Cupcakery

On Thursday night I made four dozen cupcakes.

Boy C wanted to take treats to school to share with his whole class; while I didn’t have the energy to churn out enough cupcakes from our somewhat makeshift kitchen in the Boys’ City to feed all the kids in Boy A’s and Boy B’s classes as well, I sent them each off with enough cakey goodness for themselves and their teacher and four friends, and promised to bake for their classes next visit. They were fine with that.

Some of my most enduring memories of childhood are of my mother’s wonderful baking; there was very little money to spare in our house but always an abundance of biscuits, lamingtons and patty cakes. She even baked cakes to sell to local cafes using the tiny gas stove in the bus we lived in while my dad was building our house.

While I bake well myself, my focus has long been on producing fancypants grownup desserts rather than bulk kid-friendly treats. I made Nigella Lawson’s vanilla cupcakes (modded by pushing a square of milk chocolate into each one) for the Boys, and while they certainly elicited no complaints, they just didn’t have the moist, dense-but-light deliciousness of my own mum’s recipe.

I would love to think that my cooking could become part of the tapestry of the Boys’ childhood memories, similar to my remembrances of my grandmother’s Neenish tarts and my mother’s amazing cakes. Not in a “motherly” way, obviously, but Boy C greatly enjoys cooking with me and often thanks me for cooking “such yummy things” for them. I really hope we can hold on to cooking as a shared pleasure as he gets older.

Interestingly, I often notice that when I’ve had successes with dishes for the Boys, next visit it will transpire that their Mum has *coincidentally* cooked pancakes or chocolate self-saucing pudding or whatever it is a few times since then herself, and – of course – that hers is HEAPS better than mine, her recipe is the only “right” recipe and my (previously appreciated) way of cooking the dish is now suddenly “wrong”. And suddenly it can feel like I’ve got three little food police watching, critiquing and sometimes rejecting my meals….

I’m never competetive about the cooking thing, but I do work hard to find a niche where I can contribute to the Boys’ lives in ways they can accept, so it stings a bit when their Mum seems to be trying to undermine me on this level. Still, if that is what’s happening (and it may not be!), it can only be because she feels threatened in her role. Strange, because there’s no question in the Boys’ minds or in my mind as to whether I’m a rival mummy figure – it just isn’t that way at all, even with Boy C who has a close and affectionate relationship with me.

For instance, if we’re out and anyone mistakes us for a mum with her kids, the Boys are so quick to discount the idea that it can leave the hapless commenter looking a bit stunned. Recently we were all boarding a plane and the flight attendant on welcome duty made a comment about how much “my boys” look like me. My instant response was “No, they’re not mine, they’re my partner’s boys.” She was a little taken aback, so I added “Sorry, but if I hadn’t told you straightaway then they would have, and that could get noisy!”

So, since there’s no question that the Boys would ever see me as a mother, think of me as a mother or get mixed up about who is their mother, and I’m not in any danger of doing that either, plus I’ve tried to communicate these things to the Boys’ Mum by mentioning how proud they are of her and how loyally they speak about her to us, I wish I could just be left in peace to cook pancakes or meatballs or chocolate pudding for them without being undermined!

How do food and cooking work in your stepfamily?

Small delights

I did the school run for the Boys by myself today and will be again tomorrow, since the Lovely Man has two early starts at work.

By “school run” I don’t just mean the drive in to school but the entire early-morning-drill-sergeant-get-boys-up-and-ready routine.

It only lasts about ninety minutes, but it’s quite an intense process, especially since stepmother authority to compel obedience/listening/quick responses is often fairly limited.

I sometimes dread the prospect of school run days, but today went fairly smoothly, on the whole. (Three boys of various sizes invariably = a range of at least minor hiccups, but that’s parenting, I guess.)

There was one lovely moment, though – I had made umpteen slices of toast with strawberry jam, which had been delivered to the table and duly devoured, and was standing at the sink trying to get the post-breakfast fallout cleared away.

Suddenly, a little pair of arms wrapped around my waist from behind and hugged me, and Boy C said:

Thankyou, B. You’re *really* nice to us!

