Category: Stepparenting

Will The Real Parents Please Stand Up Part 3

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myhealthla.org

Read Part 2 Here

What is it going to take for parents to take a stand and raise our children? Are we afraid of our children, or do we not care? Pastor Doug says parents are too busy to stop and deal with the issues. Is that true, and if it is, what else do parents have going on that is more important than your own child?

In today’s American culture, we are so self-focused that when a woman finds herself pregnant, she plans the date of the birth of her child. We can go to our doctor and request a date to be induced so that the birth falls in line with the plan. We have six weeks of family leave and so therefore, it has be really calculated to all work out. I’m 47 and I remember women being 3 weeks late to give birth or three weeks early. Not so much anymore. If we go a few days past our due date, we asked to be induced. The clock is ticking. We need to speed the process of growing up because in our fast-paced lifestyle it has to fit in.

Then the guilt sets in for all sorts of reason. Maybe you had a terrible childhood where you had to get a job at 16, so you vow never to do that your child. Maybe you grew up without all the latest gadgets so you have to make that up to your child. Maybe your parents told you no about some activities that you wanted to do so you have to live vicariously through your child. So we make little idols of our children. How often have we heard these words, maybe from our own mouth when things aren’t going well?

My child is so smart that he fails all of his classes out of sheer boredom because the teachers don’t motivate him.

My child is so misunderstood and they pick on him because of_________ (you fill in the blank).

My child is strong willed and I don’t want to change that because he’ll need it in life. So rather than fight with him, we come to agreements.

Most people are jealous of my child because they are so (beautiful, talented, smart) that they mistreat them.

My child has been through so much in his life that he is entitled to act out.

Please realize that these are all excuses that we use to excuse not the child but us as parents from doing our job. We blame the school, we blame the church, we blame the friends, but the responsibility is ours and solely ours. In our effort to insulate our children from any bad things that may happen in life, we don’t prepare them for life. Basic life skills are not taught. Being truthful, honest, honorable, or moral may hurt our child’s feelings, so therefore we abdicate our responsibility and go on the attack of anyone who calls them on any of their behavior. So why do you think we are neglecting those obligations or why are we trying so hard to pass the buck? I’ll talk about my thoughts on this next time.

But What If I Don’t Wanna?

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With not an inch of space to walk and the stench of a locker room emanating from the boy’s room, kitchen counters sticky from lemonade making and gently asking for two weeks daily for the sugar spilled on the kitchen table to be picked up before we were visited by ants, I finally flipped out. Granted, the sugar spills were daily in a new location and the sticky countertop was wherever the lemonade had made that day, at 17 you’d think he would pick stuff up right? Wrong!

My 17 year-old said, “You act as if we are doing this TO YOU. We aren’t. We simply don’t think about it. My teacher says you should only do what you are passionate about. Nothing else. I am trying to live that.”

I said, “Yeah well your teacher lies because he can’t say everything he does he is passionate about.”

“Yes he can, he loves teaching!!”

“He may love teaching but does he love getting to work on time, having meetings, meeting deadlines, and all that goes with that? Your dad loves preaching but he hates parts of his job. He does them because they allow him to pursue his passion. With everything you do, there are parts of it that aren’t so great but you do them to get to do what you want.”

“NO! He really doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do.”

“Whatever! Do you have groceries in this house?”

“Yes”

“Have you had them here for the last 10 years?”

“Yes”

“Well, I hate grocery shopping so what if I just stop doing that? Since it isn’t my passion?”

The eyes begin to look desperately for the next argument to prove his point.

“You see, you want more responsibility but you aren’t handling what you’ve been given. Until I see that you are taking care of this stuff, I can’t give you more.”

Yes, sometimes we look more like the Roseanne Barr Show than the average family.

There’s a bigger issue here. You see, we’ve created this monster, and it’s not just in our home, it’s in your home as well, and in many other homes. It’s the American spirit that has brought us to this mess. It’s this ideal that I was created to only do what I want to do and we should all live out our lives happy and entitled. Dishes should magically clean themselves and beds should come with a remote control that pull the sheets up. Work should be an afterthought or for the idiots who haven’t figured out what they were created to do.

And just to be clear here, I am not asking for perfection. I’m fine with closing the door to the kids rooms, but when the smell starts creeping down the stairs or when the dirty stinky shirt is on the kid who needs a ride in my car, it’s then that I have an issue.

There are things we do, not because we want to, but because we are part of a community and that requires the good of the whole, not the one. We need to get back to center and it starts in our home first.

Not Bone Of My Bone

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I have struggled with step-parenting. That is true and well documented. However, we really need to change our minds about how we speak of our children.

While out with Lauren, my stepdaughter, a man we both know, asked me, “I haven’t seen your kids in awhile. How are they doing?” I smiled, knowing what he meant but not wanting to feed this thinking, I answered, “One is standing right behind me.” I heard Lauren snicker. The man persisted, “No, I mean your real kids.” I answered, “She looks pretty real to me. Are you talking about my two oldest? They are fine. Working and living in Los Angeles.”

