Sparenting - 1

Can a step mother ever be the “good breast”.

I hate the words step mother, and by that I do not mean I dislike them, I mean when I hear those words I have a physical reaction akin to watching something really gory in a film. Likewise with step parent, step child, all of them, and it’s not really the title its all the emotion, obligation, guilt and shame that are associated with raising a child that is not yours.

I wanted to write this article for two reasons, I wanted to get my thoughts clear in my own head as having a child in the home was new to me when I wrong this, and I don't think I realised how significant the changes would be. The other reason I wanted to write this was because I want to share with people anything that might be at all useful to others in my position, and believe me this is not a “how to” guide, if anything it is a “how not to” guide.

The Build Up

Prior to my step son moving in with me we had shared weekends, the occasional week together, and as a family we always had fun. But there was a literal sigh of relief when he was packed off again and I got my life back, my new life with my new boyfriend. Having been single for so many years, my home was very much my own, having been desperately lonely for most of those single years, I was ready to share and be part of something bigger and better. Just maybe in a phased way!

Whilst we were part parenting we instilled the same discipline that the child got at home, we ensured as a couple we were always in agreement, we set good boundaries, had activities lined up, it was text book parenting and we all seemed pretty happy. Often tears at the end of a weekend, which in my arrogance put down to us being better parents that his mother and her partner. Time passed, life as always it does, changed.

The Change

He came to stay. And this time he didn’t go back. Initially it was as a result of a minor operation he had to have, but it opened the door for his frazzled mother to ask if we might share some of the more full time burden with her for a short while so she could recover, and spend time with her new baby daughter. We obliged of course, my soon to be husband relished the thought of getting some of the precious childhood years back. I didn’t blink. It won’t that different to the weekends, just a bit longer.

I kicked into uber organisation drive. Lists, plans, programme, diary, anything at all to contain and control the total and complete panic and grief that was setting in for my lovely life. Although I didn’t see that for some time.

The move was good, bedrooms were redecorated, a school was found, we managed. We moved from survival and into thriving as a family and I can assure you the style, shape, look and feel of our family is wholly different since that first school run. It took a while, too long, with too many mistakes along with way, I write now to share with you the why, and if I can the how!

It’s ALL about them

So if you are a kid, life is all about you. They need, amongst other things:

• To get to school on time and to be picked up on time, not within a 5 minute window, ON TIME.

• Play dates organised with kids and parents you may not like.

• They need stimulation which is not walking around the shops, box sets or dinner out.

• Dinner when you don’t want it and have just walked in which is also nutritionally balanced so you are not rotting their teeth or developing the same bad habits you may have as an adult.

• Reading the most useless and poorly written books when your husband has just walked in and you haven’t even said hello.

• School shoes/socks/shorts/PE kit during your one small hour of break at lunch during the working week and these are just the practical items

• Your help with homework - your help remembering they have homework

• Endless shit for school - and I don't mean essential, I mean a yellow cake, (because it's yellow day), stripey socks, (it's stripey day), a balloon, (balloon day), £1.85 in exact money for the expedition we are going on today...;.you get the picture. Some schools will make staying on top of this stuff easier, some will not.

With some useful apps and a good up to date calendar most of the above is achievable, even for the less organised. When you have your own child these things creep in, it's slow and you don't notice that actually the school is running your life because it's been a slow burn. You know the pace of your own child, or children if you've had them, if you haven't the adjustment is huge.

But there is more, this stuff is just the admin side of kids, it's not tricky, taxing or really time consuming and it requires little more than mere effort to get you by. What they really need - that needs a whole lot more of you than you might be ready to give.

