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"Point of honor to bring her to tears before main course arrived"

ChiefGrownup's picture

Googled "wicked stepchildren" and a host of interesting results came up. This is my favorite one so far. She is writing as a stepchild who is now adult. She candidly states the only thing that made a stepmother successful--and she had a host of them--was her father putting the fear of god into her and her sister and throwing total support behind the woman. Further, she states he only did this for one woman and the rest she and her sister made a game of destroying and she thinks her dad secretly enjoyed the battles.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2004/jun/30/familyandrelationshi...

This little google adventure of mine was partly inspired by notsobad's recent blog about her experiences as a stepchild which resulted in an interesting discussion. So, thank you to notsobad.

Comments

notasm3's picture

As an older woman (60s) I do not give a shit about the welfare of anyone but me and my loved ones. I love my dh and care about him. But I don't give a shit if ss30 is dead or alive. He's now knocked up his gf so there will be a baby that I certainly do not wish ill of but ss's little fuck trophy has no place in my life.

Disneyfan's picture

Why do some woman allow CHILDREN to disrespect them????

Deal with the behavior from day one. Of course that means you have to be willing to lose the guy if he's stupid enough to get upset because you checked his kids.

Yeah, the kids may be brats, but the adults allow it to go on.

HappyHome's picture

The writer says, "The best you can do is to be yourself and be their friend - and remember that presents will sweeten some of the more unnecessary comments." Hah! I'm not a dimwit who is going to be someone's friend and give them presents so they like me.

"It is easier to see the benefit of a stepmother as an adult: now that my father is older and has been ill, it is my stepmother who cares for him, not us, and we are eternally grateful." So glad you can see the BENEFIT of having a caretaker for your father so you don't have to do anything.

The writer is clearly a POS. And could have been written by my SDs.

ChiefGrownup's picture

Exactly.

She does show some self-awareness but the sentence about bribes was one of the least self-aware.

In any case, she nails much of the skid/smother/dad dynamic. The skids DO do it on purpose. They DO know that if daddy didn't allow it they would have to stop. They DO know that the sm is usually guilty of no other crime than "not being Mom."

ChiefGrownup's picture

From my original post: "and she thinks her dad secretly enjoyed the battles."

Last I checked, a stepmother has no real authority to make her skid do the dishes or stay home from the dance or apologize to anybody. That is unless her husband endows her with that authority which is tantamount to saying what the article did say: dad must require the skids respect the smom.

I felt this article fit in nicely in the context of the other thread. I found it interesting to explore what now adult stepchildren say about their childhood experiences.

Disneyfan's picture

She can't make them do chores, but she can damn sure speak up when they disrespect her.

Kids will test adults to see what they can get away with. If a SM sits back and waits for dad to deal with disrespect, kids just see her as weak. If she deals with it head on from day one, the kids and dad learn that she will not put up with any crap from them.

As an adult, SM doesn't have to sit back and wait for dad to give her the green light to be heard/respected in her home.

ChiefGrownup's picture

Speaking up is great and I have advocated that for a long time. But it simply does not work in all situations and, frankly, a smom should not be frequently thrown into a swamp of crocodiles with nothing but her air of authority. At some point she is going to have so much blood loss from croc bites she'll either escape or be too wan to escape. Not everyone is willing to walk away from their marriages the first, second, or even third time a husband fails to do what she hopes he'll do. So which bite is the one that makes her flee--the 4th or the 5th? Or the 33rd or 34th? Once she settles on the answer to that, does she discover it is also the same exact number that makes her too incapacitated to exit on her own two feet?

Some women do "take it" too much because they are co-dependent or delusional or have poor relational skills or deficient self respect or are just plain stupid. But they are allowed to have those human flaws. As good a grabbag of flaws as anybody else's, why not? The fact is the husbands are not innocent and the children are often not innocent. But the biggest factor in the entire step-dynamic is the Dad/husband.

Bottom line for me, though, is most interesting to me about the article is not every adult who was a stepchild looks back and continues to view the stepmother as an enemy and does recognize their own bad behavior and can name why they behaved that way.