Guest Post: How to have a healthy relationship with your stepchild's birth parent
Written by Jenny Parrott
The Freelance Parent is currently a free service-based newsletter aimed at helping its subscribers thrive professionally and personally. While Cat is taking some time off to have a baby, we have some brilliant guest parents stepping in each fortnight to inspire your Monday mornings. If you find this week’s issue helpful, please consider supporting the newsletter by donating £3 here and sharing with your friends. All Kofi donations will go to the guest writer.
Becoming a step-parent to young children can be the ultimate challenge for a new partner. Here writer Jenny Parrott shares her own experience and how she continues to make it work.
Many people, when they fall in love post-thirty years of age with somebody who has children, will discover something they hadn’t necessarily thought about much before: the very real presence of a flesh-and-blood ex.
At first the sensations of being with a new partner may be so heady that any potential problems might be pushed aside. His (or her) children will be, well, nice, you tell yourself; and somehow the picture of the other parent never quite comes into focus.
You move in together and – wham – those nice children are frequently anything but nice, while their other parent looms somewhat ominously in the background.
I was lucky – my stepkids’ mother tried very hard to accept me, and encouraged me to help care for her children when they were at our home. But I don’t think anyone – least of all the children themselves – would pretend it was easy. There certainly were some tricky times. As an only child with no extended family, I knew quite literally nothing about children, or the reality of having them in the house.
I had much more liberal views than their birth mother, although I didn’t realise this for a while. And I was terrified of the children themselves, aged three and four when I met them (they are now in their late twenties) – they were adorable, but so real. They didn’t eat what I did, or watch the telly I did, and they were noisy and demanding and untidy (which was difficult for a neat freak like me), and got so many clothes incredibly dirty. They had homework, parties, friends and a whole social life, and they needed looking after all the time. And even the best day involved at least one squabble and tears before bedtime (quite often mine). Their dad bore the brunt of all of this of course, but even so, I just wasn’t used to working around their schedules, nor that of their mother.
Fortunately, their mother was much more sensible than me, and was always clear that our best way forward was to work together. So in time I found myself being honest with her about what I struggled with (everything really), or how I should deal with the children when they were in my house. This helped me remind myself that she and the children’s father were the parents, in charge of all the child-rearing decisions, and so actually I could think about it all differently. Once I twigged this, I felt less at sea. None of this is to say that I wasn’t useful: I was a back-up driver if needed, I could buy the food the children liked and clear up after them, help with spelling and homework, watch telly with them, read them a story and so on.
At times their father and their mother disagreed over certain things, and – this is absolutely my biggest tip for any new stepparent – you absolutely have to do your level best to stay neutral. In turn, they’ll do the same for you when you mess up, which you will. Even the closest of birth parents don’t agree over everything, which is also worth bearing in mind as cross words occasionally don’t mean that everyone is failing. Best of all is that the very nature of childrearing is that many things which seem infuriating and insurmountable at the time, quickly blow over, simply because the kids get older and outgrow whatever was the problem.
I think everyone needs to remember that a certain amount of friction is normal in any family, not least as children will push against boundaries as a part of their journey towards adulthood; in fact, this is what they need to do. The important thing is not to make too much of any of it – it’s rarely as personal as it might seem at the time to a stepparent – and to keep the channels of communication open between all the parties concerned.
An area that step parents can excel in is helping the children see everyone’s point of view in any argument – the child or teen does something that upsets one parent, this results in some sort of sanction, the other parent disagrees, the child is livid – all that sort of thing. A stepparent is part of the family but isn’t invested in quite the same way as the birth parents, and children and teens understand this, especially as they can be very dramatic at these moments in how they talk; a step parent becomes ideally placed to say ‘and why do you think mum felt like that? And dad? What punishment would you have chosen for yourself?’ (Actually that last question is a good one, as in my experience children then say a punishment that far exceeds what the ‘crime’ merits, and this provides a good opportunity to encourage the child to speak calmly to both parents and apologise if necessary.)
If I had the time over again with my stepkids, I would follow the ‘rules’ below from the very moment we met:
Always put the children first. You joined the family scenario after them, and they absolutely take precedence in all things. Not always easy, of course, but it might help to remember that you are the adult here…
These are not your children. What their own parents want for them is much more important than what you think.
Listen to what the absent parent wants or needs, but don’t chip in too much about what you think and then only if they approach you or there is a natural opportunity to ask (ie, never try to step in unnecessarily – even if well intentioned, it’s just not helpful to anyone concerned).
Never badmouth an absent parent to your stepchildren. This can be very hard at times, but it really pays to resist. Children automatically love their parents, and it’s unnecessarily hurtful for them to hear nasty things. If their birth parent really is a problem, they will work it out themselves in their own time and they don’t need you to tell them.
Don’t sweat the small stuff. Remember that all the adults in this scenario will get things wrong, and will at times be incredibly irritating. Remind yourself you are in it for the long game, and the small upsets just don’t count in the big scheme of things.
Always be reliable over your dealings with the absent parent – if you agree to do something, then do it. This is the quickest way to your harmonious relationship with the absent parent.
And the benefit of all of the above is that as the months turn into years and everyone gets used to each other, it becomes much easier. Truly, it does!
Jenny Parrott has worked in book publishing for nearly thirty five years, following a career as a news journalist and crime reporter; in 2016 she began writing fiction and since then has had nine novels published under pseudonyms for three large publishing houses. One of Jenny’s personal essays about motherhood features in the book The Best, Most Awful Job.
Some lovely Freelance Parent news…
Cat’s second son, Rocco Ralph arrived safely into the world last Monday, born at home on a Totter and Tumble play mat, weighing a whopping 9 pounds 7. I’m sure you’ll all join me in sending a huge congratulations to Cat and her family!
What a gorgeous boy.
Jess x