He’s such a sweetie, and my smile persisted even after I looked down at where his hands had been and saw his little jam-sticky paw prints on the front of my cream dress.

That’s the other side of parenting, I guess, and I like it, jam and all.

Oh, what a night

And it’s not even late December back in ’63…

Normally the Boys read at every meal, and while it’s certainly a bit antisocial, breakfasts and dinners are peaceful enough, if punctuated only by grunts in reply to adult questions.

It’s worried me for a while that these silent reading meals are pretty much on par with the kids being lined up along the sofa staring glazedly over their TV trays in terms of the supposed vaccinatory effect of mealtime interaction against family dysfunction. Accordingly, I’ve gently tried to suggest to the Lovely Man that some of each week’s evening meals could be “conversation dinners”.

Anyway, we served up spag bol to the Boys for dinner tonight, and for reasons of sheer messiness, I asked the Lovely Man whether tonight was going to be a comic-reading extravaganza or not. He said not.

Immediately it became evident that he wasn’t going to be allowed to slurp spaghetti while staring fixedly at his current Simpsons comic, Boy A went on the warpath.

He put on the Ritz in terms of dramatically bad table manners, derailed every attempt at normal conversation and deliberately worked Boys B and C up into higher and ever higher fever pitches of hysteric silliness, culminating in attempting to bodily carry a protesting Boy C from the kitchen to the dining table, despite that Boy C was trying to balance a full bottle of juice and a glass.

One of Boy A’s special talents is to conjure up the most annoying combination of high-pitched whines, clicks, drum rolls, fart noises and stupid voices imaginable; I sat stoically ignoring him for the most part, although at one point I turned to him and calmly said:

Boy A, it seems to me that you are stirring everyone up on purpose because you didn’t get your way about reading comics at the table.

(Naturally, he disagreed heartily, but then he disagrees if I say that the carpet needs vacuuming, or leaves grow on trees, so that was hardly unexpected.)

Boy A was relishing using his Super Older Sibling powers for evil instead of good, the younger boys quickly lost all control of themselves in an impressively swift race to the bottom for poor dinnertime behaviour, and after several well-spaced warnings the Lovely Man ended up taxing everyone’s pocket-money and banning books at the table for at least two nights, during which period the Boys need to display good table behaviour or the ban will be extended.

Of course, fury and upset resulted; the Lovely Man is grumpy, Boys B and C have gone to bed angry and crying, I’ve bunkered down in the bedroom feeling that somehow it’s all become my fault and dreading the repeat broadcasts tomorrow and the next night, and everyone is utterly miserable.

Except Boy A, who is singing away, apparently as happy as a clam.

(I know he’s actually not, but Lordy, he does a fine impression….)

Sigh.

The search string diaries bite back

Trawling through three months of blog statistics yesterday, I discovered what may well be the strangest search string ever.

(Subtext here: with the current mix of three rampant Boys in my loungeroom, the Lovely Man’s father and stepmother arriving this afternoon, a three course lunch for nine to cook for tomorrow and several appointments to attend in addition, this post would perhaps better be titled “Search String Cop-Out”. But that’s ok, as Boy C would say.)

Drumroll…….

“when you’re up to your ass in alligators”

!!!

All I could think was:

Alligators? We don’t even have alligators in Australia! Why would I write about alligators?

Then, belatedly, I remembered this post.

Mystery solved, Nancy Drew.

Star-crossed lovers?

One night during our recent Easter holiday with the Boys at my parents’ beach shack, the Lovely Man decided it would be fun to take them out for a traditional country-town Chinese meal, complete with lurid plum sauce and deep-fried everything.

As we drove back home through the darkness to the shack, honey chicken and sundry culinary delights gurgling in our tummies, Boy C piped up from the backseat:

Boy C: Do you know, Daddy, I think you and Mummy would make a really, really good couple. Like, with each other, you know?

Stunned silence from the front seat. The Lovely Man and I both, independently, decided against turning around and saying something like: “Actually, Mummy finally signed the divorce papers this week, so… nuh. Not going to happen.”

