I am BM to three kids (9,13, 17)and SM to SD 8. My silly exhb is very lucky these days to date a lovely lady with three Kids (20, 17, 2- last one not from him).This lovely lady, let's call her LL, ran into her new role as a stepmom for my kids very quickly, moved in with exhb one month ago, full of idealistic ideas and values that she shared with me, since we like each other and talk sometimes.LL also seems to adore exhb , who is a succesful scientist and didn't seem to mind that he is a total child and has zero social skills, good for him.
I had my moments where I thought LL was a bit overdoing it and playing the 'we are a big, happy family card" a bit too early, but overall I was grateful for her efforts and openness with me.After all I read horrendous stories abut nasty BM's here and I really wanted to be a good BM and being supportive.
Although my kids are mostly good and doing well, I was wondering how this new step family situation will impact them.The worst bit was that I saw LL running happily into an "open knife", having no clue about how step families work and how different they are to core families.Not that I see us here as the best example, or I wouldn't need to come here all the time, but she was really totally blind about how things should be or not.
Although I gave her some hints in the past about my struggle with SD, I couldn't really gave her any more warning since it would have looked like as if I would like to interfere in their lives too much.
But after a few weeks I get all those messages of her about the kids not being independent and not listening suddenly....Although I don't have those issues with my kids, I assume that they are no perfect angels there and also that the step mum role is finally taking impact on her!! My daughter told me that my 13 year old and his father had a huge fight and the words "she is not even my real mom" were spoken, so I decided to sit down with BS 13 for a chat.
I tried to explain to him that although SM and SDad will never be the real parents or wanting to replace them, but that it still means that he needs to show respect to them as the adults in the house hold.I told him that LL does care very much (although I believe she is overdoing it)and that she doesn't have to do all these things for them but chooses to.
I hope I left some impact on him.I feel sorry for LL for loosing her rose tinted glasses so quickly and also that my otherwise good and nice kids are partialy responsible for it.Step families suck.