Step Parents.

This subject can be quite touchy to a lot of different people.
I have a step mother myself and I was raised by a step father and my mother. I have had PLENTY of experience with step parents so I am not coming into this subject blindly. First I want to warn you and let you know that I do NOT think all people were meant to be parents...or step parents for that matter. I also want to warn you that even though I am going to try and word this as nicely as possible, it may get a little ugly.

Let me first tell you a little more about my background. I was raised mostly by my mother who was a single parent until I was like five. She married a man who I called daddy because I wanted to. He helped raise me and was in retrospect not a very good man. He was good at taking care of his family, but not good at being a husband for my mom, and because of the way he was raised he wasn't very nice to me or my brother who also wasn't his. My mom divorced him when I was eleven and she was once again a single parent. Now, my dad married the woman who is still my step mother when I was two years old. She was young and had no children of her own. When I was spending time with my dad she was there and she did her best to be a step mom...not a MOM, a step mom. Because she has been in my life for so long, I have heard all kinds of stories. They had a glass coffee table because they didn't have kids in the house full time and I heard about how frustrated she would get when right after she would clean it I would toddle over and put my sticky little hands all over it. Her and my father have been married for almost 23 or 24 years now. There are a few ways that these things have impacted my life. First of all, watching the marriage my mother had with my step father really shaped the way I react to things in my own life, and the way I manage my relationship. Second, being raised for my adolescent and teenage years by a single mother taught me how to look at life a lot more realistically than other people do. And last, because my dad has been married to the same woman basically my whole life it has shown me what a step mother is supposed to be like.

Now as for another experience in MY OWN life with step parents lets talk about Ryan and Max. Maximus is not Ryan's biological son...as most of you probably know. I think my circumstances in this situation are way different than most people who are not with the other parent of their children because Max is the product of literally, a one time thing. I have long ago shaken the embarrassment of that whole situation and accepted it as the path God wanted me to go down. Now, I really am not into bad mouthing Max's biological father because I would never want him to do that to me. What I will say though is that he is not in Max's life, no phone calls, no visits, nothing. His court ordered child support is garnished from his wages automatically and he lives his life. Everyone in life makes their own decisions and this one is his. Moving on from that, because of the lack of relationship between Max and his biological father there has been room for Ryan to be the father Max needs. So I can't really say I view Ryan as Max's step father, to me there should be another level of relationship. Ryan isn't Max's blood but you wouldn't know any better if I didn't tell you or if you didn't hear about it from somewhere else. I want to tell you what it would be like if Max's biological father were in his life...but I can't. I have no idea what that life could be like or how it would change our family dynamic. I do know that I would definitely implement guidelines to make sure that the other parent in the situation never felt disrespected by myself or Ryan.

This brings me to my next point. Step parents should ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS think about how they are affecting the actual parent in this relationship. No step parent should ever TEACH a child to call them mommy or daddy, I do feel like every parent feels differently about this and some may not mind but as for myself, if I had even this slightest feeling that my child was being manipulated by someone like that, there would be some issues. Kids should really be taught to think for themselves and make those kind of decisions on their own with no pressure from anyone. Another thing is that step parents need to think of how they would feel if the shoe was on the other foot. How would they feel if their daughter came home from their dads house with her hair half gone when they themselves weren't there for the first hair cut? Not so good, and some of those step parents might even say that if the shoe were on the other foot they wouldn't allow the kind of things that they do to the other parent of the children. So how, honestly, HOW can these step parents go on being so rude, disrespectful, and sneaky to the other parent?


Now after visiting a little with the bad side of step parents lets talk about the good. There are some step parents that are just normal. They know their boundaries. They respect the relationship the child has with their other parent. These are the kind of step parents that I think the world should be filled with. These are the parents that have no ulterior motives. All they want to do is love the kids, because as we all know, a child can NEVER have too much love. These people were raised with a strong sense of respect for people in general and will use that in their everyday lives therefore applying it to their position as step mother/father. These are the step parents that are friends with the other parent, the ones who will come to functions but step back and let the actual parents do what they have to do as mom and dad.

I feel like I can type about this forever because after seeing my best friend be put through the wringer with regards to the step mother of her children I have a lot of feelings on the subject. As I said before though, we all make our own decisions in life and we all decide how to handle the situations that are thrown at as. Not all of us will do what someone else would do. Not all of us would handle it with grace, some of us would just haul off and beat someone down. So I will stop rambling now because I know this was long and I honestly dont even know if I will even keep this up for good. I'm not trying to make waves, I just have been wanting to get this post out there. I hate that people think Ryan is doing everything I criticize other step parents for doing when in reality they dont know that Ryan is only doing what no one else is doing for Max and that is being his father.

I tried my hardest not to offend anyone and I hope I didn't.
Talk to you soon,
J