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advice and help at the same time

silver ring's picture

Hello, everyone!

I have been a stepmother for a little boy, 5 years-old new, since February 2009. His dad and I are married with no kids of our own.( we talked about having a child next year). I met my stepson when he was 2 years old. A very sad case...his mother who is bipolar basically decided she could not longer take care of him and decided to dump him in my husband's lap.They went to court and she agreed with my husband to be the custodial parent. The boy lives with us 24/7. He sees his mother every now and then. Whenever she decides to make time for him. We have put all the effort and money into raising this child the right way.He has a stable and structured environment at home. Not spoiled, well-mannered.No big deal so far. The major problems occur when he goes to visit his mother. She can't handle him at all. She over spoils him, doesn't enforce any rules and, basically lets him do whatever he wants at her house. When he comes back from visitation, we have to start all over again with everything...following the house rules( which are not absurd, just normal), correct his behavior/ manners...everything. She ruins our work every time he goes there.My husband is in the military and has classes/ trainings.When he is not home, I am the one responsible for educating my stepson.
I am so enraged with my stepson's mother because she doesn't help us at all with anything let alone raising the boy. She is what psychologists call "candy parent". She parents out of guilt. My husband told her to stop baby my stepson, but she does whatever she wants. I don't take to her because she gets on my nerves really badly and I might say something I will regret later. And I don't want to give her any reason to bad mouth me.
I feel like we work on vain and she does all these on purpose.
I would like a piece of advice regarding this situation.It consumes to the point that I want to scream in her face" What are you doing with this kid? Let him grow up!He is not a baby anymore."
How can I relax and stop being so mad?
Thank you in advance for reading my post.

silver ring's picture

I understand what you are saying. And you are right. She will not change her parenting approach unless she realizes that she is damaging the child.Which will never happened. Also, she uses her condition as an excuse when she does not want to be held accountable for certain things. Every time my stepson misbehaves at her house, she does not discipline him. She calls my husband so he can discipline the kid.
Until my stepson will grow up and see the reason for which he does not live with his mother, the situation will continue.And it damages the child.
I don't want to mention the fact that she gives in to all his wishes.I guess it is very easy to do that when you are not responsible for raising your own son.
The question is what I shall do to stop being so angry about it.

Poodle's picture

Hm. It's a difficult one because you are trying to fully parent him yet the BM retains, and will retain, all rights to be involved until his legal majority. If she is mentally unstable, her parenting will not alter. Also, she may decide irrationally in future times to intrude on your family and take more of a role. For example, if you have a baby, she could try to get her son back. If you read the threads about BMs on this site you will see that when the BMs are unstable mentally, they usually do play these sorts of manipulative games, even if they started not too involved with their kid.
So my own advice to you is going to be rather gloomy, I am afraid, which is that you have to recognise that this child IS going to be badly brought up for part of his life, by the BM, and there is nothing you can do to stop it unless you reduce her contact with him lawfully or unless she does something so bad that your DH can cut him off from her entirely. And, going forward, the confusion that she is going to cause could damage him and that again, there is nothing you can do to stop it. The question is not will he be damaged, but it is how much will he be damaged. Following on from that, how much will it damage your relationship and family, including your future unborn children?
I would say you need to read up on this heavily, both into stepfamily issues and into mental health issues, or otherwise study these issues so that you can see the difficulties that you face. Your SO should be involved in this too if you are going to have children together. You may even want counseling together to deal with these issues.
If you carry on with these relationships you are going to have to become more philosophical about the damage BM does because it unfortunately is part of the package of bringing up someone else's child.
I think you have taken on an immense burden and it is really a thankless task, sadly. People have done it and been happy, but they are very few.

silver ring's picture

Thank you for your input.
Oh, she tried to intrude on us, my husband and I, already, but my husband did not allow her.
Even if we are having a child of our own in the future, she will not do anything to parent her son on a full basis. She does not want to be inconvenienced with taking care of a child full time. By the way, she has supervised visitation. She sees her son at her parents' house.
I will start reading more on the bipolar disorder issue.
I know it is a difficult task raising a child , even your own, let alone someone else's child. But I can't just say" Well, he is not my child, so I won't teach him anything." I have a responsibility for him taking into account the fact that my husband is away with his army drills and I am the only one taking care of my stepson.

silver ring's picture

That is true. We can't explain him anything until he is mature enough to understand. Right now. he sees it as his vacation and mommy does whatever he asks her to do.

Orange County Ca's picture

I hope your husband does NOT discipline the kid for transgression at the BM home. Children can't connect punishment apart from the 'crime'. What happens is the child sees daddy as the monster who makes thing hard - not discipline - just random punishments. Better to let the kid get away with it.

So to answer your question. Recognize that you're not going to get blamed for how the boy turns out. Everyone knows the situation and who to blame. I'll bet the boy is progressing. Can't you honestly say his behavior is better than it was compared to when he first came to you. It may be 30 or 60 steps forward and 10 steps back when he visits his bio mother but he is progressing.

That's what you'll have to settle for. Irritating I know but since its inevitable you must change. No one else is going to. Bio mother can't, the boy doesn't understand (not yet anyway) and the father is more-or-less absent. You must do a 180 turn around in your head and stop fixating on the cause. When it rains the boy will track in mud - you don't rail at the sky. When he visits his bio mother he returns spoiled. Don't rail at his bio mother. You're the only one who suffers when you do that.

The day will come when the boy will recognize what a rare blessing you were to him.

silver ring's picture

Thank you for your response.
It is a sad situation and I know I will not be blamed for the way the child turns out.But I just can't be passive.
Yes, the little boy has progressed a lot. When he came to stay with us, his situation was so bad that it made him want to smack the crap out of his mother.I stay away from getting into an argument with her because I know I will not win.She is mentally damaged.
It is hard not to react.
I guess I need to work with myself and let it go in a way.