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How many kids do you have again ? by your response I will say 0. But I'm sure you will come back and say you raised 3 scholars, by yourself, and two are doctors , and one lawyer.
Kids are not just "bad" ? have you not scrolled down these forums, and read all the different threads started by many different people, who are at their wits with there teenage daughter / son who won't move out/ go to college / stop smoking pot / stop getting pregnant ?!
what do you think those kids acted like when they were 12 ? saints ?
Ok, I'll bite.
I have raised 4 kids. All successfully launched, responsible productive members of society. The eldest (who is actually my much younger sister) had many similar problems when she hit 12/13. Acting out, lying, withdrawn, etc. I spent quite a bit of time getting her help since losing your parents can be emotional traumatizing for (here is the key) ANY KID. Children of divorce/ blended/atypical families or who were poorly parented typically need additional coping skills and help rather than just more discipline.
Around 14 after a couple years of looking for help she actually was dxed with bipolar disorder as well. I am grateful everyday that my husband, not only was supportive of all of us as a family but on the days when I wanted to throw my hands up and call her a "bad kid" he would remind she was just a kid, and bad is a result not a label for along the way. It took another couple of years to find the treatment that best works for her, especially with the normal teenage woes and her additional issues she was and is still working through with regards to the loss of our father. But she is a happy, healthy, nearing 30 yo who is making it. Many young people with her trials and dx are not so lucky, many turn to drugs, many suicide, and I will state emphatically that early intervention and refusing to label her "just a bad kid" was key.
Let me tell you how I feel about it as I am a step father.
When I married my wife, I also in my heart married her 2 1/2 year old son. There is no such thing, as step in our family.
The son has never even met his biological father, as they were divorced a month before he was born. I am the only father he ever knew.
We have 4 children of our own, and he considers them all his siblings, as they do him.
When we took him to meet my parents before we got married, at that moment he became their grandparents as far as they were concerned, and he considered them his grandparents all the rest of their lives.
As far as I cam concerned, once you marry a person with children, they are your children as much as any more children you may have together. If you cannot do that, then you have no business marrying that man or woman, if you are not at the same time marrying their children in your heart.
I adopted him, and he was legally my child as well as morally. The father was very erratic in paying his child support. I called him up, and told him I was going to adopt the boy which would eliminate all future child support, and would forget the missed and owning child support. If not, then we were going to pursue all back/missed child support and future support had to be paid on time. He immediately agreed to sign away his parental rights so I could adopt him.
Anyone that marries someone with children and will not also take on the responsibilities of their children, and love them as your own, you are not much of a man or woman.
You are a good man, sir!
My parents divorced when I was 14 and my mom remarried to my step-dad when I was 15 (26 years ago). He had full custody of a 4-year old daughter and 6 and 10-year-old sons. My mom was only 35 at the time and my sister (3yrs older than me) and I were pretty much grown and my mom started over again.
But my three younger siblings are just that- my brothers and my sister, not my 'step' anything. I refer to my mom and step-dad as my "parents" because he has been a wonderful husband to her and a great dad to me as well as his own three kids. HE and I are actually closer than he is with his my younger siblings (his biological kids) because I was almost an adult when he and mom married.
I'm closer to one of my younger brothers than the other, but I think that happens in any family. I think my little sister summed it up when she said, "You remember a life before me, but you've ALWAYS been my big brother....at least as far as I can remember" (she was 4 and and I was 15 when we became family, like I said). My mom legally adopted the younger of my two brothers and my little sister immediately after they turned 18. Their biological mother (an insane, awful woman) signed over full custody to my step-dad when they divorced but any mention off my mom adopting them and she threatened to take him back to court and fight for custody.....so the kids WANTED my mom to adopt them once their biological mother could no longer interfere. She (the bio-mother) caused my oldest younger brother (5yrs younger than me) to be very torn and he didn't choose to have my mom adopt him when he was of age. But she makes it very clear to him that she loves him just as much as the others.
She also swears that she doesn't have a favorite....then she looks at me and says, "But if I did, you know who it would be!" =)
My little sister had a battle with drugs that landed her in jail several times and she lost custody of my niece (now 10) several times and she used during her pregnancy with my 5yr old nephew. I readily took custody of them every time she landed herself in trouble. I'm very proud to say that she has been clean and sober for almost three years and she and my nephew's father are now married and doing a great job as parents.
It makes my biological sister (I'm 41, she's 44) angry when I say that I love my little sister's kids just as much as do her son. Her problem, not mine!
My biological father, who I never bonded with even though he and my mom were married until I was 14, remarried shortly after my mom remarried. His new wife is very much the stereotypical "evil stepmother" so I just stay away and when I run into them (usually at funerals, as morbid as that sounds), I'm very polite to both of them. It's their loss....
If by John's family you mean his children, then no I don't think he should have married you. I personally would never make a man choose between his children or his extended family and me. I don't have to like his extended family but I can be polite so he doesn't feel like he has to choose. If you marry someone who has a child who is a piece of crap, then guess what you have a stepchild who is a piece of crap. I've been a step-parent for 29 years and one of the kids was a real challenge. In and out of jail, always wanted to borrow money, drunken calls in the middle of the night etc. I still encouraged my spouse to remain in contact even if it was only phone calls and holiday visits in the really bad years. They were that childs parent before they were your spouse.
