Really surprised no one has created a thread for this. (If they have, I can't find it.) Willing to bet that there are a lot of stepdads and stepmoms here on this site. I know being a "regular" mom or dad can be a struggle, but being a step parent can be just as hard, if not harder. I am currently the step-dad to my wife's 14yo son. I knew my wife in high school, but we didn't date until 2010, at that time he was 8. We bonded a bit over Legos and TFs, but not a solid bond. He is an only child was the only child his family, (including aunts and uncles) had for a while. So he got spoiled, like a lot. He was never really made to understand consequences or disciplined much, and from what I know of my wife, she was raised in a similar fashion. I, on the other hand, had a more......structured upbringing, with groundings and spankings. TL R version, he was (and somewhat still is a spoiled child), both me and wife have been raised differently and thus have different views on how to raise him. I love the kid, his name is Tyler, but a lot of times, I don't like him. He's more into YouTube, hunting and fishing, whereas I'm more into Lego, TFs, (of course) and reading. We connect here and there but not a whole lot. His dad is still somewhat in the picture, Tyler just doesn't want anything to do with him, which is awesome. I am more of a dad to him then anyone else has been. I don't have a parenting bone in my body. I don't know how to be a good dad. I don't how to do the punish and praise thing. He doesn't call me dad, I won't make him, when he wants to, he can. Sometimes he refers to me as his dad to other people or his friends. Me and my wife and son are all going to have a family talk soon. I need and want us to be a better family and communicate with each other more. I know there are other step-parents here. Let's make this a support area for us. Sorry if my post sounds like rambling, hard to really type out feelings. Share your stories on being a step-parent, give advice, let's help each other.
I know some people think the difference between dad and step dad is huge but really I don't see why. Anyways me and my real dad don't have a lot in common. Here's more into tools,building, as to where I'm into video games,YouTube but we do have one thing in common,video games and regular show. Try to find something you both enjoy. A sport team,music,show (even a youtuber.) lastly I would say be a cool dad. Don't be that stereotype step dad that's mean. But also don't force him to much for interaction because as I am a 14yr old this is the age where family time isn't as "cool" as it used to be. So if he dosent want to hang out don't force him. It'll make things bad.
*sighs* Living the same life, for the most part. My stepson has no real common sense. My wife and I have a 4 month old, the son comes home after sitting in the ER all evening with his girlfriend's brother because the kid was vomiting and had a fever and was on an IV drip. He came home. Like it was nothing and when I voiced my objections, all I got was a shrug and he just went on about his business. We're hoping that the illness isn't contagious, but the son just doesn't get it. He's also the type that when HE is sick, he'll throw up and then walk all over the house getting in the refrigerator and everything. Age? 23 years old. Twenty. Three. I just cannot fathom what runs through his head. He comes home from work and takes over the entire living room until about 4 in the morning. We have a home theater. Yes, he uses it. It doesn't matter if I take this time as my me time, he commandeers the LR. Day or night, if he's home, GTFO. My wife won't do much because her ex-husband, his previous step dad, was an absolutely horrible person to him. She regrets that she didn't divorce him sooner, so she's letting this "kid" get away with everything. I'm so sick of him watching wrestling, playing video games and living for SportsCenter. When he's done with that, he'll spend ALL of his free time with his girlfriend, a person that makes you want to walk on your face through broken glass. (She loves to lie and tell confidential things to the public on Facebook and her family). My wife had him as a teenager, so they grew up together and she's unable to let go and he's unwilling to stop putting the screws to everyone. I was stupid when I was younger, but I had manners. I mean, he'll cough and sneeze without covering his face! Ugh. Her daughter? Offspring of the ex. For the longest time I had to hear about how wonderful her father was. He was reprehensible. He manipulated her during the divorce, he planted things in her mind, it was up to ME to reveal the truth. We had to take her to a therapist. Fat lot of good that did. Finally, he showed his true colors to her and she was heartbroken. So much so. So, I've been raising her for the past 5 years while he was dating internet women (some of whom he dated while having visitation with our daughter, so she had to meet strangers while he was trying to make a love connection. The women were like "WTF, dude??") and a rehabilitated heroin addict who was also a trafficker and used his car to commit a B&E. She didn't want to see the daughter, he kept pushing for them to meet. We finally stepped in and said he couldn't see her. The daughter said "No, I'm done. Leave me alone." He's still coming over, sometimes without warning, and bringing her presents, asking if she wants to spend time with him. Why? The heroin addict left him so his focus changed back to the kid. Mind you, through all of this, he chose to not see her at all for nearly a YEAR and then starts this crap out of the blue. The kid? My wife's mother said it was