Good post. I like the list.

Only thing I would add is also talk about money. Each other's spending style, past debt, funds coming from the other bio parent if any and financial goals. Money is a subject that causes a lot of fighting in a marriage. Discuss the issue way before getting married or living together.

I like almost all of your post.

11. Do not try to get your spouse to gain custody of your skids as soon as you enter the picture.

12. Do not try to MAKE your spouse admit that their kid is a bad kid.

I think we broke rules 1,2,3,4, and 7. Number 5, I had an idea and had seen my husband parenting, but didn't really have the full picture so probably broke that one too.

Not a bad list per-say but real-life doesn't always go the way it should and if you pick the right person for you and you are both committed then you can make it work.

You should clarify that not all of this applies to those with adult children and step children.

I have a 30 year old SS. No way do I feel obligated to blend him into my life. That works for some, but it does not work when an adult skid is dysfunctional. My SS is an alcoholic with a history of domestic abuse offenses. I would be a fool to want him in my life. And at 30 his choice to abuse alcohol and beat up people is not his parents' fault.

ETA - I agree with # 12 about not trying to convince your spouse that their child is bad. DH and I had many arguments about how horrible SS is, and he got very defensive.

I finally wised up and realized that it does no good to enumerate his son's many faults. DH knows. He just doesn't want to hear me say it. So I politely refuse to see SS - but I do not add "because he's a worthless POS". No in a complete sentence. I don't need to add the why.

I like five and six the best. Totally agree with you. Introducing the so and that may depend on the age of the kid and how long you have been divorced, but I do think that when the stepkids' us nasty to the stepparent, it is because they lack parental guidance.

I think this is a good list for people with young(er) children. In my case, I don't agree with #6. My DH did not act as if he were a package deal with his daughter. She was 14 when we started dating, just turned 15 when I finally met her. She was not an easy teenager, and my DH didn't even ask her to our wedding (2 years later). 10 years into our relationship, SD24 and I now get along very well. I didn't agree with how my DH parented her when she was a teenager (which led to issues that brought me here) but it didn't matter in the scheme of things. We have children now, and we seem to be on the same page these days, although it will be many years before ours are teenagers. If anything, I think DH will be more strict with our children, and that is something I would be happy about.

I will say, right from the beginning, he did make us the priority. I think we're guilty of not doing that now with our children together, but we're also on the same page, so maybe it's not too much of an issue.

Some of these skids were produced because their bio parents were utterly irresponsible and chose to fuck around using NO BC. How stupid is that? Others were produced because the bio parents made a decision to have a child. The SP was not involved in any of these choices.

No way that a person should be required to bear the responsibility of rearing others' children unless that is a decision that they have made of their own free will.

Whenever I hear of a bio parent demanding that their spouse parent their children I think just another USER/LOSER BP.

Oh Boy #5 & #6!! This is a BASIC scenario list, so I am supposed to try to parent a 16YO SD that ignores my very existence when passing me throughout the house, ignores any text I send even at the request of her dad if he is driving. Retreats to her room as soon as I walk in from work and is not to be seen or heard from unless she comes into our room to speak to her dad. Everything she says starts with "dad"! So I know she is NOT talking to me! And yes we decided I would step in, yes the BM is out of the picture and could careless. BM shows up for a dinner once every six months or so. So "oh ye of wisdom" how do you parent that when she says "I'm not doing anything wrong, I dont have anything to say to HER".......yeah sometimes its not up to the "adults" exclusively.......I say DISENGAGE for your own sanity.

EDITED to add.....that would be 4 years of this behavior.

I may be in the minority here but I honestly do not know how/why some of you married into your situations. I would say that MOST of the time you DID know what you were getting into but choose to ignore it. I knew after dating a few months that something was off with my DHs whole situation. After dating a full year I knew there was no way in hell I would put my kids or myself into that type of situation. (And my step situation was nothing compared to most on here.) That is why we dated for 7-8 years before marrying and moving in together.

And another minority here. I don’t think SDads have it easier than SMs. I just think that SDads are normally more laid back than SMs. We…as women tend to be more controlling and I think that is where a lot of things go awry.

Yup...there are ALWAYS curve balls. But all in all...we mostly know what we are stepping in when we marry a person with kids. IF you actually get to know the person before marriage.

I met my SS when he was 8ish. Within 6 months, I knew how he was going to be as a 14 year old. Because I saw how BM and DH rasied him. I don't feel like I am being a Judgy McJudgersons (lol).

But I still do not understand how MOST on this site can actually say they did NOT know what they were getting into. Im sure that sometimes, as SOON as the marriage happens, the BM turns into a loon, the dad suddenly becomes a terrible parent, and the kids turn into spoilt turds. But MOST of the time, that all was there before the new marriage it was just overlooked. JMHO

My husband (the OP of this thread) sent me his list in an email and I have to say that I was really curious about the responses and about this board in general. Since I am kid free at the moment, I thought I'd take some time to write a little about my thoughts and perspective on this topic.

The first thing that you should know is that my husband truly is one of the good guys. We really did fall in love the night we met. (Although, everyone here should take note that I was the one who recognized it first! ) We are still obnoxiously in love 5 years later. I miss him when he travels for work, write him love notes in his lunch, we make our friends sick on Facebook...all that good stuff. Lol. I think it's important to note where we came from to understand us and why this way of parenting our kids was the way we chose to go. My first marriage was pretty awful. My ex physically and emotionally abused me. He still tries to mess with my head now and then but he is more of a nuisance than anything else now. Although he has a harder time admitting this, my husband's ex manipulated and emotionally abused him as well. We talk a lot about why we married our ex's..why didn't we wait for each other, why did we have kids with these people that were so wrong for us?? Ugh, we talk about it, ad nauseam, and the answers don't always come easily. We were both young and naive (okay, stupid!). My husband has already answered why he married his ex..The reason I married an abusive jerk is something that maybe I will never really understand about myself. I just know that in order to move forward with my life I had to forgive myself and do what is best for me, my marriage, and all my kids.