John did not have children from his previous wife although she tried to pin one on him. The DNA test proved that he wasn't the father.
I never encouraged John to choose between his family and me. If there were family functions that he wanted to attend I would simply stay home. I did not marry those people. I married John and it worked out for the best that I just distance myself from them. He did not have a problem with that and my feelings about his family never interfered with our relationship, except for once. He admitted that what he did was wrong and it never happened again.
I agree that a parent should be a parent till death do us part. I personally love having shorties around but if that child is an adult then that child is responsible for their behavior. If that adult is a piece of crap then sorry, they won't be a part of my life.
I always stay out of John's business when it comes to family matters with the exception of his mother. I will go up and help her even though she's been a total "B" to me. She's 88 and feeble. I do it more for John then I do it for her.
When the time comes that she leaves then it will be John going up alone to sort out the mess left behind.
We all only have one life to live and we should be able to live it with or without certain people in spite of popular opinion.
Some people just don't like kids. That's neither right nor wrong. It is what it is. Does that mean that they shouldn't be loved by someone because of it?
I think the key to any relationship is respect and compromise.
John did not have children from his previous wife although she tried to pin one on him. The DNA test proved that he wasn't the father.
I never encouraged John to choose between his family and me. If there were family functions that he wanted to attend I would simply stay home. I did not marry those people. I married John and it worked out for the best that I just distance myself from them. He did not have a problem with that and my feelings about his family never interfered with our relationship, except for once. He admitted that what he did was wrong and it never happened again.
I agree that a parent should be a parent till death do us part. I personally love having shorties around but if that child is an adult then that child is responsible for their behavior. If that adult is a piece of crap then sorry, they won't be a part of my life.
I always stay out of John's business when it comes to family matters with the exception of his mother. I will go up and help her even though she's been a total "B" to me. She's 88 and feeble. I do it more for John then I do it for her.
When the time comes that she leaves then it will be John going up alone to sort out the mess left behind.
We all only have one life to live and we should be able to live it with or without certain people in spite of popular opinion.
Some people just don't like kids. That's neither right nor wrong. It is what it is. Does that mean that they shouldn't be loved by someone because of it?
I think the key to any relationship is respect and compromise.
And you should not be vilified as the "fill-in-the - blank" step - mother because of your attitude. Sometimes relationships with steps just don't work out. Respectful distance should be okay.
I'm puzzled by something and hoping someone can explain it to me. Why do people who don't want to be a step-parent and or step grandparent marry people with children? Know of a couple who have no desire to be involved in the child's life at all. Doesn't seem to matter if the child is still a minor or not? They are perfectly content with trying to get their spouses to distance themselves from children and/or grandchildren. Or they would like new spouse to start a second family with them and ignore first family.I just don't understand why you would get involved with someone who already had children if you didn't want them in your life. I never realized this was so common until recently from reading posts on social media and from CD. Why would someone even become involved with someone who didn't welcome their children?
They might not even be aware at the beginning, sometimes the person will fake it and slowly try to separate the parent from the child, or find ways to get in the way of the parent-child relationship. It is not unusual for the person doing this to have children themselves.
Then there are parents who are just bad parents and would sacrifice their children for a new partner. Those two types deserve each other.
A typical narcissist or sociopath will "compete" with a step-child for the attentions of the spouse. Not only does it not view the child as a child, but as a kind of behind the couch sibling to be squashed. I only know of this as being done by childish women who are able to easily get men because they are so girlishly charming. The men don't understand what this really means at first but they find out - the woman actually enjoys the drama of the one-sided competition and means to win the man away from his child.
It sounds almost unbelievable but I've seen it first hand and have cut contact with that person, it just seems so evil it makes me sick.
For one thing, it's hard to find anyone to marry who DOESN'T have children or grandchildren -- especially once you're beyond a certain age -- so there's that! Secondly, it's a question of the degree of involvement. Although it's rare now, parents and grandparents historically were not so intimately involved with kids 24/7. Parents once had other stuff to do and their own lives to live, especially once the kids were grown, and grandparents were people you visited once a week for a family dinner, at the most. There weren't "helicopter" parents, there were "I'm busy, go find something to do" parents. Today the relationships are far more enmeshed, including grandparents essentially supporting and raising their grandkids, so it's a continuum of involvement. In my opinion, steps don't have an inborn natural love of other people's kids and may not want their lives to be all about them, doubly so in the precious golden years, so it can be hard to achieve a mutually satisfactory balance.
And not wanting to devote your life to raising someone else's kid doesn't make you a "narcissist."
Last edited by otterhere; 01-29-2016 at 01:08 PM..
