I had big plans to write about my Bluegrass experience and I let a whole week slip by, unnoticed by many, without sharing our delightful festival insights. Partly I was very tired last week. And partly I seem to need time away from writing. I suspect that deeper than that, I simply have a need to step away from most habits from time to time, take a look at them, rub my chin a bit, mull things over, then shrug and walk back in to pick up where I left off. If they will still have me!
I may get back to Bluegrass at a later time but I have also discovered that if I don't write about something soon after, it fades and the impact of the experience begins to diminish, like waking from a dream and feeling it fade in the early part of the day.
I am going to attempt to describe why I find the experience of step-parenting challenging at times, such as this past weekend. It may be that many parents feel the same way, with their own kids, and there are some unique scenarios to step-parenting that have an added bonus (!) to the process, so here goes.
When I first became involved with JC and the kids they were young, 4 and 6 but very close to 5 and 7. It was apparent from the get-go that they were fundamentally good kids and he was fundamentally a good dad, yet the household had not really been established with its own deliberate personality and ways. The kids were still struggling with navigating between the two homes, which were becoming more and more distinct, and JC was perhaps still feeling like he was trying to keep his head above water.
One thing was very clear to me from the start: the kids don't need another mom. What they need is a second, stable, predictable home where their needs and wants are balanced and healthy and provided consistently. I was fairly vocal about what we were trying to establish, and helped create some home routines that I saw as necessary for me to feel good about being a part of it all. It also became clear to me that I have a natural tendency to be a bit more strict than JC, or perhaps have higher expectations of the kids than him.
Over the past few years, I have become less vocal, and I now tend to voice my parenting input only when asked or when a voice pops in my head that says loudly and clearly, "Absolutely not." Most times I defer to JC. He is their dad, they are his kids, and we agree on 97% of the decision-making. I have softened my approach and expectations and he has tightened his up a little, the end result is that we meet somewhere in the middle most of the time.
The kids respect me and my authority, they ask me for permission to do things very often, and they do what I say. No problem there.
I stayed home with the kids on Friday because Frances was sick. Saturday he left the house early to get to Ridgway to play music for the River Festival, I followed a couple of hours later with the kids, the spent time with them until he had finished playing and joined us to swim in the river and lounge about in the sun. The kids and I spend a good amount of time together without him on those two days and I found it incredibly taxing.
Here is why. When you are parenting you are making decisions for and with the kids at intervals of 5 to 15 minutes throughout the day. And every time there is a decision to be made, which ranges from what is appropriate to wear, eat, drink, or just do, you have to assess if it is okay or not. You have to assess if it is okay in the short-term (how is this going to impact them right now), the medium-term (how is this going to impact them in the next few hours), and the long-term (is this a behavior that I think is okay for them to carry into adult-hood)? Not only that, how does it impact the rest of us? And even if I can see no negative impact in the now or the future, often times I fundamentally just don't agree with what it is. I just don't like it.
So all of that is normal parenting stuff, right? We are constantly trying to decide what is best for the kids and family group at the same time. Now add to that the niggling little voice in the back of my mind that says, "What would JC do? Would he say yes?" And if what I want to do does not align with what I think he would do, do I still do what I think is right for me and my day or my parenting? Why, that is so obvious, you think! Just do what is right for you! But if I do that, perhaps I start to set up a scenario where the kids don't want to do things with me if he is not with us. Enter the evil step-monster. There is a huge amount of pressure to not be the Evil Step-Monster.
I know what Sister is thinking, she is thinking, this is why you have rules in your house that the kids know are always in place and should never ask. Well, that sounds good on paper and we have many many rules like that, but there are many many more days where we have new experiences and encounter new options and as the kids get older those rules change as they change.
So by the time we got back home for dinner, I was fully depleted. I just get burned out on making decisions, trying to balance what is best for each kid, for me, for JC (even in his absence because my time with the kids affects our time when we are all together again), for the family group, for the future. I get to a point where I don't want to talk to anyone, I just want silence and stillness. And in the summer when the kids go to bed a little later, that silence and stillness is short-lived. My bed-time is not much later than theirs, so the window of time when they are snoozing and I am recharging, can feel very small.
And here is the kicker: we had a great time! We had a pleasant drive to Ridgway, we had fun watching JC's band play, all got along great, it isn't about that. You would probably never know from watching us that I find it so taxing, but I do. I like the kids getting older. The decision-making gets less and less every day. But it is the constant engagement, mentally, with someone else, that has been the biggest adjustment for me. Even if we are all just hanging out, I am processing what the next half-hour will bring, who has eaten, what did they eat, who needs sunscreen, what time do we leave to get back in time for dinner, how much time do we need to pack up, am I spending too much time talking to my friends, do they wish their dad was here instead of me, blah blah blah. I am getting tired just writing about it.
Some of this stuff is just parenting and some of it is step-parenting, that extra layer of uncertainty with my role at times. My role when we are all 4 together is diminished, in a way, which at the start I did not know how to handle. Now, I like it and have to readjust to a role of increased importance when JC is not with us.
When Little Rose asked me about being her step-mother once, I told her it was kind of like a substitute teacher: they are nothing like your real teacher because she will always be your teacher but you still have to do what the substitute teacher says.
My remedy: 3 hours of yoga on Sunday morning. I emerged from the studio feeling slightly guilty so I bought each of the kids a book. Frances loves his and immersed himself in it that night, Rose joined him on the couch on Sunday evening, while I sat on the porch and we all read quietly while JC played guitar.
We live in a place where the weather is notoriously fickle and variable and the favorite quote is: if you don't like the weather, wait an hour. I say: if you don't like your kids, wait an hour. They might surprise you.
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