I think everyone's situation is unique to them so I didn't find much fault with this general list. (Of course I am sleeping with the guy who wrote it, so I may be biased. :P) I know that I have felt every emotion possible when in comes to being a step parent. And that every single one of the "10 steps" along the way has been incredibly hard. But now I feel like it's really all been worth it. Our youngest son is 4 and I get to have him with me during the day, Mon-Wed. He is the sweetest, smartest, funniest little guy and I feel like I've contributed to that. I don't know if that makes sense.. Sometimes my husband says things like, "Oh, he has your sense of humor" and I take pride in that, because he is a little stinker and he definitely gets that from me. (We are big fans of nurture over nature) I love that our 4 year old wants to dance with me, bake with me, wants me to sing him a song at the end of the night, and wants to cuddle with ME. I can't afford to emotionally disconnect myself from him or his brother (who is the mini version of his father ). I think that if I was disconnected from them then I wouldn't have those great moments with them both that I do now. I can't say that I didn't do that, or rather that I didn't want to, or feel like I should disconnect in the beginning. I understand the need or maybe the desire for self preservation. Nothing hurts your feelings more than a little boy asking for mommy and not being his mommy!! It's a helpless feeling. Believe me, my husband and I had plenty of discussions (some of the quite loud!) about OUR feelings as step parents. Which is why #10 is SO important to us and it should be for anyone in a relationship.

I think the idea that step moms find themselves in a more difficult parenting position than step dads is interesting. I might partially agree with that, but I would say that is over generalizing things. A better way to say it might be that moms have a different roles in their kids lives than dads do. My husband and I choose together what works best for our family, just like I'm sure everyone here does. Like I mentioned I have our youngest son every Mon-Wed. He has preschool Mon and Wed,that I take him to and pick him up from, and I have to pick up my other step son from his school since he goes to a different elementary school than my sons. I would be lying if I didn't say this caused some resentment on my part at first. Especially because last year our youngest was VERY mommy centered. And as I mentioned, it hurts to have a little guy asking for mommy. I really had to step back and take a look at the situation. Last year I was a bit of a mess. My mom died in April, we had to take on the responsibility of my brother and sister, we got married in June, we had to figure out a way to add rooms onto our house for my brother and sister, we had to figure out everything for my mom's estate and deal with my lousy relatives....Needless to say I was a wreck. I really felt like I was failing at everything,including being a mom. I just had to look at all of this from the kids perspective. Not only had we just lost my mom but now our boys had to take on essentially a new brother and sister. Life was hectic and of course they acted out. Hell, I was 34 and I was acting out! My mom was my best friend (other than my husband) and her loss was..ugh, I can't describe it. I know I wasn't much good to anyone there for awhile. Thank God for my husband. He really is the best.

Anyway, I guess my point with the above paragraph is that no one here should assume that our lives are cookie cutter, picture perfect and that we judge everyone who handles things differently. That's not my husband's MO. He told me how sad he felt for so many of the posters on here and how lucky he felt that despite all of the madness, we somehow make it work.

I have to say that I am not surprised to read people saying that they don't think they love their step kids as much as their children. I feel sad for you if that is the case but I do understand it. That bond is hard and if it doesn't form then I can see why someone would feel that way. I don't know how I would feel if my husband didn't love our kids the same... I think about growing up as a step kid and where I would be if my step dad hadn't loved me. My biological dad was not in the picture at all so maybe that made it easier for my step dad. I don't really know. And maybe that experience of growing up with a step parent makes it easier for me to love my step kids... I don't know that one either.. We try to tell our kids (and they are younger so maybe that makes it easier) how wonderful it is that they have a step mom and step dad who love them just as much as their mommy and daddy do. We tried to make it seem like having an extra mom and dad was a pretty cool thing and so far it's worked with minimal attitudes from our kids. As we are the guardians for my younger brother (almost 17) and sister (almost 14), we've gotten a fun preview of what is to come in the teenage years and I can't say I'm looking forward to that!! Bottom line is I think all kids can be jerks at any given time, and can sometimes be difficult to like and hard to love. But the moment you can look at your spouse and say "Hey, they will ALL be gone some day! Yay!" and then laugh together, is the day that you know you've got a good thing going!

I really believe that doing all or at least some of these steps could work for a lot of people. But of course they can't work for everyone. It's just amazing to see how our kids act like siblings, which means fighting hard and playing hard and loving each other hard too. It didn't happen over night though but I'm really proud of our family and how far we've come. And that has so much to do with how solid we are as a couple. Lots of things have happened that could have come between us but thank goodness we are both pretty awesome people who deserve happiness after so much unhappiness. And there was A LOT of unhappiness in our previous lives. Lol.Thank God we decided that everything we had to go through to be together was worth it! I think it's made us better parents and better people!

I wish everyone on here the very best. Being a parent is just.. well not that fun sometimes. I think that every parent who thinks that they have really tried their very best should be proud of themselves. This isn't a job for the weak! It's great that there are places like this for people to come and vent. We all need a safe place to do that!

And I really like your list, love. Too bad we broke that first one! We didn't just break it. We ripped its still beating heart out, stomped on it, peed on it, spit on it, maybe even pooped on it a little too.. Lol. We lived and learned though and I'm so glad that we didn't give up. I love our crazy family and I love you!!

PS: I will save everyone the trouble and add these for you :sick: :sick: :sick: Yeah, I know you were all thinking it. Lol. We do really love each other. He is the best man I've ever known and I'm so lucky to have him! And so our all of our kids!