And then there's the other side of the story. An example:
I know a guy in his 50's who married a coworker around the same age. She wanted a house. He bought the house with his savings. She wanted all new furniture. He bought the furniture. She needed a car, right after they got married. He bought the car for her. She wanted $2000 to loan to one of her adult children. He made the loan. She decided to move her other adult child, the spouse and three children into the couple's new house. When he said he hadn't planned on a houseful of children, she accused him of being selfish and uninterested in being a step-parent or a step-grandparent to her children. She's been mad at him ever since. Now he's totally broke and stuck supporting five extra people, in addition to the new wife who's so mad at him that she barely speaks to him.
I'm sure there are also step parents who walked in prepared to be part of a loving family and got the cold shoulder from kids who didn't want/need another parent.
I'd love to envision myself and my second husband presiding over large family gatherings with a bustle of children, step children, grand children and step grand children all tumbling over each other in a drum circle of love and good food and laughter. But reality is............
And you should not be vilified as the "fill-in-the - blank" step - mother because of your attitude. Sometimes relationships with steps just don't work out. Respectful distance should be okay.
Agree. Personally I couldn't be mean to the shorties and I would love them even if they were brats. They're just kids. I have an ex friend that wasn't close to her natural grand child, she just doesn't like kids.
That's just the way it is. It didn't affect her relationship with her son. She didn't like his wife either. They manage to keep their distance and she only interacted with her son.
It's no different when people marry. It's unrealistic to expect everyone to be besties, but the key is mutual respect. What do you do if that's lacking on one or both sides? Pretend that nothing is wrong? Get a divorce from someone you're crazy about because other family members don't approve? Not in my universe.
This son, died a year ago last September at 64 years old. I and all his siblings have really missed him.
I'm so sorry for your loss. It sounds like you were a phenomenal dad.
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Originally Posted by Hedgehog_Mom
And then there's the other side of the story. An example:
I know a guy in his 50's who married a coworker around the same age. She wanted a house. He bought the house with his savings. She wanted all new furniture. He bought the furniture. She needed a car, right after they got married. He bought the car for her. She wanted $2000 to loan to one of her adult children. He made the loan. She decided to move her other adult child, the spouse and three children into the couple's new house. When he said he hadn't planned on a houseful of children, she accused him of being selfish and uninterested in being a step-parent or a step-grandparent to her children. She's been mad at him ever since. Now he's totally broke and stuck supporting five extra people, in addition to the new wife who's so mad at him that she barely speaks to him.
The key here is balance and boundaries.
There is a huge difference between kids 18 and under and adult children.
I have a wonderful boyfriend who will make an excellent stepdad. He and I have discussed this issue ahead of time. I think adult children should be on their own. I don't believe in financially supporting my adult children. I love my girls and want them to visit on holidays, come over for coffee or dinner or breakfast, go hiking, go to church together. I plan on leaving them each a gift in my will. I plan on being an active grandmother someday. But here's my boundary: When they're grown, I want them living on their own and not under my roof.
My girls are in high school, so basically I have 39 months to go!
Quote:
Originally Posted by ccc123
I'm puzzled by something and hoping someone can explain it to me. Why do people who don't want to be a step-parent and or step grandparent marry people with children? Know of a couple who have no desire to be involved in the child's life at all. Doesn't seem to matter if the child is still a minor or not? They are perfectly content with trying to get their spouses to distance themselves from children and/or grandchildren. Or they would like new spouse to start a second family with them and ignore first family.I just don't understand why you would get involved with someone who already had children if you didn't want them in your life. I never realized this was so common until recently from reading posts on social media and from CD. Why would someone even become involved with someone who didn't welcome their children?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ccc123
I don't understand it either, I'm hoping maybe someone who has lived it will comment and explain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lkb0714
Because they are selfish. End of story.
I think it's a selfish refusal to deal with reality on the part of the biological remarrying parent as well as the new stepparent. Both want an existence apart from the past, which cannot happen. Again, it's about boundaries and balance. Husband and wife are one. Children's needs also need to be met. Step-families are complicated and unnatural, and this is why the divorce rate among second (and third) marriages is so high.
Quote:
Originally Posted by germaine2626
I have known children who this has happened to and it can be completely devastating to them. In one case (best friend of my son), while the children in his first family were literally having problems being able to find enough food to eat and having serious, serious financial problems, their father was taking his "new, little princess" on European vacations, buying her a horse, sending her to private schools, etc.
The father never even spoke to or sent birthday cards or contacted his first family for almost 20 years. He said that his new, much younger wife forbid him from seeing his children and said that she would leave him if he did. What a jerk. IMHO, both of them were jerks.
This happened to my best friend. It is indeed devastating. I cried with her, as young adults, about the intense pain she experienced. Remember that movie, First Wives' Club? I told my best friend that there should be a movie called First Kids' Club. So many victims of no-fault divorce. So many in my generation would be able to relate.
I have dealt with this issue both as an adult child of divorce, as well as a divorced parent of my two girls. (Their dad, sadly, passed away some time ago at the age of 55.) Time and forgiveness have helped me to heal from the deep hurts I have experienced due to my parents' divorce and remarriages. And I hope my girls and I will enjoy a long, healthy friendship when they're grown!
Last edited by Banjo71; 01-29-2016 at 02:18 PM..
Reason: clarify dates
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