Counseling Advice for dealing with Step-Son
I am looking for some advice from people that may have been through counseling to deal with issues related to step-children and acceptance.
I am specifically looking for information about how you found a counselor and if you went alone, with Wife/Husband or with the step-child as well. I feel very desperate for help.
I will explain the situation I am in. I met my wife when my SS was 3. That was 14 years ago, almost to the day. She was just going through a divorce and we fell in love very quickly, but we waited 4 years to marry. I think one of the reasons we waited so long was to be sure this Step-Family situation would work. I had never been married and had no kids coming into the marriage. We took our time, but looking back now we probably should have sought out some resources then. It was more of just take a wait and see approach. We got no counseling, although we read a couple of books on the subject.
I probably saw my SS once a week during this dating period of 4 years. Towards the end she would sometimes stay at my apartment with him and we always seemed to have fun and get along okay. For the first 3 years I saw less of him, mostly seeing my wife-to-be when SS was at his Dad's.
So, we got married and we fought and disagreed a lot on the Step-Family issues. I coached his soccer teams and was generally about as involved a Step-Dad as I have known. He was a very hyper child and very impulsive. Always had to learn things the hard way. At times I found it very difficult to be around him. My wife and I started having a family together during this time and we now have 4 boys together.
When SS was 14 he decided he wanted to go live at his Dad's house about 30 minutes from us. We had our reservations as Dad was not very stable and good at discipline which this child needed a ton of. But in the state we live in there was not much we could do and the Dad had promised us he would keep him in activities and closely monitor school. SS came to visit every other weekend and my wife and I fought less and less about things. But I just never felt much of a bond with SS during that time.
SS had a lot of problems in school and got in some trouble for underage drinking right before his 17th birthday. He dropped out of HS while at his Dad's without even asking us, with plans to enroll in a faith-based homeschool where he would do the work on his own. We were not happy about it, because we worried he needed more structure. But again, we felt like there was nothing we could do. I encouraged him to start this school during the summer and to get a job and was met with an attitude. He ignored the advice and basically did nothing all summer.
Well, his Dad meanwhile got divorced again and they lost the house they were living in so they went to live with his sister. SS got in trouble again for underage drinking, 17 now, and I had to go and tak to the police as SS was afraid to call his Dad. When his Dad found out he got very angry and they had a big fight on the phone. I sat down with SS and his Dad over dinner and we worked out his punishment. The Dad still seemed a little angry and I told my SS that maybe we needed to discuss him living at my house. He said there was no way he could live under our rules.
Then a week later they went on a trip together and we get a phone call at about midnight from SS saying that his Dad got drunk and they had a fight. It got physical, with some wrestling and maybe even a punch or two thrown. I mostly blame the Dad, but SS is into bodybuilding and has that teeenage hormone thing and he will often square off in a physically challenging way when told something he does not like, so I think he has some responsibility. He has done it to me a few times and I am not macho by any means, but I actually wanted to hit him. In a way I felt like how dare you challenge me in my own home. He has gotten better about that, although I still see it from time to time. He was told by my wife about it and now he turns away, but I still feel like it is there a little bit.
Anyway, I drove 6 hours in the middle of the night and went to get him. I had talked to the Dad after the fight and calmed him down. I drove 12 hours round trip and brought him back to my house.
Now, I am having a very hard time with him being back in my home. SS and I had started to get a long better recently because I took the approach of not worrying about his future so much because he was not my problem. He is exteremely lazy and has ignored all of my advice for years about getting a job and concentrating on school. Now that he is living with me again I feel this constant pressure and like my wife and I have totally lost any sense of privacy we had.
Our children are younger and my wife and I still had a very romantic life together after the kids went to bed. Before SS came back to live with us had probably been the greatest 3 weeks of our marriage. We have fought almost constantly since he has been back. He has lied to us on a number of occasions and it takes constant prodding to get him to do his school work or look for a job. It is like having another young child in our house.
I still think my wife babies him too much and that he needs to go out and do almost everything on his own. She has countered by saying that she needs to help him to feel like she has done her job as a mother. Recently, when the rules of our house became too much SS went and spent 10 days at his Dad's house. He only came back because he had to start a job. This was a job that my wife found for him.