okay to accept his gifts, but not see him. I put my foot down and said no. That teaches her bad habits and makes her an entitled child. I at least want her to have respect for her father, if nothing else. He's not an ATM, a giftcard, etc. He's a human being and no matter how much *I* don't like him, I don't want her using him. She's now 14 and has a boyfriend who is just so stupid when it comes to women, it's a miracle he can even function well enough to breathe on his own around my daughter. She thinks he's the greatest thing ever and ignores me and my wife because of it. And her attitude is turning to pure crap. She's an ingrate, she's mouthy, she's just downright horrible at times. She crossed a line, she made my wife cry. More than once. I've considered breaking up her relationship so she goes back to the way she was (she always acts like this when she has a boyfriend) but then I'm the bad guy and I'm sick of that. We pay her a solidly good monthly allowance because she helps out with the baby on the weekends... Sometimes. Yet, she gives us crap when we ask her to do it sometimes. I just want to scream. Both of these kids could use a good paddling. It worked for me, they've never had one. They really need a wake up call. I'm so sick of it. I'm hoping they're out by the time the baby is old enough to have a personality. I don't want him being like them. I'm so sick of it. So, so sick of it.
To be honest I can't really follow this cause t0o much he/she to understand who you are referring to. Sounds shitty though sorry. To help with this problem a lot of "Family" type (mostly Mom) boards will use abbreviations that say the relationship of the person referred to instead of he/she. For example: DD = Dear Daughter DS = Dear Son DSD = Dear Step Daughter DH = Dear Husband etc. I don't know why everything has Dear in front of it and it's kind of annoying but it prevents confusion.
Fair enough, sorry for the confusion. I was tired and frustrated. Won't be using the DD stuff, though. That's just... Wow, people really do that? Yuck. TL;DR version. Stepson is a 23 year old has no manners and little respect. Brought home a possible contagion to the 4 month old we have, shrugged it off. Takes over the living room day or night, even if you're using it. Horrible girlfriend makes it even worse. My wife won't do anything because her exhusband abused this kid, so he gets away with stupidity. I've threatened her with divorce before and meant it. She begged me to stay. Stepdaughter is 14, offspring of the exhusband. Exhusband was a degenerate dating women online and taking the kid with him to meet these internet dates (highly dangerous) and then started dating a rehabbed heroin addict who was also a trafficker. He wanted them to all get along and the girlfriend said no, the daughter said no, so he skipped out on the daughter for about a year. GF has broken up with him, so now his laser focus is on the daughter. Shows up, sends her gifts, tries to visit her even though the daughter said "No. Leave me alone." The daughter has a boyfriend now, acts like an asshole when she's got one (this is not her first) and she pretty much treats us like shit. Made her mom cry. Pisses me off. I have a 4 month old that's actually mine with the wife. I'm hoping these two don't affect him. He deserves to be a better child than they are.
Yeah they do. Mostly women complaining about their husbands and kids. And you are right - it's annoying AF. As far as your stepkids - wow. Sorry. Don't really have a lot of advice for you, other than to try to shield your newborn from the BS as much as possible. And try to convince your wife that she isn't doing the 23 year old any favors by coddling him. One of these days he will need to grow up.
One of the main problems I run into is that it has been demonstrated to the kid that he really doesnt have to listen to me. That was a big issue in the first few years of our marriage, but me and my wife had a talk about it and she understands that we both have to be on the same page. But its still an issue. Case in point, kid doesnt like to clean his room. Mom offers to help, she ends up doing most of the cleaning while he plays on laptop. The room gets clean and is trashed two days later. She makes a deal. If he can clean his room, and keep it clean for two weeks, plus get his grades up, (he's not the brightest kid, and hates doing homework....another big issue there), that she would get him a puppy, like he wanted. Days go by, weeks go by.......room is not clean, no effort to be made, and grades are staying steady, neither up or down. Come home from work one day and guess what..........there's a puppy sitting in the living room. Oh, and just not any puppy, but a fucking $300 Dutch Shepard that kid engages with for a few months and then gets bored of him. Now, the kid knows that he really doesnt have to do anything he is told and he'll get rewarded whether or not he does the right thing. He is not ready to enter society. I feel like this thread needs more advice. I dont know what to do. I can have family meetings and heartfelt talks, but sometimes I fear that the situation is beyond that. I feel like my family needs me to be the leader...a husband I can be, but this whole father thing is way out of my league. Sorry to be so depressing. There is this whole stigma about being a step-parent, that we're supposed to be mean and cruel, and we're not. I feel like most of us are just trying to help fix a broken situation and a lot times we can get in over our heads. I want to give a call-out to you step-kids, you're on the other side of the fence of these situations, do you have any advice to offer?
