More thoughts…

Out of all the things I did wrong, as a stepparent the most significant was not setting and ensuring my personal boundaries were respected, and this was my fault to a large extent. There were a lot of he said/she said incidents with the kids between the bio-mum and myself, they became very good at playing both their parents and the new family off each other, and it added enormous stress to our relationship.

Early on there was a significant amount of stress over court cases, the alcoholic father was taken to court twice for adjustment of the parenting plan. First was when he relapsed, he lost all visitation for 6 or 8 weeks and only supervised visitation for a number of months after that. It was more than 18 months before he was allowed overnights.

He turned up one morning and blew a 0.18 and a 0.16 on a brethalizer at 7:45 in the morning. At this point something had to give. We went to court and I clearly asked if the cutting of visitation was being done for the right reason.

I believe I was totally supportive through this time, it was tough as the stepparent my role is to hold hands, turn up to court and be quiet. It’s easy to feel useless, and I rather did.

Through out all of this I did not understand the power the other parent hed in the relationship. In all the reading I’ve done only one or two books (the excellent Stepfamiles by Bray and Kerry is one) touched upon the impact they will have on your life. It was not so much about the disagreements that two people, especially relatively recently divorced people will inevitably have, but the promises the bio-father would make and often not carry through with.

The father was treated with little respect inside the household and for the kids this took away any chance of a strong male role model. They needed to have, if not repect, certainly not hearing him reprimanded by the mother for his actions.

In a blended family we were already dealing with separate homes, animosity, my introduction and the schedule of shuttling between parents.

The kids were, as are most kids I understand, very good at playing one parent against the other. The want to be the popular parent was played by both bio-parents and gave the kids a significant amount of power.

The therapist stated it best, all authority derives from the bio-parent in the relationship, like it or not. Any authority the stepparent has over the kids comes from the agreement of the bio-parent and no one else. The kids know how the bio-parent treats the newcomer and their respect mirrors that of the parent.

This is one of the places where boundaries become important in making a blended family work. The boundaries and rules of responsibility and decision making need to be keep no matter what happens. No matter what the children do or say in an attempt to convince you otherwise.

I get now their job is to test limits and test the strength of the new relationship, I did not understand that at the time. One was clear, she was vocal about preferring it when it was just her an mum, before I came along. That was tough, but understandable, very understandable.