Dear 21st Century Dad, I moved in with my 35 year old girlfriend. It’s been a quick romance. We met each other five months ago. Not a day has the bloom faded between us. I still look into her eyes and go mushy. The problem is her two boys, eleven and fourteen, with whom I’m trying to build a friend/mentor relationship.
Before I embarked on this journey, I read all the books I could about stepdads. Their mother told them in separate meetings that we would all be living together. They both seemed pumped because we were moving into a bigger house, and their mother had been really happy since she and I had met. After his mother talked to them one on one, we had a “family meeting”, me included, and we set up some basic house rules that we all agreed to obey.
Outdoors we have a blast. Both boys and myself are sports nuts: we’ve been playing a non ending game of road hockey, juggling, catch, baseball and I’ve even built them a mini skateboard park out of old plywood and some junk I picked up in garage sales.
It’s indoors that drives me crazy. I open the fridge door and five half eaten apples stare me in the face. Their bedrooms smell like a toxic waste dump. The bathroom is a swamp pit with wet towels behind the door, toothpaste spit in the sink and toilet paper discards piling up around the toilet. I don’t even need to talk about dirty dishes.
What happened to the rules we agreed upon? Last week I yelled at the seven year old for a food indiscretion. I couldn’t stand it anymore. He looked up and told me, “You’re gone in a year and a half.” What’s to be done here?
Dear It Will Get Better in Seven Years,
Congratulations on the new relationship. (Actually, the three new relationships!) We are off to a good start. The lady is still the apple of our eye, and the primary objective in our new family is to keep that loving feeling on the front burner. If we are happy, many of the reality checks (two obstreperous kids!) that have become a part of our lives will have less impact on our stress levels. Buy her flowers, chocolates and occasional “You are my sweetie” cards and obligate ourselves to get a kid respite at least once a week. Well, ok, at least once a month, and if not then, plead to the universal wish machine for once a year.
Doing sports activities with our kids is brilliant. They spend so much time sitting immobile in desks all day, the physical activity is essential to burn off the hyper energy levels they come home with. The movement activities also help to develop the brain by coordinating the transmission of information between the two sides of the brain.
We do have to be careful though. Our sports culture promotes winning at all costs: tough and aggressive attitudes are essential personality traits. Do our boys bring this type of energy back into our household? Aggression and toughness have a place on the sports field, but they can be destructive to family power relationships. Can we practice cooperative activities such as pin point passing to each other? Or develop two person juggling routines. Who knows? Maybe we have the beginnings of a new Flying Karamosov Brothers routine Formal team sports will provide peer and community identities that a driveway shoot and save hockey game won’t.
Let’s not sweat the yelling and the mean commentaries. Put three strangers in a broken hot elevator and the worst of our vocal reactions will surface. Our own included. New families can be as stressful as we allow them to be. We can model respectful conversation when the need arises, and apologize if we blow it. Let’s take heart that in other families, millions of kids are building wet towels sculptures in dark corners, nurturing mould farms under their beds and doing their best to complain there isn’t a clean dish in the cupboard. And we are not alone in our parenting exhaustions.
We can reread the books on stepfamilies. The first time gave us an intellectual overview of the delights and the difficulties. Now, we can zero in on what specifically occurs in our family and discern which methods prescribed are suitable.
The biological parent is usually the best disciplinarian. Our complaint implies that we could first have another parental agreement on what ‘neat and tidy’ means to each of us, and then rebroadcast it in kid language. Then, we state our requests calmly and succinctly, and let us narrow in on one project at a time.
Where to start? Which is more offensive to us? The mould behind the bathroom door, the growth under the beds, the partially demolished fruit bowl, the shoes we trip over at the front door, the doors left open, the lights left on, the disgusting post toothpaste sink, the winter coats thrown on the chesterfield, the ring around the toilet, the over amped teen music, the squabbling over TV programs, food, the mud footprints on the new carpet, the computer, the front seat in the car, the theft of personal items, the physical fights or the constant nat-nat-nattering?
Hey It Will Get Better, isn’t family life fun? Here are three 21st Century Dad hot tips.
1. Buy a couple of movie tickets to a parent’s only sweet Hollywood movie.
2. Know that our boys will most always perceive their new stepdads as mother stealers.
To alleviate this suspicion, we can do our best to be honest and sincere friends and mentors. Seven years should about do it.
3. Teach the boys that real men shower. The rest of us won’t have to hassle them over cleaning the ring around the tub.
Google:
1. cyberparent+blended-family
2. Barry Macdonald + Boy Smarts Mentoring Boys For Success at School
3. Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day +Practically Edible
Key into YouTube:
1. katrina fridge of mystery
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