The Lovely Man squeezed my hand in the darkness as Boy C continued.

Boy C: Yeah, it would be perfect because you’re just like Harry Potter’s dad and mum, you’d be so well suited together.

More mute gulping from the front seat. Luckily Boy C didn’t seem to want an answer.

Boy C: They’d be a great couple, because, you see, Mummy’s so intelligent, just like Lily Potter and Dad’s so… ummm… so…

Boy B: Active! Dad’s really active, just like Harry’s dad! And they got together and had us, just like Harry’s parents had him.

(For the record, the Lovely Man is devastatingly smart. And the Boys’ Mum was apparently always a bit intimidated by that, despite being no slouch herself. The Boys, especially Boy A, often seem to feel compelled to insist to me how Very Intelligent she is, despite me never, ever saying a word about it or bringing up the issue of intelligence, of anyone, at all, ever.)

Boy A: What do you mean? Dad’s quite intelligent too, you know!

What came through very strongly from this conversation was that the Boys have a need to see the story of their parents’ marriage as special, almost mythic, within the family history. They need a love story, a sense of themselves as part of the family destiny. The divorce hasn’t altered that need; now the mythic love story they tell is just a little more star-crossed.

Harry and James Potter had their son, Harry, and were happily in love until the evil Voldemort killed them.

The Lovely Man and the Boys’ Mum had their three beautiful sons and were happily in love until the Evil Divorce Monster fell out of a clear blue sky and broke up their marriage.

(I could go further and add that Boy A, at least, identifies me directly with the Evil Divorce Monster.)

I can understand the Boys needing this sort of emotional family architecture to provide an account by which they can understand their existence. After all, if the way you see your parents’ marriage is that they were ill-suited and a bad match and their marriage was a mistake, then presumably in kid-magical-thinking terms, that makes you, their children, mistakes that should never have been made.

Then, of course, there are the obvious reconciliation fantasies at work in this little vignette. Those go without saying.

Fair enough.

One thing I never, ever, expected to experience in my stepfamily, though, was sitting in the front seat of the car while my stepchildren openly attempted to matchmake their parents based on the Harry Potter novels from the back seat.

How do your stepchildren think and talk about their parents’ marriage?

How do you and/or your partner respond when it comes up?

What’s the most unexpected thing your stepkids have ever come up with?

Draft house rules – your thoughts, please!

Thanks for all your input – it’s really helpful to know that I’m not developing into some controlling psycho-Nazi with a penchant for making the Boys stand at attention while singing a family anthem of my own composition each morning.

Here is the version I whittled down from the original novel-length document. I’d appreciate any input before attempting to plaster this lot to the fridge:

House Rules

Words

We speak courteously and respectfully.

No running each other down – opinions, actions, creative acts, cooking, etc.

We call people only what they want to be called.

No swearing or violent language.

When somebody’s talking to us, we listen and don’t interrupt.

We say please and thank you, and appreciate what people do for us.

We don’t whinge – we express our feelings but not over and over.

If we feel sad or angry, we say so, which helps us and others.

If someone has annoyed or upset us, we talk about it with that person.

Actions

Adults and kids from this house do not hit, bully or hurt others.

Limit violent play and stop when asked. Play gun games only with people who are playing gun games with you.

We respect others’ things by asking permission.

We respect others’ privacy by knocking on closed doors before entering.

If you don’t agree with an adult, you can ask for an explanation, but once you’ve heard it you have to do what you’re asked without arguing.

What happens when we break the rules:

• mild warning
• firm warning
• “I’m getting angry”
• punishment – withholding of a privilege, or withdrawal from the group

Bedtimes

Boy A – in bed by 9.30pm.

Boys B and C – in bed by 8.30.

Boy Jobs

• School bags and lunchboxes are put away as soon as we come home.

• We tidy away our rubbish – wrappers, apple cores etc – soon after making it.

• We put our plates, cups and cutlery in the dishwasher after meals.

• We keep the bathroom tidy – hanging towels, keeping toothbrushes tidy.