I do think I love my SS. I have done many things for him over the years. I just don't like him living in our house. The only reason he moved back was because of the fight with his Dad. Otherwise, he never would have moved back home. I am resentful of having him eating all the food I pay for, having to give him gas money and having him in my house in general. He will be 18 in just 6 months.
I feel like the worst person in the world for saying that and it has even made me question my love for my wife. If you love someone wouldn't you be more accepting of their child? We have four children together that we adore and I can't think of life without her and I have seen how harmful divorce is to children, but I just don't know if I can live in this house with my SS. I don't feel a fatherly bond with him at all. Even after all these years.
And probably worst of all I emotionally distance myself from my wife when he is around. I try to stop doing that, but I cannot stop.
That is my story. If anyone has any advice or a suggestion for counseling I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
I also have a stepson, but I
I also have a stepson, but I am the stepmom. I become involved with my husband 8 years ago. Because my SS was only 6 at the time, and was still trying to adjust to his parents getting divorced (BM cheated on dad with his brother in law), I did not meet him as until we had been together for alomost 7 months. BM made it very difficult for us, but my SS and I grew close despite all of the trouble we had with her. We were married after being together for almost two years, with just my SS and my niece as our witnesses and our honeymoon was actually a trip to WDW with just the two of them and us.
We only had him every other weekend and once a week overnight until he was 10. Right before this, I was pregnant with my fourth child (I had lost 2 babies and we finally had a little boy the third time around after much difficulty), he accused me of beating him when no one was around. Now I was a stay at home mom, but he was only with us one night a week and every other weekend, plus I had this beautiful little baby of my own and I had always tried so hard to make sure SS knew how much we, I loved him too. After speaking with his father, his story fell apart and he said it was because we had the baby, was having another one (which after all of the stress from his accusations and being that my pregnancies are very high risk, we lost a week later), and mom was too busy with his sister (from her first marriage).
My SS's mom did everything she could to make sure that the two boys did not have a bond; we had a new son, didn't need him, etc. When he came to live with us as per the new agreement of one year on, one year off, we did whatever we could to make him feel comfortable, even after the accusations of child abuse against me. I became involved in everything he did. His school, his participation in sports, karate. You name it, I was there. Rain or shine, I brought his little brother where ever we needed to be because I wanted him to know that he was important to us and part of our family. We had the basic trouble on and off. No rules at mom's, rules at our house kind of thing.
I was also left in charge of discipling him as sole disciplinarian because although BM tried to make sure I had no say so about her son with anything, once she saw me as the convenience factor in this equation it became ok to pick him up from school and run him here or there, because she bacame the cool parent with no rules just nothing but fun at her house. His dad became so involved at work that he didn't really pay attention to anything that went on at home either. I am the one that was left to dole out the punishment for report cards, talking back, etc. So I became the bitch but I also had my children and wanted structure of some sort in their lives.
At this time I had also talked to my husband about having SS evaluated for ADHD or ODD because he would on occasion have an outburst of anger or rage as I would like to call it and I was concerned, but the doctor couldn't have me bring him in for evaluation because I was the stepparent not the real thing and both of his parents didn't think anything was wrong with him. I then became pregnant again for the fifth and final time, which SS informed me was unnecessary because at almost 11, he was too old for us to have anymore children and assumed we would have stopped after losing the last one. Kind of makes you wonder how I just wasn't oozing with love and joy for my SS, but anyway....at the end of the school year he went back to live with mom with no rules, I had two small children by the end of summer along with postpartum depression which wasn't diagnosed right away.
Well, my husband became very involved in work, shut him self off from me and our babies, but only would open his mouth if SS complained about me when he was with us. SS's mom likes to party, has had 4 to 5 boyfriends since being divorced from SS's dad, one of them molested her daughter, she has underage drinking parties for her daughter and friends, and SS likes the fact that there are NO RULES there!