In fairness to him, it's not just her coddling him, it's the environment he's in. His girlfriend's family is utterly insane. The mom? "Guess I'm gonna be starting 2014 in jail. Gonna beat that bitch." (in reference to my wife...) Why? Because the son and the girlfriend started shit and lied and twisted what was really said. The dad? Pretty harmless guy, caught in the middle. Has stage 4 cancer, everyone smokes around him and just makes it worse. They've adopted kids, literally dangerous kids (the one's a pyro and they've had to take sources of flame away from him) and they were fostering them at first. ($30.00 per day, per kid from what we've been told about the system here in Ohio. You can see why this started...) Their biological kids are... I can't even describe it. It's an absolute madhouse and the cops know them by name, it's no wonder the stepson is regressing more than he already was. Between you and me? Stepson's a lost cause. He chooses to be. When life blows up in his face, and sadly it will, I don't think he'll be able to grow up. I mean, heck...he wrecked during his driver's test. He backed into a car and it's been downhill from there at 16.*smh* I don't hate him, I really don't, I'm just frustrated beyond belief. Oh, the old "you're not my real (insert parent here), I don't have to listen to you!" crap. No, you DO have to listen to me and it's up to your mom or dad to make that happen. And if the ex spouse (if they're in the picture) should be decent human beings and tell the kids "Hey, this is between me and your mom, leave him alone. He's been good to you." it doesn't happen, but it should. As for the step kids, I'm not one, but I've been around them long enough to know that there are times when it's a two way street. More often than not, there's two sides to every story and there's more going on behind the scenes and we usually only see one side of it. My wife, for example? Amazingly crappy life. Her mom and dad divorced when her dad cheated and broke up TWO families to do so. Her mom married a REALLY bad human being. He was horrible to my wife and brother in law while they were growing up. They even witnessed him beating their mom up. That kind of guy. He was torturous to them and my brother in law decided to move out with his dad, while my wife stuck around. Horrible idea. My mother in law finally divorced him, AFTER my wife was threatened with assault by the stepdad. Too little, too late, however. My wife decided to go live with her dad and brother to get away from this guy and that home was no better. During all of this, the mother in law rented a new apartment with her and this douchebag's daughter and made no accommodations for my wife. So, no mom and had to suffer with a horrible step dad on top of it. Her step mom? Only 10 years older than she is and was pretty infertile for a time. My wife got pregnant at 15, so the stepmom made it her mission to get rid of my wife with any means necessary short of murder. My father in law, at the request of his wife, wanted my wife to give up the baby for adoption. That was bad enough, but then the dad got mad when my wife said no and he came up with "Then fuckin' abort it. I'm not letting you raise it in this house." She also refused that, of course. Both step parents were useless, both parents were useless, so she ended up living with her grandparents. They helped her graduate high school and get on her own two feet. She also had to babysit her sister from the monster and received no pay or recognition for it. Then my mother in law's parents both died, roughly within a year or so of each other. Guess what? The mother in law sold the house out from under my wife to pay her back for being able to sit in the front row at the grandmother's funeral. (No, I'm not joking.) Sure, the proceeds from the house were a big part of it, but it was payback too. When the grandfather died, my wife and her cousin (who also lived with the grandparents) were forced to sit rows and rows behind the mother in law and her siblings and they barely spoke to my wife or her cousin. I said all that to say this... Sometimes children feel like their step parents are more important than they are and that their parents don't love them enough and you know what? In some cases, it's the absolute truth and you're right. But, for the most part, the step parents are just as lost and confused as you are and they're trying to make the best of an awkward situation. Sometimes the step parents treat you well because they genuinely care and they're not using you, they just want to be accepted by you, too. Heck, some step parents are pretty cool and make for an additional person to love on top of everyone else who does. We all could use a little more love in a world like this.