• We keep our bedrooms tidy – straighten beds, pick up clothes and toys.

• We flush the toilet and we turn the fan off.

• Our shoes live on the rack in the hall.

• We put toys, comics, books and stationery away before moving on to a new task.

• When the recycling bin is full we empty it into the big yellow-topped bin in the driveway.

We may need reminders to do the things on this list. If we remember without being asked, we will get Treat Points. And a lot of appreciation.

**********

I’m not sure about the Treat Points idea in the last paragraph? The Lovely Man originally wrote:

Often we will need to be reminded to do the things in the job list, and that’s OK. If we can remember to do them without being asked, that’s best of all.  If we are asked, we just do the chore.  If we do this stuff as we go, chore cards [an occasional chore blitz we do where the Boys choose from a pile of face-down cards with short jobs written on them] are really easy.

Personally, I felt that this paragraph just gave the Boys a free ride not to even try to do the jobs on the list without being reminded. I’m not sure if the Treat Points idea will work, but still….

What is your take on this brand-new, first-time beginners house rules list?

Too long? Too short? Too woolly? Too complex? Or just right? What would you do differently?

Disengaging

Disengaging is not a new concept in step-land.

But it was new to me when I first came across some articles a few months back.

At that time, I was trying trying trying to get the Lovely Man’s kids, and especially Boy A, to like me.

There were thoughtful little gifts, special efforts to make their favourite foods, questions about their interests and opinions.

Boy B was mostly ok, though he was wary and occasionally rejecting. The day I overheard him tell Boy A that he hated me I went into our bedroom and cried.

Boy C was, as ever, fun and funny to be around, offering me a level of mostly unconditional trust and pleasure at our friendship that felt like it was all that was getting me through.

Boy A, though, was really letting rip. Everything I did was stupid, he felt free to criticise my appearance, my cooking, my family. The sighs of disdain rang out and the eyes rolled and his gaze and ears were always averted from me. He actively sought to exclude me and tried to build alliances with the Lovely Man against me.

My poor sister used to patiently hear out my venting and say:

B, you’ve got to stop trying so hard! Just ignore him if he’s being nasty.

That was her approach with her own (heavily alienated) stepdaughter, and she found there was less pressure on them both.

But me? I Wasn’t Giving Up.

But then, after a particularly awful visit, I came across the disengaging concept.

Here’s the classic piece about The Disengaged Stepparent.

And Help! My Wife is Disengaged, an article aimed at men with frustrated stepparent partners.

And finally, Disengaging Made Easy.

(A lie, I’m afraid. It’s not actually easy. But it’s easier than the alternative!)

I didn’t follow the suggestions exactly.

I haven’t refused to do laundry, or made any big announcements. I will if I need to, though.

Here’s what I now do differently:

I’ve mostly given up cooking for the Boys.

It was causing me way too much grief to have my nice meals rudely rejected, so mostly I allow the Lovely Man make the dinners. If I do cook, it’s something their Dad makes that they’ve had a million times before, or a dessert that they’ve eaten in the past and liked. School lunches, when I make them, are exactly what they had the previous day.

The best thing? I’m not giving anyone a hook to hang their loyalty issues or desire to reject me on.

I now almost never buy little treats or presents for the Boys.

I liked doing it, but I didn’t like being expected to do it or not being thanked, so I stopped.

If, for instance, I decide to go to the fancy deli to buy Boy A’s favourite gourmet jam so he has an extra breakfast option, I don’t mention it, or I let him think the Lovely Man bought it.

It’s not that I don’t want to do nice things for the Boys – I do – it’s that I don’t want the stress of being unhappy with the way they choose to react, or to add to the “pity spoiling” they already get from other family members.

Instead, I aim to be completely present in the time I spend with them, whether that’s wrestling on the floor or helping with their homework.

I play with Boys B and C and hang out when and as much as I feel like.

Generally, we have a play session each day, but if I feel like staying in my bedroom with a book, then I do it without feeling guilty.

And because I’m actually enjoying the time I spend with the younger Boys rather than forcing it, we have more fun. They beg me to come and play now.

