When I became I SM, I thought I could make things with BM better. I thought my stepkids would love me. I thought that my husband would start standing up to BM and being a parent to his kids. BOY WAS I WRONG. For the next few years, my life was he**. I thought we could all be one big happy family. I think a lot of us here thought the same thing with our respective blended families, too.

So looking back on my first years as a SM, I thought of some tips I wish I had been given when I married DH. I want to help as many people as possible avoid being in the same stepparenting catastrophe I was in. I hope they can help you.

1) let your partner do the communicating with his/her ex. This will save you from having a lot of drama in your life.

2) If you think your partner is communicating too much with their ex, you have every right to discuss this with him/her and draw up communication rules for their communication with their ex. The first one is all communication between them must be about the kids only. Maybe they could email each other once a week with info on how the kids' week went, and info about the kids' upcoming week, and call only to talk to their kids at the court-ordered times and in skid emergencies. Write out copies of these rules- 1 for you, one for your partner, and one for their ex.

3) Pay very close attention to how your partner treats you now. Do they make sure their kids treat you with respect & courtesy? Do they make you feel included (of course not at the expense of the skids)? Do they discipline their child when the child misbehaves? Do they encourage/appropriately reward good behavior in the kids? Or do they guilt-parent the kids, let them treat you like a doormat, cast you completely aside when the kids visit, and treat you like cr*p in general? If the latter set of behavior is the case, think long and hard about staying with this person.

4) Don't go into this thinking you will, all of a sudden, change things with the ex and be one big happy blended family. If your partner is complaining frequently about how loony their ex is, they're probably telling the truth. Plus, all the bickering between them and their ex has probably been going on for years. Let your partner handle the ex-after all, it's their ex so the ex is their problem- and just be yourself.

5) Allow yourself to not like the kids. Don't force yourself to feel anything you really don't feel for them. By removing this pressure from yourself, it might actually help you come to like them over time. Just like I had to learn this when dealing with my SM, I realized that I don't have to like DH's kids either, but I do have to be courteous & civil to them. By not pressuring myself into feeling love or like for them, I think that helped me come to like them over a long period of time.

6) Give the kids permission to not like you. Just like your not forcing yourself to love or like them will help you feel better, allowing the skids to do them same thing will probably make them feel better too. I wish my Dad and SM had told me this when I was younger because I spent a lot of time trying to force myself to like her, even when I really did not. Do, however, insist to your partner and the kids that the kids treat you with respect.

7) realize that if your partner does not back you up regarding the skids then you may simply end up having to disengage. Sometimes, our disengaging helps our partners to see how bad the kids really are; often, it doesn't, and many biological parents continue down the guilt-parenting path. :sick:

Try to carve out alone time with your partner, i.e. a weekly date night,
an occasional trip, even just 5 minutes at home. Even if its' on the scheduled visitation time with the kids. This shows the kids what a loving romantic adult relationship is like. Again, though, your partner has to back you up on this one. Be prepared if they do not and go hang out with friends, take your kids out, see family, etc.

9) allow the skids to each get alone time with their parent, too, and try to use that time as bonding with the other skids. However, if these kids are rude to you and you cannot stand them, you have the right to go do something nice for yourself in your home or outside of your home, so long as the kids are old enough to watch themselves or there's other adult presence in your home.

10) realize that, if these kids treat you rudely, and turn out to be monsters, it's not your fault because their bio-parents did a poor job, and that you did the best you could in the situation.