Well, right when he is coming back to live with us for the school year 2005, KATRINA hit! He was with us, my husband had to work through it, which then left me, newly diagnosed with postpartum almost a year after our youngest son's birth in charge of him. I was them told by SS it was my job to find a way to get him to his mother and that I was useless and he hated me! We were in Florida and his mom had stayed in Louisiana but went up to Baton Rouge so that she could continue to party. So now he's 12 and I am still feeling no love or any type of bond with him, nor is there any bond with him and his little brothers, which the oldest was only 2.5 at the time has already been physically harmed by SS but no one but myself seems to be concerned. Somehow, it's the little one's fault everytime and everyone seems to buy that also. So now I am not only fed up with SS, but very concerned that I have to watch him like a hawk because he will hurt my son.
Well fast forward to the next year, instead of going back to mom's for school, she's too busy with his sister's senior year and all at high school, he'll be with us once again. He is also going into high school because although it will cost us more I felt it was better for him and that the sacrifice would pay off in the long run and his grammar school wasn't living up to it's former standards.
Well now, he is 14 and living with his mom, but my boys and I haven't seen him since the end of July this year because he grabbed me and shoved me into a wall and I had to fight very hard to get him off of me. He weighs in a 185 and is over 6 feet tall. He left, went to mom's said I punched him in the chest, I only weigh 140 at 5 feet 6 inches tall.
I have an appointment for counseling for myself because I want someone to help me understand why no one can see that he needs some form of help and that I am afraid that he could hurt me or my boys worse than he already has. I too, like you would also like to try and understand how is that you can love someone so much but not their child when that child is a part of them. No one helped me find one, I went through the mental health and well-being section of my helath insurance website. I asked my husband to go and he said he'd go to my appointment only because he wanted to see them tell me nothing was wrong with anyone else but him. The sad thing is that if this were one of my, our boys and I thought he had issues no matter how great or small, I would want to get help for them ASAP. I do not feel that help is something to be ashamed of, that is why I am going for counseling on my own.
My feeling on this is that maybe, just maybe he believes me and knows his son hurt me and that he has some issues that need to be dealt with, but if he admits it and agrees with me then in his eyes it will be be like saying something is wrong with his son and that he is a bad person. I also love his dad very much, but after almost 2 months of not speaking because of this and separating several times, which to me shows you first hand how hard divorce is on kids, my 4 year old after his dad being gone just 2 nights, asked when could dad come back from MaMaw's? I too question my love for him at times. My inlaws are not speaking to me either by the way, but I have decided that the well-being of my boys and myself come first and if it comes down to it, I guess my husband may end up divorced again.
My SS has already told his dad that he wants nothing to do with him and that he was writing him off because of me and my rules. All I ever did for that child was take care of him because his parents were too busy, his dad with work and his mother with partying and his older sister. He had already told his dad numerous times, he resented being left alone with me and the boys and that his mom and dad didn't have time for him. I have been constantly reminded by SS that I am not his real parent nor his brothers his real brothers, they are only half-brothers. Try explaining that to a 4 year old who hears him say and asks why he's only a hafbrother!
Now it has come to this and neither my husband or the BM want to step in and take responsibility for their own son. Like I told my husband, stepparent is not a title I am proud to have anymore and haven't been for a long time. All it has gotten me in the past 4 years, is stepped on and now I am going to take the time to just stop worrying about everyone else and take care of my boys and myself. I finally realize that as much as I have tried to be accepted and thought that I was by my husband, his family, his son, is that it seems to come down to blood is thicker than water and my main concern now is MY blood...my boys.
I hope you have better luck than I have had with this issue, I feel that I have no choice but to put my foot down because if my stepson continues on this path of destruction that I feel he is one, what will happen when he's 16 or 18? What will they do if or when he ends up in jail because of this behavior?
Jail is where I am certain he may end up because his mother's younger brother is in jail for violating parole on armed robbery and attempted murder charges when he was in his early 20's. He's now 35 and when he was first paroled guess where he lived? Right! The BM's house with my SS and his sister and then was arrested for DUI not 3 weeks after being paroled. It never ends. My husband and I are living in the same house but we might as well be worlds apart.
Sorry this is so long, but I do feel like I know where you are coming from and I wish you the best of luck.
Couples therapy would be the
Couples therapy would be the best to help you two learn to work together for this child and Don't sweat how you feel, we have all had those times where their attitudes make us wonder and during that last year before adulthood I remember thinking I was doing fine- joke was on me- can I be a kid again PLEASE?????
There is no reaon where logic does not exist