I no longer try to include Boy A. He’d be welcome if he wanted to join in, but he never does and I don’t mind at all.

I try to do what I say I will rather than “give in” to be popular.

So last visit I told the Boys they could choose a treat for two days of smooth morning school runs. If both mornings hadn’t ended being smooth, they would not have gotten their treat.

I tell Boy C exactly what time I will read until in the evenings, and it is his job to be in his PJs and in bed with clean teeth before that time. The longer he takes getting ready, the shorter his reading time. I don’t give in to cries of “just a few more minutes!”

Because I said I wouldn’t, that’s why. And I want them to know that I can’t be swayed by begging, pouting or bad behaviour.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Ironically, I’m both happier in myself and more popular with the Boys as a result of my decision to disengage.

There are different approaches to disengaging as a stepparent. Depending on the situation, it may not need to be full-scale, on-strike, you’re-hitchhiking-to-school revolution. But I bet there’s a few things in almost every stepmother’s life that might benefit from a strategic disengagement.

What do you disengage from in your stepfamily?

What could you disengage from?

There’s an app for that – iPhone applications for stepmothers

Ok, perhaps I’m being a trifle silly and self-indulgent with this post. But a bit of frippery is good in the middle of the week, and silly is sometimes surprisingly sustaining.

And for me my iPhone is more than a phone; it’s a family member. One that never complains on long car trips. Which gets it extra bonus points.

And yes, it’s true that probably most of these apps are no more applicable to stepmums than they are to Mothers Who Birthed.

But if you have the care of children (not infants – given that I first menaced into the boys’ life when Boy C was five I’m going to let that aspect slide for want of credibility), and sometimes those children, or you, need distracting/managing/pacifying (point me out either a stepkid or a stepparent that doesn’t!), then these apps come tested and recommended.

Exercise. I already wrote about Couch to 5k, but Gateway to 8k and (especially) Runkeeper are also pretty nifty for those times when you just need to escape. Exercise is one of those self-justificatory, don’t-need-a-reason activities that give you a get out of jail free card when you’re about to throttle someone.

Byline. For reading my stepmum blogs. Anywhere. Anytime. And it will cache them for reading even when I’ve got no reception.

Pzizz Relax. This incredibly useful guided mediation tool allows you to have timed power naps and wakes you up refreshed when your snooze is up. Can be used with optional hypnotic suggestions and “Aurora 3D” effects, also known as “binaural beats”, which are said to help induce a relaxed and suggestible brain state. Give Pzizz a go when you’ve been up late with kids who won’t settle, when you can’t seem to stop ruminating about the difficulties of steplife or just when you need to relax. It really, really works. And it’s great for regular self-care.

Epicurious allows you to search recipes based on one or more main ingredient, meal or course you are catering cooking for, a cuisine type, dietary considerations, the type of dish and the season or occasion. You can search by keywords, save favourites and generate shopping lists.

I’m a keen cook, and the thought of stirring industrial-sized vats of the bland gloop that results from eliminating almost every known ingredient or flavouring because one or other of the boys won’t try doesn’t like it nearly does my head in. Epicurious at least lets me explore a range of options.

The boys also love using it to choose recipes; and when they are involved they tend to try much broader groups of foods.

Another free app with a database of less foodie-type meals and a super cool high-kid-appeal slot/fruit/poker machine-style format for spinning up recipes is Dinner Spinner. I’ll mention that a lot of the recipes it links to seem to include cans of Cream of Mushroom soup and leave you to judge whether that communicates “time-saving homestyle deliciousness” or “gloopy 1970s casserole” to you…

Stanza is a book reader. It’s so well laid out that the format is being adopted by other purpose-built reader gadgets. It’s very pretty, with a page-turning simulation that the boys love. And I love being able to download hundreds of classic books with kid appeal for them to read in random moments of boredom or when we’re travelling. For free!

