Bite Back

I was over at Family In Bloom reading Tulip’s latest about how her husband put a really powerful and appropriate boundary in place for her pre-teen stepdaughter, Daisy. Go read her post, if you haven’t already – the way Tulip’s husband handled the situation was just SO perfect. It was like stepfamily poetry or something.

What was interesting though was despite the ringing-from-the-hills rightness of how the issue got dealt with, a rightness so patent that it had commenters alternately sighing wistfully and congratulating madly, Tulip was nonetheless second guessing the actions taken and wondering if the way the particular situation was dealt with was too harsh.

(In case I wasn’t already clear, there was NO.WAY. it was too harsh… in my opinion, anyway.)

The whole thing made me think: isn’t it funny/weird/interesting that we stepmums tend to push harder than our partners for boundaries, rules, structure in a dynamic that can feel utterly ENDLESS, but when we finally get our wish and we get to firm up the boundaries or someone else does it for us, we suddenly feel a tiny bit guilty, uncertain, or just plain mean?

I had this come up recently in a different context.

It was my week in the Boys’ City, and there had been a steady but not slow degeneration into morning chaos and disorganisation from the Boys. Morning after morning, we’d get halfway to school to hear a voice from the back that someone had forgotten their assignment, due today and reeeeeeeally important. Or someone else had left their lunch behind. Or their tie, and now they wouldn’t match the other kids at choir and would risk getting into trouble.

I’m sure I need hardly say that in every instance, there had been a range of reminders that morning about the assignment, the lunch, the tie. For goodness sakes, the Lovely Man and I give multiple prompts about taking assignments and homework with them, we place the Boys’ lunch boxes on top of their school bags to be packed and we LAY THEIR UNIFORMS OUT ON THEIR BEDS for them (OMG, I’m a valet to pre-teens!) while they enjoy their leisurely reading breakfasts. Which is another story altogether…

Anyway, the Boys were constantly and sloppily forgetting their school things. And for the most part, the Lovely Man would either turn the car around to get whatever it was, guaranteeing a late arrival at school for all the Boys, including any that were organised that morning, or he would drop them at school, then drive the twenty-five to thirty minute round trip to collect the forgotten item and deliver it to the school. There were never any negative consequences to the Boys from their forgetfulness, just a confident expectation that the adult servants would rectify the situation with minimal inconvenience to the child involved.

I’ve always had a problem with this approach; the incentives aren’t there for improvement in the patterns of behaviour, so how could we expect improvement? It would actually be unfair to expect the Boys to be more careful to remember their things unless the adult response changed.

So anyway, the Lovely Man had early work on a couple of mornings in a row and it was down to me to do school runs alone. The Boys were a tiny bit more motivated about getting ready in a timely way than usual, but inevitably the call came: Boy B had forgotten his blazer and tie, and Boy A had forgotten his blazer as well, despite my reminders.

We were about halfway to school, doing okay for time but set to be late if I turned the car around, so after checking that they wouldn’t be cold, I said:

It’s a pity, but I’ve got things on today, so I can’t run home and get them for you. You’ll just have to manage as best you can.

There were no demands that I rearrange my schedule or accusations of cruelty or wickedness; they were pretty accepting.

But you know what?

Even though I stuck to my guns, it was a warmish day, and I absolutely knew letting them tough it out was the right and necessary thing to do if they were ever going to learn to take responsibility for packing their school necessaries properly, I felt bad and guilty and just plain mean.

All day long.

Top 10 Remarriage and Stepfamily Blogs for 2010

Yay!

I’m thrilled to announce (a bit late – as ever, there’s been lots going on here) that Stepmum Of The Year picked up a gong from the fantastic stepfamily resource site reMarriage Works as one of their Top 10 Remarriage and Stepfamily Blogs for 2010.

If you’re in a stepfamily and are looking for more support and resources – and I’m guessing most of us are constantly schnuffling around for new and helpful information on stepfamily life like a French pig hunting truffles – then head over to reMarriage Works to look at some of the other blogs in the top 10 list.

Some, like Wednesday Martin’s amazing blog and Becoming A Stepmom, will probably be familiar to you, but despite having a blog subscription list the size of the Dead Sea Scrolls there are a few I hadn’t come across before.

And truly, who could possibly resist a blog with a name like Rockstar Coparenting?

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News

I know it’s been a while, and I’m not even going to apologise. Nope, not sorry!

The last month or so has been a really important recuperation time; it’s been so vital for me to take a break from stepmummery (or at least from writing about it…) and focus on reweaving the last few fraying threads of my normal self back together.

