Don't Try Too Hard

Despite what some people might tell you, stepmothers shouldn’t feel pressured to do things that make them unhappy at the expense of trying to make their stepchildren happy. This week I read Step Wise: A Parent-Child Guide to Family Mergers by James Dale and Alex Beth Schapiro and buy urine kit. This book has some great points, but there are few things in there that rub me the wrong way. For example this urine, they suggest that stepparents should listen to music they don’t like with their stepchildren, watch TV shows they don’t like with their stepchildren, and go to movies they don’t like with their stepchildren, etc. etc. Halfway through the book they state, “the point is that you give and they get; the point is that they come ahead of you” (Dale & Shapiro 2001) and fake urine.

Now, I understand that compromise is a part of being a family quick fix. By all means go ahead and join your stepkids on the couch for an episode of Rap Stars or whatever every once and a while. But don’t start consistently doing a bunch of things you don’t like to do just because you think it’s going to make your stepkids like you more. You’re only going to end up feeling frustrated. You can buy quick fix synthetic urine

Gaining Affection from your Stepchildren, Part III

This week I’m sharing advice on some simple things you can do to start gaining affection from your stepchildren. These are little things to start out with, the kind you can begin with and then build on as time passes.

Praise Others
Research shows that people subconsciously associate us with the things we say about other people. This effect, called trait transfer, means that if you talk about how other people are selfish or annoying, others will associate you as being that way, too. So praise the people around you. Besides being a nice thing to do, your stepchildren will associate you as having the good traits you describe.

Do Small Nice Things
Do very small nice things for your stepchildren without calling attention to them or expecting a thank you. The theory of reciprocity says that when we receive a gift, we feel obligated to make a return gesture. Newsflash—your stepchildren don’t want to feel obligated to you. However, they do want to feel accepted and comfortable, and small gestures like cooking a favorite meal or going to a movie together are good for this.

I say small things specifically, because doing big things without expecting a return is hard. Even if you tell yourself that you’re bending over backwards for the good of the kids, you’ll still end up feeling resentful over time if you never get a thank you. Trust me, I know this one from experience!

Stepfamilies as "Reconstituted" Families

Five days ago my laptop died. My tech-savvy FH has tried each day since to coax it back from the grave, but to no avail. So here I am working on a borrowed computer and mourning the loss of the dozens and dozens (and dozens) of blogs and articles I had bookmarked.

As I’ve been fretting over all the scholarly articles I had saved in my Favorites list, I was reminded of something about them that’s been bothering me for a while. Namely, that a lot of the scholarly articles I’ve read about stepfamilies refer to them as “reconstituted families.” (See here , here, and here for a few examples.) One article even refers to stepfamilies as “recreating families."

This description frustrates me because I think it’s both degrading and inaccurate. The word reconstituted means that something has been “reconstructed, restored, or rearranged.” In reality, though, a stepfamily is not just a family that has been rearranged. A stepfamily is a completely new family with its own unique joys and challenges.

I think as a stepmother it’s important to keep in mind that our family isn’t any less valuable, any less real of a family, just because we or our spouse has children from a previous relationship. A family by definition is the bond between all sorts of relations: adults, children, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and third cousins; a family is the bringing together of people who love one another.

Reading Suggestion: a post about How to End (Stepmom) Suffering

I stumbled across a great blog post on Brazen Careerist the other day: How to End Suffering by Tina Su.

She describes how ruminating about her husband’s frustrating ex-wife caused her intense pain. Though Su doesn’t directly discuss being a stepmother, I thought that her discussion translates well to just how strongly negative thoughts about an ex-wife (and bio-mom) can affect a stepmom. She writes:

“My husband Jeremy was married once before. During the early stages of our romantic courtship, he was simultaneously battling the lingering ends of an unsettling divorce . . . As excited as we were for having found each other under extreme circumstances, the pending divorce hovered overhead, and a battle for money and properties continued without an apparent end in sight . . . Here was a man who I loved and adored more than anything else. When I saw that he was being hurt, it hurt me too. The spirit of mother in me, of survival, wanted to protect and fight anyone threatening to hurt my family. I was like a walking cave-woman, minus the animal-skin skirt and wooden club. To say that I was unwell and unbalanced is an understatement.”

Su goes on to discuss how she overcame her persistent negative thoughts and gives some interesting advice about how others can do the same. Read the whole post here.

standing by...

I'm still playing around with my template tonight....bear with me here...

Are Non-Married Stepmothers Really Stepmothers?

As tough as it can be to be a stepmother at all, it can be even tougher to be an unmarried one. The role is even more ambiguous and many people don’t extent non-married stepmothers the same level of respect and acknowledgment as married stepmoms.

My now-husband and I lived together for several years before getting engaged and married (both in the same year). I struggled with feeling like people in my life didn't respect that fact that I was, indeed, a stepmom--someone who changed diapers and kissed boo-boos and gave time-outs.

Then when I got married people said things to me like, "how do you feel about becoming a stepmother on Friday?" One person even 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 had known me and my family for years.It seems like a lot of the step-parenting material out there is aimed at married stepmoms.

That’s why I’m so excited by a new book I just started reading: Teach Yourself Successful Step-Parenting by Suzie Hayman. In the first chapter Hayman writes,

“What is a stepfamily? A stepfamily is any household that includes children who are related to one parent but not the other. You may feel that partners have to be married for one of them to be a step-parent, or that the children need to live with you full time for them to be stepchildren. The truth is that all the emotional needs and problems that go with stepfamilies kick into play whether the adults concerned are actually married or not.”

I think Haymen hit the nail exactly on the head--whether you’re married or not, you still have to face the same issues.

How about you--do you agree or disagree? While I feel very strongly about this, I've also women who feel very strongly that you're not a stepmother until after you've both said your vows. I’d love to hear what you think.

How to not Look Like You're Trying to Replace their BioMom, Part I

I mentioned before that I’d signed up for a step-parenting newsletter. I was a bit suspicious when I read this installment:

“You are not the parent . . . Making attempts to take the place of your stepchild’s biological parent, no matter how little contact the child has with him or her, will likely backfire. That’s what David Caldwell, a 52-year-old father of two stepchildren and three biological children in San Francisco, learned when he married his wife.‘The main thing is not to overreach,’ he says. ‘I had to remind myself that the kids already had a father. No matter how little he was around, I needed to respect his position.’”

I agree and disagree. I agree that the role of a step-parent is not to replace a biological parent. Our place is not to convince our stepchildren that their biological parents never existed or that our relationship with them is better than the one they have with their parents.

At the same time, though, I believe that being able to be a parent in your own home—that is, to be an equal partner with your spouse, to set rules in your house, to show your stepchildren love and support, and to discipline them when necessary—is crucial for many stepmothers to be happy.

The question becomes, then, how do you parent your stepchildren without acting like you’re trying to replace their biological parent? I’m going to be doing some additional research about this during the week, but here are my initial conclusions:

First, don’t try and replicate the life they have with their biological parent. You might think that you’re doing them a favor by doing everything the way their mother does it—after all, that’s what they’re used to, right? If you do this too much, though, your stepkids are going to interpret this as you trying to take over for their mother.

Next, don’t make any kind of negative comments about their biological mother or the quality of the relationship they have with her. Besides hurting their feelings, this is going to make your stepchildren think that you’re trying to show them that you’d make a better mother to them than her.

More to come next post.