At the moment Boys C and sometimes Boy B are listening to me read aloud The Wind in the Willows. We can’t find our lovely old hardcover edition amidst the chaotic forest of Lego sculptures at present, so it was iPhone to the rescue. And the benefit is that with the lit screen I can read to them in the dark, helping them to settle for sleep that much sooner.

Games. The Boys looooove playing games on the iPhone and we mostly keep it as a special treat, or to palliate annoying waits and car trips. Enduring favourites include Yahtzee, Flight Control, Doodle Jump and Touch Physics; all of which are non-violent and/or cooperative.

Apologies to non-iPhone geeks, but the little plastic and metal phone thingy really makes a big difference in my time with the kids, and I sometimes, quite frankly, wonder how I’d manage without it.

Self-Care Challenge – Day 7

Ummm, I didn’t walk the dog yesterday.

Bad. Evil. B.

My self-care challenge has been most useful by showing just how much I need to make self-care an active priority. If it’s not actively planned into each day it just doesn’t happen, I’ve found.

And given that we’re about to head interstate for a week with the Boys, becoming aware of the need to plan self-care and getting into the habit of scheduling and doing it before we leave has been good practice for the next few days, when I’ll be in the KidHaus with the chips down and the stakes high.

I think a self-care diary would help me stay on track, even if it’s just a stack of post-it notes on the bedside table. Or maybe I could use my iPhone. Surely there’s an app for that!

Today, for the final day of the challenge, I’m going to bake something yummy with Billie Holiday playing in the background. So soothing!

And (finally) take the dog for a walk.

Thanks to everyone who has followed, commented and been involved in my inaugural Self-Care Challenge Week!

Let’s keep asking ourselves –

What’s one thing I like to do, just for me, that makes me feel good about myself and that I can do today?

The Telephone Diaries

Sometimes I hate the telephone.

After many months of not getting though to the Boys on the phone, and of questioning whether the phone calls are “about him” more than “about the kids” (because who said a parent is allowed to have a need to have contact with his children?) the Lovely Man now has an agreement with the Boys’ Mum that he can speak to the Boys on the phone twice per week on set days.

The phone was a problem in the past.

Days and often even weeks would go past when his many calls and text messages would disappear into the Great Unanswered Void.

Or he’d get through, only to hear his ex laughing heartily in the background as the Boys informed him, one by one, that they didn’t want to talk.

The Boys’ Mum has been very scathing about the Lovely Man’s desire to occasionally have a brief phone conversation with his kids:

Personally, I just don’t see why it matters so much. I don’t feel this need to talk with them all the time when they’re away like you seem to.

For a long time, everything was wrong with his calls.

They were too regular. They weren’t regular enough. They disturbed and disrupted the children. They were at the wrong time when the kids were engaged in other activities. They were too close to bedtime. He was calling too often. He wasn’t calling enough – the kids needed him.

Even now that phone contact is more predictable, it still causes some grief, at least to me.

My heart breaks to hear how grateful the Lovely Man sounds when he gets through to the Boys, or when they call him. I could cry to hear him thanking his own kids for ringing to talk to him.

When they ring, or if he rings them, it seems like everything stops.

If we’re on our way somewhere in the car and the kids call, we stop. Which is ok with me – watching the Lovely Man try to drive on the motorway and give the Boys his full attention on the phone simultaneously is scary.

(It’s not just the kids, either. The world used to grind to a halt when the Boys’ Mum wanted something called, texted or emailed,too.

I’ve seen the Lovely Man stop the car right on the roadway to respond to an SMS from her, not delaying his reply even long enough to pull over onto the verge.

And abandon an entire restaurant meal from before the food arrived until the restaurant closed so she could rail at him they could talk about some school issues, after months of her refusing to speak with him.

But that’s another story. And, to be fair, one that I hope is now mostly finished.)

Even now, though (as happened recently), if the Boys ring at 9pm, even after I’ve spent ages making a beautiful meal and just laid it on the table for him, that’s nonetheless probably the kybosh on dinner.

He took the call, and the Boys talked. And talked. And talked. As the Lovely Man listened, his laksa congealed in the bowl, the prawns rubberised and the concoction I’d spent ninety minutes preparing became cold…. and miserable.