For those who’ve asked, my visit to Scotland was gorgeous. Short, yes, but filled with the generosity of friends, beautiful landscapes and cities, reconnecting with faraway cousins, exploring the history and the galleries, the parks and the tearooms (and the vintage clothing shops!) of London. I’m a hopeless history/vintage geek, and my much-younger cousin Rhys was enormously patient with my pokings and peerings around important Tudor-era landmarks and through the delights of every stinky vintage boutique in London….

(To be fair, he’s a very cool guy and *may* have enjoyed the vintage shopping even more than me. Clearly, I’m getting old!)

More importantly, I was able to stand beside my dear friend in the emotional lead-up to her wedding, tie what felt like a gazillion trios of ribbons onto napkins, administer spa treatments as required, get lost on the way to Sainsbury’s the day before her wedding and emerge five hours later with more boxes of grissini than three hundred of even the hungriest kilted Scotsmen could manage to devour. I got to be there to soothe her meltdowns and speak on her behalf as her family at her wedding dinner.

All of which turns out to have been unexpectedly good training, because….. the Lovely Man and I have recently gotten engaged and plan to get married late next year sometime! We’re both very happy and excited, and delighted by all the good wishes we’ve received.

I expected very mixed responses to our engagement news from the Boys, but on the first weekend the Lovely Man had the Boys after we became engaged he rang me from their city (it was his extra weekend with them, so I was at home in our main city) before getting on his plane to say that their initial responses were (mostly) fairly positive.

That was the Lovely Man’s take on it, anyway, eternal rose-spectacle-wearing optimist that he is. Reading between the lines I gather that “fairly positive” ranged from excitement and enthusiasm about the idea from Boy C, who is definitely mercurial but generally pitches his emotional tent in the “delighted with life” campground, to kind of neutral-ish pleasedness from Boy B, to less-than-overwhelming-jollity from Boy A.

And fair enough, because why would Boy A be pleased?

One thing I have learned about being in a stepfamily, though, is that initial reactions don’t mean much and it’s always, always a process. I’m sure that more stuff will come up for each of them. Maybe it already has.

I’m not sure whether it’s a Y chromosome thing, but rarely do the Boys display much in the way of fears or concerns about something when they first get information about it. Usually it seems to take a while to simmer their worries or upset to the surface, so we’ll be on the lookout. No doubt the fur will fly at some point.

I have never considered myself any less the Boys’ stepmum because the Lovely Man and I aren’t married, so it doesn’t feel like the “start of a family” or anything with regard to them. In practical terms I don’t imagine anything much will change about the day-to-day life of our household(s).

In non-practical terms, though, beneath all the fussing and planning and the congratulations of our friends and family, beneath the champagne and flowers, we are both simply and utterly overjoyed to be marrying each other.

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.

Shades of beige

Monday was the first night of our regular week with the kids.

As usual, Boy A was fairly hostile towards me: he refused to respond to my hello, and every comment I made (not to him – I don’t waste time trying to make conversation with him directly) was met with a shrug or a smart remark.

For instance, I was talking to the other boys about making Crepes Suzette for dessert this week and describing how we would set fire to the crepes before serving them.

(Setting fire to foodstuffs has gigantic appeal to boys, in my experience.)

At this point, Boy A butted in to snidely suggest that he’d rather pour petrol than liqueur on the crepes. To which I replied that he was quite welcome to add petrol to his own serve.

Normally I wouldn’t have responded that way; that night had me teetering alarmingly close to the cliff edge of my self control.

His rejoinder?

“Yeah, that’s really funny.”

Oh, right, because it was all about me being funny at his expense.

Anyway, by 5pm I’d had it and retreated to the bedroom with my laptop for much of the rest of the evening, feeling besieged and frustrated but glad to be avoiding further hurtful comments and pointed exclusion.

Later, once the kids were finally in bed, I asked the Lovely Man how he felt the evening had gone and whether there was anything extra I could have done to support him with the kids.

I was expecting to talk about specific tasks, like me doing dinner so he could cover homework duty – that kind of mundane stuff.

Instead, I heard:

“I think it was good that you kind of made yourself scarce and kept a low profile in the bedroom, because Boy A finds it difficult when he thinks you’re too much in the foreground.”

*Cue crickets*

Finally, I found my voice.

“I’m all in favour of keeping things low-key, especially in the first 24 hours we have the Boys, but I am NOT going to hide out in the bedroom or generally fade into the wallpaper because Boy A prefers it that way. His behaviour is the problem here, NOT MINE.”

