I’m a stepparent. I’ve made a snafu.
There is not a book that paves the way to this stepparent gig. It the hardest act in the blended family that I have encountered in the last 9 years.
My stepparent snafu started from the very beginning.
When our blended family united it was less than ideal. Raw emotions, hurt parents and starting a “new” chapter in all our lives. In conversation, I would refer to my “step” kids as just that, step. Occasionally I would refer to them as my husband’s kids and then refer to the children that I gave birth to as “my” kids.
I created a HUGE snafu. This mess was like a car that was speeding out of control and I didn’t know how to stop it and put on the breaks. There was no runaway ramp that I could use to slow this down, so the snafu continued. I was not sure where I stood in this whole snafu until I came to the realization that this is a mess that I created and I needed to clean this up before it became horrific.
A few years into our marriage, we decided to adopt. Adopting our son, brought the mess that I had created in our family to a head. When meeting our crazy crew, we would explain that we were like the movie, “Yours, Mine and Ours,” although we would laugh and throw in the humor that it was really more like “Yours, Mine and Someone Else’s.” From time to time, we would have to explain that my husband had two children from a previous marriage, I had two from my previous marriage and then we adopted. We got a chuckle with our explanation, but it was a mess.
Then we adopted again, different birth momma, another set of family members and this snafu was out of control. One day when a friend commented about our little boys, they inquired about the baby; knowing we had adopted, she asked if the little boys were brothers. We answered, “Of course!” and questioning us again, she said, “Real brothers?”
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
This “Yours, Mine and Ours” is a FAMILY. No step, no real, no biological, no adopted. A family.
I had created a mess when I treated my “step” kids any different than I did my “own” kids. Furthermore, I wasn’t going to treat my “adopted” kids any different than my “own” kids – they are my kids, all of them.
You may be thinking, hold the phone, if I didn’t give birth to them, then they aren’t mine? You may be thinking, someone else is their mom and I don’t want to insert myself where it is not needed or wanted. You may be thinking, this is nuts, you have your kids, and I have mine and they are NOT the same.
You may be thinking all of those thoughts and I get you because I thought all of those things. That is the stepparent snafu.
Whether you gave birth to a child, married the father of a child, or adopted a child, they are “your” child. And just like that, the snafu is eliminated. That mess that was created is cleaned up and you can move forward.
I realize that this is not the “norm.” We like to make distinctions between areas in our lives, we like to take credit or not take credit in areas in our lives that we contributed to or didn’t. We like to blame others if our kids don’t act right or achieve what we thought they should. We may not like an ex and don’t want to be part of “their” mess.
When you marry someone with kids, their kids became your kids; it’s just that simple. It is hard. It is messy. You are going to mess up and you may even get caught up in the “snafu.” Give yourself some grace and permission to learn and grow and love. Take it a day at a time and move forward.