LOVE – I sometimes wonder if you become a parent and then a step-parent it might be different. I didn’t do it that way around, but actually even with my own biological son the kind of “I’d step in front of a car for him” took me time, longer with my step son, but time. People might not like to admit this, other people might not even feel it, but it took me time. And that is OKAY. I cared for my step son, I ensured his basic needs were met, but until I loved him I totally failed in nurturing him. I realised this by realising that I had become not a step-parent, but actually just a parent. The first time was when a family member challenged me and said I would understand what life is like “when I had one of my own”. Note above everything that was being accomplished for the little man -despite him not having originated in my body, he was mine and I was parenting him in every single sense of the word. I felt so defensive at this fly away comment that I realised in the days that followed, I was indeed a parent and this was not something I could walk away from and was actually probably at the time one of the most significant and important hats I was wearing. Then, shortly after, he had to have an operation. Emergency. The panic, fear and gut wrenching life debilitating worry I had was like no other emotion I have ever had for another human being. I LOVED this child not "like" he was my own, I loved him AS my own. It was of no consequence where this child had originated from in my mind. I realised in those moments the distinction between step-parent and parent is, to a certain extent one you can decide for yourself. You can decide to opt out of various conversations and decisions, certain elements that are for "parents" only, or you can go all in. My relationship with my step-son bloomed with my realisation, as did my confidence in myself as a parent, my place in his upbringing and the significance of him in my life now, and forever, our family was him and our decisions had to reflect his place in my life.

PATIENCE – this one might depend on where you are dropped into their lives. I was dropped in around 5 years old, so he could wash, wipe his bum, but not get his own glass of water. If you have seen them take their first steps, watched them dress themselves for the first time and had those endless sleepless nights of trying to get them into a routine, I think it is easier as you have had years head start on slowing your life down to their pace. If you are dropped in part way through it is not as easy, but it is a quicker win, partially because it is easy to get that children are slow. And by slow I mean you think you have set aside a sufficient amount of time to get ready in the morning but for them buttoning a shirt is easily a 10 minute task, which is often done incorrectly, requiring a re-button. As frustrating as this might be, these are minor and easy lessons to learn because we can all recall being a child and doing things a lot more slowly than we do now and frankly because as much as you might want to rush them along they are simply not capable of going faster without creating more problems. Being able always to demonstrate patience is another thing entirely, but I found it useful always to step away and say “he is a little boy learning” it worked most of the time. It also enabled me to slow down my life, you just cannot go fast with a child as those “you won’t know until you have your own” parents will LOVE to tell you. Not as fast as you can go alone so you learn; some things will take longer, and some things you occupy them with something else and then you get on. Patience whilst they develop is trickier, you can see them on the cusp of the next developmental stage and the amazing growth happening before you, and then they behave like a 4 year old again. Disappointment, anger, frustration, all those things, but again you have to remind yourself that the world they view is very different to the one we see and that in the grand scheme of things we all make mistakes, even as fully developed adults.

CONSISTENCY – as a high functioning alcoholic prior to becoming a step-parent, consistency was something I could never achieve, well not whilst I was smashed anyway. I prayed for years to find something that would give me that level of consistency and reliability. And then look how the kind Lord answered my prayers. Kids need consistency, and not just the same bed time and the same routine, largely they need the same YOU and that is incredibly hard to manage for anyone who may struggle to deal with life has to throw at you. It’s okay to have emotions, and for life to have its ups and downs – but those will have a ripple effect for the small people. Unfortunately for us, his moving in coincided with one of the most stressful years we could have had: 3 house moves, 3 job moves for me, 2 for his Dad, and we got married. It was too much for me, I was signed off for a month, but before that I was crazy, I deal with that in another blog, this bit is all about him remember. He was crazy. There was behaviour that none of us had seen before, a child we did not recognise, and who can be surprised when we were going crazy right before his eyes. I couldn’t be the “me” he needed every day, and as a result he suffered. There is the guilt. I was selfish. I was so focussed on my pain, on the hurt that my life was not working out how I wanted, that in the year of my marriage I was the one getting signed off and dealing with the fallout from his behaviour that I failed to even see that I was part of the cause of that behaviour, nor that “he was just a child, a boy learning”. I can’t always be the same me, but in the short time we have been a family, I have certainly learnt that the more effort I make to be balanced, and to have his development remain at the forefront of my mind, alongside taking into consideration my own well-being, he is now thriving.