the house on those days—if she was over, he wanted me spending time with her. I had to rush to be home from work to go with him to pick her up from her mother’s house. I wasn’t allowed to take an exercise class with a friend because it fell on visitation days. I couldn’t go out for weekend coffee or weekday happy hours with my friends anymore. Meanwhile, my fiancé would switch days with his ex without notice; I’d come home, yet again, to find that I’d have to change my evening plans. Not to mention the fact that all the step-parenting advice I read said that I shouldn’t be disciplining his daughter. In short, I was forced to schedule my life, all my “me” activities, around his daughter, while at the same time letting her get away with treating me poorly.

At first I thought, hey, no big deal, I just need to adapt. After all, that’s what the step-parenting books said I was supposed to do. Meanwhile, if I complained to my co-workers about how hard it was, they’d tell me, “well, that’s what being a stepmother is like” or, better yet, “you knew what you were getting yourself into.”

But as time passed I felt increasingly smothered by this tiny, screaming, tantrum-throwing child—and helpless to do anything about it. I felt so confused. How could I be a smart, capable woman but so out of control of my life? How could I have not seen this coming? How could I be strong and defeated at the same time?

After a while I couldn't handle the imbalance anymore. Cognitive dissonance kicked in and I thought to myself, maybe I’m just not the capable woman I thought I was. I guess I’m just a mess. I guess I can’t handle things. It was a very painful period of self-doubt.

After a lot of work to overcome those feelings, I want to warn new stepmothers not to try and act in a way that’s uncomfortable for you just because people or books are telling you that you’re supposed to. Sure, you need to be flexible—but you also need to feel like yourself if you’re going to be a happy stepmother.