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.

Happy Nubbin

I wanted to share something that made my day yesterday. I was sitting with my stepdaughter after dinner, trying not to get grossed out as she told me about how it tasted like apple juice the last time she threw up. Without skipping she then looked up at me and said, "thank you for loving me." Wow.

Ruminating

For the first couple of years that I was a stepmom I used to really get carried away ruminating—that is, dwelling on my worries over and over again.

I was frustrated that neither of my stepdaughter’s parents seemed worried that she wasn’t meeting her developmental milestones. That her speech and cognition were delayed. That she seemed unreasonably terrified of the world. That she seemed to always be eating junk food. That she would never stop throwing tantrums. That she'd never graduate from diapers and she’d end up calling me from a high school bathroom stall asking me to come wipe her bottom.

I’m guessing that there are a lot of stepmothers who struggle with ruminating. After all, there’s just so much new territory to cover as a stepmom, and so much of it is out of our control.

Not only is dwelling on problems frustrating, but excessive ruminating has been shown to lead to depression. So when you find yourself dwelling on something that your stepchild or their parents have done (or not done, or keep doing…), I’ve found that it’s best to try your best to nip your worries in the bud before they have a chance to take over.

This MSN article has some good tips:

1) Put on music and dance, scrub the bathtub spotless, whatever engrosses you—for at least 10 minutes.
2) Tell yourself you can obsess all you want from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., but until then, you're banned.
3) For one minute, eyes closed, acknowledge all the thoughts going through your mind.
4) Consider "What's the worst that could happen?" and "How would I cope?"
5) Ask a friend or relative to be your point person when your thoughts start to speed out of control.
6) Accept that you're human and make mistakes—and then move on.

Do you have any suggestions to share?