we survived it I am happy to say, I didn’t take the bait from the s’kids and my husband did the heavy lifting I actually got to relax. hop eyou are all well and survived as well

I got worried around 8 pm though because my partner looked very sad. None of them had called him. But around 9, three of the six did. Not sure why they all called him in a row. Maybe somebody reminded them.

He’s going out for pizza with them this evening.

So, this way of doing it–we get together with friends for a meal, he goes out with kids later–seems to work for us. They don’t get an opportunity to diss me any more.

Kathy, Wow, wow, wow . . . My stepdaughter is 21 now and I am so thrilled to see her “begin” the process of maturing, but my heart hurts for you. For me, it’s the youngest one that I bonded with and he’s 13 now. I read a long time ago that every time a child goes through another developmental milestone (13 is one of them) that they will re-examine their relationship with the stepparent and likely have more issues with acceptance. Well, despite how very much my s-son and I got along, sometimes we even said the L-word, he is in that phase now. I keep telling myself to wait, just wait, just wait, and wait some more. This will pass. We were having a discussion because he was mad about me not listening to him go on and on and on and on with a story and I wondered aloud if it had anything to do with him being mad that I didn’t belong in his life. . . and he neatly and quickly came back with, “We’re so way past that, no this is about . . . ” And, I just sat there and processed it for a minute and realized that I DO go deeply into a projection of how much he must hate me at the slightest provocation and in fact, I’m going to guess that at least 75% of the time I’m wrong. Very interesting and a good wake-up call for me.

And, I wonder if it helps a step-couple to know that a child WILL over-react, I wonder if the biological parent could just wait and not “protect” the child and not defend against the stepparent . . . if both people could just take the teen screaming, whining, crying, swearing, and whatever else is going on as just what it is . . . an over-reaction designed to get attention so the child can get what he/she wants. Hello? I wonder if that would save any parents from a huge argument afterward. It’s not a parent’s job to make life all happy and milk-toast for a kid, and in fact in their teen years they are “adrenalin-seeking” according to many of the neuropsychologists I know. If that’s true, they might be over-dramatizings just to get their emotional-adrenalin-fix. Just a thought. Might be true for some kids.

And, here I am on this site, just before I head to bed . . . one last “look-see” at everyone’s comments to go to bed with a warm heart knowing we’re all living this process the best we can. What an amazing creature a stepmother is!!!!!!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Peggy

I have good reason to believe that her mother is fueling much of this and I’m working very hard to let go of my anger and pain about that (that is, for the past 10 years, while I put my life on hold for her daughter in some very substantial ways, she generally treated me like free, on-call childcare), but here’s my follow-up question: how can I detach from her mother? and not be so hooked by the situation? We have no actual ostensible relationship, the mother and I, and I don’t want one (I find her to be very inconsistent on her best days, a kind way of saying that she’s manipulative and unstable) –but I find myself still too reactive to her, she gets under my skin. I want to reclaim my autonomy, to not let this woman have emotional power over me, but when the 13 year old acts like a 13 year old, I feel that her mother in the room. Do you know what I mean?

I agree that teenagers in stepfamilies are aloof, angry and aggravating! They so dramatically demonstrate and act out the anger/jealousy of the spurned bio mom against the stepmom. (They HAVE TO for loyalty sake.) But it’s not a pleasant place for a stepmom to be. All SM did was fall in love and promise to care for his kids respectfully …seemed like a good idea at the time. It’s a tough and thankless position to be in. I advise that when it gets rough with angry teenaged stepkids who act badly: take a deep breath, take a break, talk to youself to calm down, and IGNORE what’s happening as well as you can. It will change over time.
Happy Thanksgiving

This holiday season will be my third as a stepmother to two teenagers (girl 17, boy 15) that live with me and my fiance full-time. In years past, each Thanksgiving or Christmas day was a horrible, crazed mad-dash between my parents’ house and his family’s house (both hours away from our house), with the result always being that I felt resentful for not having enough time with my family, doing our “family things,” and my fiance and his kids feeling the same about not having enough time to spend participating in their family traditions. This year, a bit by chance, my fiance’s family members weren’t all available on Thanksgiving, so we did early T-Day with them last Sunday – and my family will be doing something on Thanksgiving day.