Well I'm certainly not one who's gonna preach about the "Benefits" of marriage, but kids can be a lot of fun. Seems like the main issue with the kids in this thread is asshole biological fathers screwing them up.
I'll be fair, the mothers can be just as problematic, if not more so. I've seen both sides of this issue. Fortunately, my wife isn't one of those people, but friends and family? Not so much...
Agreed. I'm a believer that you don't have to pay a massive amount of money for a ring and chapel to prove your love to another person. As for kids I think I'd rather adopt one.
You're kind of strawmanning the issue and getting close to crossing lines with the board rules. No one's talking about why or why not to get married or what's the right way. We're talking about step parents and step children. The chapel comment is too close to the religious discussion and will probably get people to pipe up and cause this thread to get a mods involvement. The adopting a kid thing was fine, however. Because people can adopt their step kids, so it still fits the thread.
A good friend of mine got into a fist fight with his stepfather when he was 18. His stepfather said his biological father was... he used some unkind words about his biological father, and my friend proceeded to beat the piss out of his stepfather. Frankly, most relationships I see between a stepchild and stepparent usually (unless the stepparent is there from very early on before 5) end up being strained at best, confrontational at worst. On the flip side: I have another friend whose stepmother is amazing. They have a really close bond, but again, her stepmother was around from a very early age (2 I think) so friend doesn't really know any different.
Oh please . Then just don't get married to someone who has kids already and was married to a crazy. The cases in this thread are a bit on the extreme side. I was a therapist for women who were in DV situations and they were fighting for custody of their kids. These ex-guys purposely harm their children to get at the women, as for the kids, well some of the guys here think the kids are stupid, whatever. Seriously sounds like normal teenagers.
reading through this, let me bring the perspective of a step son. My step dad and mum got together when I was about 10 or so- I knew him as her friend but was getting old enough to understand what was going on. Gradually over time we moved to a bigger house, and he eventually moved in "offically". He is a super chill guy (at times), younger than my mum but they got on and he never really stepped when it came to punishing me or my younger sister, but he was always there and had my mums back incase he needed to step in- it was mostly like his presence reinforced a punishment. My mum is very much the "shouty" tell off person, whereas he is calm and doesn't often loose his cool/temper (he has, but i can count on one hand the amount of times). So growing up with his was fairly straight forward during my teens, he was into his stuff, I was into mine- there wasn't a lot of things to "bond" over, but he made an effort to find something I'd be interested in, so he used to take me to play pool every weekend, and even suggested inviting my dad and friend along so we could play doubles etc (was about 14 at this point- my dad was/is still in my life, we just arent close). So the pool thing helped get to know each other. He was into metallica/metal, etc. I was into rap/hip hop/whatever was popular. One day though I started getting into some rock music, so I asked him about stuff and he showed me some bands etc, showed me nirvana etc and led me on the path of grunge What I'm getting at here, really, is you don't need to force a bond. Just be there, he/she will come to you because you'll be a constant in their lives, offer to show them your hobbies and interests, of course- but never force it. Kids are weird, and they have to want to get into something. The pool thing was perfect for us, but it could be something different with you guys. Now don't get me wrong, the guy would tell us right from wrong, discipline us if he needed to (he never layed a finger on us though), and if it was a serious thing he'd go to my mum and they'd do it together. I remember one time he caught me stealing change from a big bottle he had- he confronted me and told me it was wrong, made me put the £1 I had in 20p's back, but let me go. That was scarier to me than any sort of shouting. He later told my mum who did the shouting, but looking back it's his face coming into the living room I remember. Anyways, the thing to remember most is, as a "step parent", you're not just forming a parent type relationship, you're forming a friendship. I'm 29 (going on 30 in march), and theres in-jokes I have with my step-dad (who is now married to my mum and we have another two sisters- twins who are 8) that I could never have with my mum or dad, it's an odd relationship, but when I think about our relationship he is my dad- this guy raised me, taught me, looked after me... theres more of him in me than my actual dad, and I'd have my own children call him grandad when the time eventually comes (I still call him by his first name, but I'll buy cards with "dad" on it for him etc). Same goes for my sister. It is tough, and I understand it, but I know no matter what this guy will have my back throughout my life and I'll have his because thats what it means to be a family.