People who are reading this today, my request is this: please don’t distinguish between a biological and an adopted child. My step-children may not be bone of my bone but they are certainly children of my heart. Maybe it’s incomprehensible that a stepmother would love her children, since fairy tales tell us otherwise, but I do. So please think before you speak. I know most people do not think about what they are saying and I’m sure it wasn’t meant as a slam but what if you were Lauren hearing this conversation? What if I had responded in a different way? Would that have hurt her heart? Let’s just be a little more careful with our words.

Thankful

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I was sitting with my husband having lunch yesterday when a thought occurred to me that just warmed my heart and made me thankful to God. This past Sunday my son, Anthony, preached the word to the church. He spoke on the relationship we have with God and the obligation we have to each other. The Sunday before son # 2, Charles, preached to the church at youth day. He spoke on humility before God and how we needed to stay pliable before him.

I had simply taken this for granted until the moment God gave me the realization of the blessing he had bestowed on us. Our children pay a high price for what we do, as families in ministry can attest. Ministry is what we do and there aren’t on and off hours for it. Sure, we have great discussions abut the bible and our faith. but we have great arguments about what other kids are allowed to do versus ours. Funny, our kids think we don’t allow certain things because we are a “ministry family”. They don’t understand that we don’t allow certain things because we’re strict parents.

In this moment of clarity the Lord made me realize that despite the guilt I carry, the kids are okay. They know the word of God, they are growing up in the faith that we have taught them and they will, no doubt about it, surpass all that we have done and do even greater still. God has kept his hand firmly on them. God has directed their path even when we felt we were failing at juggling all the balls in the air.

All this to say that the realization was not that the kids were on the platform preaching and that is what made it good. What made it good was their understanding of the word and how it fits in their lives. To see them talk about their struggles and triumphs is what made it good. Somehow we did something right or at least we were carried by abounding grace.

Our daughters haven’t hit the platform (yet). They may or may not but I’m secure in the knowledge that they know God, they love him, and they serve him. That is all I need to feel that life is good!

A Stepmom Can Dream Right?

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I read

Eric Urbach’s article

and knew I had to share it!

When I read this excerpt I thought wow, this dad gets it!

It hit me at that moment that I had blown it. It wasn’t that I had specifically blown enforcement of the eating rule, but that I had communicated to my wife that what my son wanted outweighed the agreement she and I had made. I had also communicated to my son that the rule didn’t apply to him. Also, selfishly, I had also allowed my desire to avoid conflict get the best of me, but that’s probably another blog post.

A Different Kind of Battle

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http://www.etsy.com/listing/72758807/stepmom-mothers-day-fairy-tale-card

Here is another article on being a step mom from CNN.

Linda Petty writes a great article on the life of a step mom. I loved her job advertisement because it is just that way. She goes back to write some of the comments on the article written by Rachelle Katz that I blogged about on May 6, 2011, and it highlights the differing views on step moms.

Maybe the world is starting to recognize that there are more blended families than biological families and that there is much help needed!

Doing A Great Work

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I read this today and it made me smile. I wish I knew who wrote it but once you read it, it will seem par for the course that I don’t. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. You are doing a great work!

The Invisible Mother

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I’m on the phone and ask to be taken to the store. Inside I’m thinking, ‘Can’t you see I’m on the phone?’

Obviously not; no one can see if I’m on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all. I’m invisible. The invisible Mom. Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more! Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this??

Some days I’m not a pair of hands; I’m not even a human being. I’m a clock to ask, ‘What time is it?’ I’m a satellite guide to answer, ‘What number is the Disney Channel?’ I’m a car to order, ‘Right around 5:30, please.’

Some days I’m a crystal ball; ‘Where’s my other sock? ‘Where’s my phone?, What’s for dinner?

I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history, music and literature – but now, they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She’s going, she’s going, she’s gone!

One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. She had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when she turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, ‘I brought you this.’ It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I wasn’t exactly sure why she’d given it to me until I read her inscription: ‘With admiration for the greatness of what you are building while no one sees.’

In the days ahead I would read – no, devour – the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work: 1) No one can say who built the great cathedrals – we have no record of their names. 2) These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished. 3) They made great sacrifices and expected no credit. 4) The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

A story of legend in the book told of a rich man who came to visit a cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, ‘Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it.’ And the workman replied, ‘Because God sees.’

I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, ‘I see you. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does. No act of kindness you’ve done, no sequin you’ve sewn on, no cupcake you’ve baked, no Cub Scout meeting, no last minute errand is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can’t see right now what it will become.’

I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on. The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.

When I really think about it, I don’t want my son to tell the friend he’s bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, ‘My Mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for 3 hours and presses all the linens for the table.’ That would mean I’d built a monument to myself. I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his friend, he’d say, ‘You’re gonna love it there…’

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we’re doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible mothers.