A couple of things about this year’s shift have been noticeably helpful to me. First, not having to drive for hours and then shuttle between multiple households with different holiday/family cultures, and then drive for hours more to get home, has dramatically decreased my stress level. When we went to my fiance’s family’s early T-Day, I found it easier to tolerate their entrenched holiday traditions, which are alien to me – protracted board game sessions, not enough wine (!), blah food, and excessive (in my opinion) doting on all the kids that were running around. Oh, and the women doing everything while the men do nothing. Somehow, knowing that we were devoting one day to my fiance’s family’s “way,” and anticipating being able to devote another whole day to my family’s “way,” made me much more calm and tolerant of a different holiday culture that often feels uncomfortable to me. The kids were happy – they got to spend a whole day doing what feels familiar to them – my fiance was happy, and while I won’t say that I relish the way their folks celebrate T-Day, I was generally happy because the whole experience was comparatively low-stress, and because we hadn’t set ourselves up with the expectation of having to shift among multiple households in one day. (The only really “bad” moment, which I can [almost!] find funny now, was when I leaned over to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and my fiance’s mom/mother-in-law-to-be came up behind me, pushed me playfully, and yelled “Put the witch in the oven!” She’s a wonderful woman who has been very candid about her love for me, but I really couldn’t help having a Hansel and Gretel wicked stepmother freak-out moment!)

Another thing that I have been more conscious about this year’s holidays: I think that in the first year, my fiance and I both really wanted the kids to love our new arrangement (though we never discussed it explicitly, and still have a very hard time doing it), and we overextended ourselves tremendously – and over-pushed the kids by extension – by trying to be all things to all families involved, make everything feel “right” or “normal” to the kids, spend too much money on Christmas gifts, etc. This post is already long enough, so I won’t go into any more background, but suffice it to say that after three years with two teenage stepkids, I have reached my limit in many ways. This year, I basically told the kids: your family does holidays one way, and my family does holidays in a totally different way. You will always be welcome at my family’s celebrations, but if you don’t like the way we celebrate, you are welcome to make other plans. I let myself off the hook around pleasing them, and I hope I’ve let them off the hook. Our Thanksgiving with my family would actually be much less nerve-wracking me for if they weren’t around (and I know that my mother actually feels the same, and more) – but if they decide to come, that is their choice, and at 15 and 17, they will have to deal with navigating a family environment that doesn’t think kids should be the center of attention all day. My family talks incessantly when we are together, wonderful conversations about culture and politics and art and all these things I/we find exciting and inspiring – and we drink wine and talk about new music and play guitar, etc…but my stepkids seem at a total loss without access to video games, Facebook, etc. If they do decide to come with us on Thursday, I doubt they will find it “fun” by their definition. But guess what? Not my problem. Realizing that has been liberating.

Best wishes to all the stepmothers out there – I hope we can all remember and honor ourselves and our partnerships this holiday season. I’m not quite there, and neither is my partner, but I hope we all will be, one day.

So part one of any solution is to acknowledge and hopefully for your husband to understand that the simple fact of the matter is that this IS in fact tough, and would be no matter how wonderful and self-abnegating you were. Kudos to you and your marriage, for starters.

As for the holiday, you’re staring into the abyss of unstructured time with a teen stepchild and that is understandably daunting. A few suggestions:

1. She might be on her best behavior at your friend’s house for Thanksgiving and I think it’s brilliant that you’ll be bulwarking yourself with familiar faces who help you feel understood and supported! Teen girls often really rise to the occasion when there is a “fresh audience” and here’s hoping she surprises you in this way. She might feel very grown up and it might bring out the best in her. I’ve seen this described many times. I think kids feel a certain freedom out of the confines of their home where roles feel more embedded and inflexible.

2. how much of this can you delegate to your husband? and I mean all of it, the heavy lifting and the emotions, too. can you tell him that you just don’t like your role of worrying and stressing and ask for help here? can he be in charge of cooking for her, cleaning up after her, and arranging many, many playdates to keep her active and with her peers–the most appropriate focus for her at this developmental moment–rather than you taking any of this on?

3. I vote to delegate her bedroom to your husband. close the door if it’s filthy, don’t even look at it, don’t even think about it. every time it aggravates you, tell yourself that her room, like her bad behavior, is not your problem. you’re not responsible for how this person turns out, she wouldn’t accept your advice anyway, and your obligations are to yourself and your marriage–never a doormat be, never put your mental health or your marriage anywhere but first on your list of priorities in a situation as demanding as yours!

4. I vote for much, much time with YOUR friends during this period. how much can you get out, get away, have them over, have them buoy you, prop you up, amuse and distract you, and help you feel like an insider in your home and your life? get them over as much as possible when your stepdaughter is around.

And let me know how it goes.
best,
wednesday