It looked so lonely, sitting there. As lonely and sidelined as I felt.

The call dragged on, with Boy A (in a rare good mood) asking fifty thousand questions about the Lovely Man’s family for a genealogy project he’s doing at school.

(Which stung in itself, given how relentlessly and completely he defines me as a person outside the family. I’m certain he wasn’t asking what daycare centre my pet budgies went to.)

After maybe thirty minutes, I heard the Lovely Man say:

Just a second, Boy A. Just let me call you straight back. I promise I won’t be more than five minutes at most. I’ll just stuff some food down and I’ll be right back with you for as long as you need. Not a moment longer, I guarantee it.

(I’m paraphrasing here.)

As he rushed back to the table with the manic gleam of a man determined to fulfil his promise to his firstborn child by emptying a litre of delicious cold laksa down his hatch in milliseconds, I said

Lovely Man, you are NOT going to shovel my laksa down your throat like disgusting gruel!

No, no, it’s delicious! Delectable! (shovelling it down like disgusting gruel….)

It was more than I could take. I left the table, to a soundtrack of:

Well yes, your third Grandpa on your first once-removed cousin’s side was a coal miner….

All the time I was furiously trying to self-soothe:

Wow, this assignment must be urgent. It has to be due tomorrow to keep Boy A at it for this long. After ten at night, too. He’s just trying to get his work in on time. That’s good, B. That’s a good thing!

But then, to top it all off, I heard the Lovely Man say:

Gosh, Boy A, this sounds like a lot of work. Is it due tomorrow?

[Unintelligible reply]

Oh, two weeks from now. Well, I hope it goes well! Did you say you needed more information about Great Aunt Diamantina’s pet goldfish?

And so it went on. For what felt like hours but was probably only forty-five minutes all up.

The thing is, I really am so glad that the Lovely Man is now getting to speak with his Boys in between visits. And I’m glad that Boy A, the apple of his eye, was actually talking to him for a change instead of being rejecting or pointedly cheerleading for Team Mummy, as has more often been the case lately.

It is so hard for the Lovely Man, missing the Boys, and until recently he hasn’t even given himself proper permission to want to talk to them regularly, due to his concern that he might have been selfishly foisting his own agenda about phone conversations onto them.

An unfortunate side effect of Boy A’s rejecting behaviours, though, is that the Lovely Man would be uncomfortable, for instance, explaining that he’s just sat down to his dinner and asking if he could call back in fifteen minutes after he’s finished. If one of the Boys wants help with his homework right now, then right now is when he will get it.

Kid says jump, Dad says “how high?” parenting is a common complaint from stepmums whose partners are experiencing the dreaded Daddy Guilts. And when these dads’ kids reject them, in ways big or small, it becomes so much more difficult for them to do anything other than be one hundred percent “on” during the times when the kids are seeking them out. Whatever else is happening at the time.

As Wednesday Martin says, quoting Dr. Patricia Papernow, one of the key dissonances for stepmothers is feeling rejected, exhausted, and unappreciated  by the same kids that their partners feel loved, nurtured and supported by.

I would add to this, that one of the key stresses for stepmothers can be feeling angry and protective at their stepkids’ hostility toward their partners, even when that hostility has abated and their partners feel accepted and embraced by their kids once more.

We may feel that the “tap turns off/tap turns on” aspect of our stepchildrens’ relationship with their Dad “shouldn’t” bother us if it doesn’t bother our partner, knowing that the parent/child dyad can generally absorb these ups and downs fairly seamlessly, but it’s still hard to draw a veil over yesterdays’ hurtful behaviour towards the man we love just because today’s behaviour is better.

Overall, there are many aspects of last night’s phone call scenario that make me happy – the more regular schedule, the Lovely Man’s increased happiness, Boy A’s preparedness to chat. I recognise them. So please, don’t lecture me about being selfish. (I don’t need it, I do such a good job of beating myself up.)

I just felt so sorry for the poor, neglected laksa, that’s all.

Tell me, though, is your family phone using its powers for good or evil?