Thank you to all the Moms who are looking down and smiling at the cathedrals they helped to build. May God bless and keep you.

Happy New Year 2011

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Psalm 16:1 Keep me safe, O God, I’ve run for dear life to you. 2 I say to God, “Be my Lord!” Without you, nothing makes sense. 3 And these God-chosen lives all around – what splendid friends they make! 4 Don’t just go shopping for a god. Gods are not for sale. I swear I’ll never treat god-names like brand-names. 5 My choice is you, God, first and only. And now I find I’m your choice!6 You set me up with a house and yard. And then you made me your heir! 7 The wise counsel God gives when I’m awake is confirmed by my sleeping heart. 8 Day and night I’ll stick with God; I’ve got a good thing going and I’m not letting go. 9 I’m happy from the inside out, and from the outside in, I’m firmly formed. 10 You canceled my ticket to hell – that’s not my destination! 11 Now you’ve got my feet on the life path, all radiant from the shining of your face. Ever since you took my hand, I’m on the right way. -“The Message”

It’s been crazy busy around the Young house. Friends, family, church, store there are lots of obligations that came on all at once. We’ve had a wonderful season this year and I have to take a second to encourage all the stepfamilies out there. This year, we finally were able to come together and have a really great season. Statistics tell you that it takes 7 years to blend a family and we were no exception.

This year my resolution is really simple. This year, I will breathe in deeply the presence of God, I will not measure my life’s success as a human doing but rather a human being. I don’t know about you but I am my harshest critic. I will turn 46 this year and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that my plate will always be full but I don’t have to eat everything off of it everyday. I’m sure I will one day die with a do-to list left behind and I’m sure someone will come behind me and finish it. This year I want to be focused solely on being.

I hope these first seven days of the year have been great to you. I am continually thinking of all of you and I there is still much to be said!

The Battle For Peace

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This is an ongoing series on stepparenting. To read the previous entry click here.

Lady Tremaine suddenly finds herself misunderstood and the magnifying glass is on her. Why is there no peace in her home? Why is she always disapproving? Why can’t we all just get along? Why does she take the blame for everything?

The children on both sides of the coin are vying for control. One child told his stepmother, “Every time I hum a song using da, like ‘da da da dadum dum’ it really means I’m praying for my dad to ‘da-vorce’ you.” So each time they got in the car to go somewhere as a family, the child would sit behind her in the car and as the music would play on the car stereo, the child would kick her seat and hum along using the “da”. By the time they reached their destination she would be furious and the child would be in control and loving it. Her husband simply didn’t believe her because the child was only 8 years old, at the time, and it seemed too manipulative a move for a child this age.

Stepmothers need to take an honest assessment of the situation they are in. If the home is becoming hostile and she is getting resentful and feeling like an outsider, she must back off and take a hands off approach to the children. She can’t step into a stepmother role, rather she must be seen as a mentor. This is not easy because our idea of a family is a mother and father. Only we have to remember that these children have a mother and father, for the most part, and they haven’t asked for another.

If a battle is ensuing in your home you must step back. The house will become unbalanced. There is no way around this. It means the things you need to have done will more than likely not get done. If your rule is to bring your own dirty clothes down to the laundry room on Wednesday for wash day, you can bet that the children will forget or ignore. It’s not personal. It doesn’t add to your chores either. You will simply have less clothes to wash that day. On Friday when everyone is looking to you to provide the clean School Spirit Shirt, you’ll simply say, “I washed all the clothes that were brought to me on Wednesday”. If dishes weren’t done the night before, well then tonight you won’t be able to cook dinner. Don’t worry, cereal for dinner has never killed a family. The key here is to give the person with the responsibility the ultimate authority while saving your sanity.

One stepmother would get up each morning to get her stepchildren off to school. Because they had ignored bedtimes the night before, there was always a battle. She’d think to herself how she was ignored the night before and now she was paying for something she hadn’t done. By the time she dropped them off at the bus stop, she was angry, kids were angry, and everyone was miserable. One harried morning she was rushing kids to get up and get moving while getting herself ready for work. Then, one of the kids threw up. Not having the time to figure it out and get the other one to the bus stop, she told the sick child to go back and lie down and she would be right back. She loaded up the other child and ran them to the bus stop. When she came home the sick child wasn’t home. She was frantic and called her husband. They both went looking for the child and when they found him wandering the streets, he began to cry to his father saying that he had thrown up and his evil stepmother had grounded him for life and told him to go to his room and never come out. The father was enraged and asked how she could be so heartless? It had never happened but it didn’t matter, she must have had a tone or a look or something. She had a choice, fight, flight, or take a step back. Guess what? This stepmother took a step back. She removed herself from the responsibility of getting children ready for school. Do you want to know the result? The children’s father was frustrated in no time, yelling, rushing out the door and the bedtime rules which seemed harsh before, became law. When her husband would come to complain about how hard it was, she would pat him on the arm and say, “I’m sorry you are going through this. Parenting is hard work.”