What Does Trust Mean to a Stepmom?
Trust is one of the pillars in a healthy relationship. That’s trust for a spouse, friends, children, and most of […]
stepmoms
3 Co-Parenting Tips for Less Stress and Happier Children
These co-parenting tips will make your life easier. Honest.
Co-parenting often proves a nightmarish, combative process, with your children’s health and well-being as collateral damage.
Resentful and embittered divorced parents share inappropriate information with their children, or just outright lie to them about the other parent. Some do it for revenge. Some do it to maintain control over their children, whom they believe are “theirs” more than the other parent’s, and that the ends justify the means.
The real victims, however, are the children. They get deprived of emotional wellness and a chance for a healthy relationship with both parents. Even if sabotaging the parental relationship is successful, and the relationship between the children and the other parent is severed, the relationship with the alienating parent is far from healthy.
So here’s what to do for your kids.
Why Your Step-kids Hate You (and What to Do About It)
Your step-kids are getting it from all sides, but they’re going to be taking it all out in one place: on you.
They have to deal with their mother’s venom, their father shirking responsibility, and discomfort caused by accommodating you as you enter their lives. In their eyes, you are new, you are strange, you are temporary, and you are disposable.
That can change with time. With some patience, empathy, and clear, consistent boundaries, your step-kids will grow to trust, connect with, and maybe even like you.
Stepfamily Mother’s Day: Mommageddon
Mother’s Day day isn’t always smooth. It’s even rockier for stepfamilies. Biological moms rock the boat when feeling envy over stepmothers’ share of the children’s affection, or feeling threatened by the presence of another woman in their children’s lives. Meanwhile, stepmoms feel jilted out of their just desserts when something called “Mother’s Day” is primarily about someone other than them, despite their maternal role in their new family.
The bitter pill is that Mother’s Day is primarily about mothers. If both the bio and step moms in your family can share the day, then bravo: there’s no need to read the rest of this. For the rest of us, here’s a guide to being sensitive and understanding during a surprisingly tense holiday for stepfamilies.
The Stepmom’s Marriage Manual
Violated expectations breed strife. Everyone has ideas about how things should be, and dreams about how they will. And then, well, things aren’t. The new wife, the old father, and the young children all have their own expectations; the thread that threatens to unravel your marriage is how everyone winds up wrong.
3 Ghosts of Marriage Past Sure to Plague Your Holidays
Millions of people all over the world are looking forward to the most festive time of the year. Remarried couples with children, on the other hand, hold their breath, hoping that this year the holidays will pass with minimal turbulence.
Unresolved grief, hostile exes, and your children’s fantasies collaborate to make this one of the most difficult times of the year for you, and here’s how.
How Kids Sabotage Remarriages and What to Do About It
You’re free from your old, poisonous relationship. You’ve found someone new who you love. Remarriage is shaping up to be the best time of your life.
That is, unless your children have something to say about it…
5 Ways Undermining Bio Moms Haunts Stepmoms
Joining a family is a tricky thing. You worry that you’ll be forever stuck on the outside, looking in. So, you want to please your husband and his children as best possible. This way you can solidify your role in the family, and bring stability into your life. If you’re particularly ambitious, you may even be out to heal your new family’s past wounds inflicted by the divorce or ex-wife.
You’re compelled to win everyone over. You won’t settle for “Step-Mom.” “No, call me ‘Super-Mom!’”
There are just a few teensy things in the way…
How Sabotaging Stepmoms Hurts Your Children
It’s unnerving watching your children spend more time with a competing mother figure than you. You feel inadequate, your judgement clouds, and you make knee-jerk reactions in protection of your cubs. You catch yourself making unkind remarks about your children’s stepmother and demanding your children’s unwavering loyalty.
What could go wrong? You’re just making life hard for her, right? Wrong.
Newsletter
When Being a Nice Stepmother Is Not Enough: 7 Steps to Enjoying Your Stepchild’s Graduation
Stepfamilies facing life’s milestones, like graduation, experience a great deal of anxiety. It’s made worse when the relationship between two households is challenged due to an insecure parent feeling threatened by a stepparent. Your goal is to celebrate the occasion.
Consider the following steps to help you and your stepfamily enjoy your child’s graduation celebration.