Tiny Pep Talks for Stepparents

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) I spent A LOT of years trying to protect Dan from his own crappy decisions. In doing so, I inadvertently buffered him from the very real consequences of his actions (or inactions). In fact, I protected and buffered him so well that he had zero incentive to change. 🤦🏻‍♀️. If I could go back in time, I'd save both of us a whole lot of frustration by reminding...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Okay. I know it’s super easy to take everything about becoming a stepparent and blending your family really seriously. And understandably so — there’s a lot of worrying involved in stepparenting.  What if the kids never warm up to you? What if that initial awkwardness never goes away? What if you always feel like an outsider? What if your partner never starts paren...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Yesterday I talked about how we don’t need anyone else’s approval to move forward as a stepfamily. This goes double or maybe triple or maybe exponentially times a million for not needing approval from your partner’s ex. I know on some level, wanting the ex to sign off on your presence in your partner & stepkid’s life kind of seems like the respectful thing to d...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Because stepparents start out as outsiders, we have this tendency to kind of hover around on the sidelines, like we’re waiting for someone to give us permission to participate in our new families. Or maybe we want someone to fill us in on the rules of this new game so we don’t piss anybody off. This can happen even for stepparents like myself who aren’t typically t...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) There's a tendency to act like parallel parenting is the shameful option we only resort to because we've failed at co-parenting somehow. But when you're dealing with a high-conflict ex, co-parenting is not possible, because they will never compromise. In fact their inability to compromise is literally the thing that makes them high conflict. So if yo...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) The rewards of stepparenting can feel way too few and way too far between for this gig to feel “worth it.” The bullshit outnumbers the wins by at least 10 to 1. That’s the thing, though: we can’t think about stepparenting in those terms — just like no one thinks about whether it’d be “worth it” to have their own kids. Because that’s not why we’re doing this. We mak...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) I talk a lot about how challenging my relationship with my own stepkid has been, but actually our relationship started out pretty decent… before it took a steep nosedive around 6 months in. Followed by more major issues right around the 2-year mark. Turns out this is super common — this exact pattern, timing and all. It’s also common for stepkids to suddenly reject...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) When you’re in a relationship with someone who has children, by definition that implies that you’ve agreed to help parent those kids. Let me just say that again: you’ve agreed to help parent. Which implies that your partner should already be parenting their kids. Stepparents: you can't parent your stepkids unless your partner is willing to actively support you...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) It’s important to remember that the whole reason that you’re putting up with all this bullshit as a stepparent is because you really really really love your partner. So it’s also important to make sure that relationship is healthy, supportive, and worth it. Look, we can't do any of this without our partners' help. We can't. I hear so many stories eve...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) In a high-conflict step parenting situation, the natural process of blending your family gets set back over and over again with each battle between households. So if you’re blaming yourself for this whole blending thing being a hell of a lot harder than you anticipated, please knock that off right now. Stepfamily experts say that blending a family takes 5 to 7 year...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) It’s really common for us to judge our stepparenting performance based on one single metric: whether our stepkids like us. But believe me when I say it’s a huge mistake to base your self-worth on your stepkid’s approval. Honestly, most stepkids are standoffish with their stepparents, especially at first. There’s a lot of reasons for this — read this blog post for a...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) If you haven’t heard of Bill Eddy, he’s basically the king of kicking high conflict’s ass. And he’s got a fantastically simple tip to greatly minimize communication problems with difficult people called the BIFF response: B = BRIEF: Keep your reply short, and preferably in writing. I = INFORMATIVE: Respond with relevant facts, not emotions. Don’t waste time defendi...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Today’s pep talk is really just a list of reminders. Starting with the reminder that there’s no Stepparent of the Year award, so let's please stop destroying ourselves trying to achieve some gold standard that doesn't even exist. It’s okay for stepparents to say no sometimes. Or even a lot of the time. It’s okay to take time for yourself when you need to...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) A huge challenge in defining your role as a stepparent is trying to figure out when that role actually begins.  When you become a parent, there's a clear before-and-after sequence. One day there wasn't a kid around. The next day, BAM. You're a parent. Even adoptive parents and foster parents experience this.  As a stepparent, not so much. Becoming a...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Omg. Your stepkid forgot to pick up their backpack AGAIN? The ex is on yet another rampage about something? Your partner STILL isn't enforcing the household rules you all agreed to? It’s all so rage-inducing some days isn’t it?? Like the progress we made one day gets wiped out the next. We’re continually starting from scratch. And also, doesn’t anyone else car...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) A lot of single parents genuinely don’t realize that they’re doing their kids (and their romantic partners!) a disservice by putting the kids first no matter what. Yes, kids have needs, and obviously it’s a parent’s job to make sure those needs are met. However, your relationship has needs too. And pretending like only the kids’ needs matter is not sustainable. Jus...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) When our partners are stuck on the receiving end of a manipulative, controlling, or narcissistic co-parent hell-bent on destroying their lives, we stepparents are standing right there next to them, right smack in the red zone. Narcissists love pushing buttons. They want conflict and drama because that’s the best way to keep you off balance. Their goal is chaos, bec...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) There’s no way around it: stepfamily life is messier and more complex and far more confusing than life in a traditional family. Based on my personal experience, a person could just about go crazy trying to make a blended family look or act or feel more like a traditional family. But if we’re able to kind of lean into that messiness instead of fighting against it, w...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) No one talks about the day-to-day exhaustion of feeling eternally judged and found lacking, of constantly walking on eggshells living in fear that the next thing you say or do could affect the amount of time your stepkid is at your house. This is a very real fear that stepparents in high conflict live with EVERY SINGLE DAY.⠀⠀ But the thing about high conflict peopl...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Today’s episode is for stepparents who are also parents: the more we lose ourselves in the stepparenting role, the more our kids lose us too. We can’t get so wrapped up in the challenges and drama of stepfamily life that our own kids get lost in the shuffle. I have oh so very many regrets about my first decade of stepmotherhood, but the thing I regret the most is l...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Only after I'd been dating Dan for somewhere like 2 or 3 years (flying totally blind and feeling pretty miserable the entire time) did it finally occur to me that maybe there were some kind of stepmom resources I could look into that would help me figure out what I was doing so wrong. I guess I thought stepparenting advice really didn't apply to me since...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Stepparents have the best of intentions. We think we’re supposed to support our partner, help parent their kids, smooth things out between houses… basically make our partner’s lives better, in the interest of becoming a family together. Seems sensible enough, right So it can be a REAL FRIGGIN SHOCK if none of our efforts seem to work — or worse, backfire! And then...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Even if you love having your stepkids in the house, the switcheroo from kid-free to kid-full can feel like... a lot. And if you don't love having your stepkids around — well first of all, that's normal, and secondly that means transition days are that much harder for you. (And don't get me started on the complications of transition days when you&apos...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Would it be nice if the ex supported you? Of course. But if they don't, that's also okay... because you don't actually need their approval.⠀⠀⠀⠀ You don't need the ex to acknowledge the importance of your stepparenting role for your contributions to be valid. You really don't. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Remember that the way the ex acts toward yo...

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Because stepparents are the new kids on the block, we tend to think that A) anything that goes wrong must be our fault and B) it's all on us to make our blended family work. Nope! Wrong on both counts. It takes ALL the people involved to make a blended family work, but especially the support of your partner. It's not all on you, the stepparent, to "j...