Turns out that the Lovely Man hadn’t even noticed Boy A’s nastiness, and just thought I was relaxing in the bedroom because I wanted to.

I found it disturbing and a bit hurtful, though, that it’s considered preferable that I minimise my presence and role in the house to keep the peace and keep Boy A “happy”.

Ultimately, I think those kinds of accommodations devalue and disrespect me and enable Boy A to continue deferring his adjustment to our family situation.

I understand that the Lovely Man feels stuck in a lose/lose situation, juggling to keep everyone happy, but this incident has made me wonder – if my best contribution is made by downplaying my existence in what is meant to be my part-time home, why am I here at all?

As a stepmother, are you ever asked or expected to downplay yourself or fade into beige to keep others in your stepfamily “comfortable”?

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.

Again???

Yes, again. I must have asked a lot of intrusive questions in a past life…

This time, though, I had the kernel of a plan.

Remembering Peggy’s wise advice, I was ready with my response. Or as ready as you can ever be when you’ve just been hit with a runaway dump truck full of nosy.

So this time, when a woman I’d just met asked me at the top of her voice during an unfortunate lull in dinner party conversation:

So, has your partner agreed to have kids with you even though he already has kids?

I was right back at her with:

Yes, well that certainly is the question, isn’t it?

B: 10 points. Curious cow: 0

And normally, with a questioner with more tact than, say, a careening out of control tour bus, I’m sure that would have been the end of the issue.

This time, though? Not so much.

Ms Mouthy proceeded to assume that my answer was code for “No, he’s a mean selfish bastard who gives no account to my God-given desire to reproduce” and informed me, still at the top of her voice, that I should “just go off the pill without telling him then“.

Nice.

Still, I didn’t face her savaging questions alone.

My lovely friend J was a fellow guest at the dinner party in question, and she felt motivated to ask him, on zero previous acquaintance and in the presence of onlookers, whether being gay meant that he had never had sex with a woman before.

So if there was any upside to her antics, it was being reminded that stepmothers aren’t the only freakish minority alien life form that some people consider open season for intrusive interest.

The Getaway

I’m spending a couple of much-needed days away at the moment while the Lovely Man takes a week’s “Boy Time” in the kids’ city.

As much as I support the Boys getting time alone with their Dad, it wasn’t a plan I was particularly happy about initially – there’s nothing like feeling excluded from what I consider my family (even if the other people in it don’t feel the same way about me!) to reinforce those inevitable stepmother outsider feelings. The Boys actually get a lot of time with their Dad without me there, and the timing of this particular trip certainly hasn’t felt ideal…

But now, looking out of my hotel window at the blue sky and glassy river beyond, I feel very glad to be here, catching up with myself as I am outside and beyond my stepmother role.

Part of the “shutting down” feeling that I get from being depressed (and just as a reminder, stepmothers suffer stress and depression at significantly higher rates than other stepfamily members, mothers without stepchildren or women generally) has included a kind of distancing from spending time with people I love, so it feels like a big step forward to have invited a couple of friends and my sister to each spend a night with me as part of this mini-holiday.

And in between their comings and goings I’ve got hours each day to myself for walking on the beach, shopping, reading and writing. I also carefully chose the cheapest hotel I could find that had a gym so I can keep up with the all-important exercise regimen that’s been so helpful in lifting my mood and cutting the dreaded rumination cycle off at the knees.

I’m very lucky to have this option – lots of other women wouldn’t be able to get away from work, or couldn’t spare the extra cash that three nights in even an inexpensive hotel costs. As much as I love our home, the Lovely Man’s long hours and extra travel to see the Boys without me for two weekends in four means I spend way too much time alone there, so actually being in a different environment is a big part of the self-care investment of this trip.

Especially for stepmothers without children of our own, there’s an enormous benefit in getting away from our usual routine and consciously connecting with the things that make us who we are beyond our partner and his kids.

Common sense tells us there are real benefits to getting away, even if the best you can manage is sending your man and the children out for a day of Dad-Kid time and consciously taking that few hours to do something enjoyable that you have let slide away under the pressure of stepfamily life. Or for some women maybe deliberately setting out to do something new and different might be more nurturing – what about packing a book, a blanket, a sandwich and a drink, heading to the prettiest park you can find and turning your phone off for a guaranteed two hours of solitude? I’ll stow that idea away for the next time the Boys come to visit…

I’ve put so much energy into cultivating my relationship with the Lovely Man and with his kids that the most important relationship I have got neglected. It feels so good to be gradually getting back together with me again.

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.