Holidays

The holiday season can easily be the most stressful time of year for anyone, but even more so for those who are part of a blended family.  Trying to live up to a child's dream-like expectations for the season can be daunting, even for a non-blended family, but add in another household with a different environment, traditions and parenting style and it can quickly throw a wrench into your holiday plans and add an extraordinary amount of stress that no one needs to deal with during what should be a season of celebrations.

The biggest problem with being part of a blended family during the holidays is there nearly always ends up being a sense of competition between households, even if you try to avoid it.  Who can have the best decorations, the most fun, or the best gifts.  To say that one isn't falling into such a petty display of rivalry would be denying human nature.  Everyone wants to be the reason that their child smiles and feels loved, and who wants to feel like someone else is doing a better job of it?  Yeah, that's what I thought.  No one.

Believe me, I don't want to be involved in that type of competition anymore than the next person, and I try to straight up ignore what goes on at the other sides house.  But it's hard to ignore the stories that B tells about what holiday plans they have, the decorations they've put up, the gifts her mom is making, the gifts she ends up getting and how excited she is about all of it.  Especially when I already feel like I'm trying to make up for the meager Christmases I had growing up by piling on the gifts to make sure she has bigger and better Christmases than I did.  The pressure to deliver an amazing, magical holiday experience is real and it's much too easy to get wrapped up in it.

That's why I feel like it's important to focus on your own household first.  That's not to say that you should ignore what the other side is doing, but put your family first, just like we know we should with anything else.  In my opinion it's pointless to try to ignore what's going on with the other sides household anyway, instead I try to acknowledge it whenever B brings it up, and make positive comments like "Oh that's cool!" or "How exciting!  I'm sure (insert family member here) will love it!"  It isn't easy saying these things when I flat out despise her mother (for legitimate reasons here, trust me), but it's important for her positive emotions to be reinforced and more importantly my negative emotions shouldn't ever even be known to her.  That's damaging to a child, plain and simple.  Past that it's important to remember that each family is going to have a different holiday experience, neither one is going to be "better" than the other, just different.  Getting caught up in trying to make anything better than something else is going to be counterproductive anyway, making you more stressed and the experience less fun, blended family life isn't any different.  Creating consistent family traditions within your own household and getting the whole family involved in them is the best way to make the holidays memorable for your household, and the easiest way to avoid playing into the petty rivalries between households.

One other form of competition that may not be as obvious but is even more important to avoid, is the other side having access to their child(ren) during the holidays.  This shouldn't even need to be said, but it seems to be a big problem that not only my family has to face.  All too often do I hear from others who are part of a blended family about the other parent preventing them from speaking to their child during their visits, whether its during the holidays or otherwise.  And I'm not talking about the other family being so busy that it's difficult to make time for a simple phone call, I'm talking about the other parent flat out refusing to allow them to talk to their child.  Whether it's a straight forward refusal or a deceptive time limit rule that cuts off access to the child as a result, it doesn't much matter.  It's still taking the other parent away from the child and it isn't right.

I know it can be all too easy to feel like it's "our time" and to want to keep it that way, avoiding letting the other parent in on the families holiday time together even for a few minutes with a phone call.  But it's important for any child to be able to talk to both sides, regardless of the season.  Putting aside a few minutes to have your child call the other parent, to sit down and have a real conversation without distractions (as in they aren't sitting in front of the TV or in the middle of some other activity) is really not that hard to do and it can mean the world to a child.  Telling your kid that it's "your time" with them and that you don't want to give up any of "your time" by allowing them to speak to the other parent (whether at all or for more than a set amount of time) when they want to be able to talk to them only makes you look like an ass.  So don't do it, no matter how horrible the other parent is or you think they are.  There are some rare situations where maybe forbidding access could be acceptable, or the best possible decision even, but for most families and situations it's just a bad idea.

In the long run it's the holidays that children tend to remember the most, so it's important we make the most of them.  Stressing out about petty bullshit, competing for our children or hogging our children's time and attention is only going to make the holidays suck for not only us, but for them as well.  I'm not saying lets all get together and be best friends with the other side, but lets put the focus back on our children the way it should be all year round.  I hope that my ranting might help someone else who's struggling with being part of a blended family during the holidays.  It sure can feel like the farthest thing from "the most wonderful time of the year"!

Perspective

It seems to me that we all face major life lessons at some point in our lives.  Some might be brief, one time lessons.  Others might be ongoing and span months or even years.  Whether you believe these are lessons placed before us by a higher power, the universe guiding us, or just part of growing up without any deeper meaning, we all go through them.  Currently I find myself facing two main life lessons which have been ongoing for some time now, and I strongly believe these have been lessons set before me by God.  These two lessons are patience and perspective.

Learning patience has been set before me for a long time now, and I feel I have come a long way with it, although I know there are some areas in my life where I still need to work on practicing patience.  Perspective, however, is either a new lesson or one that I have not recognized as being a lesson until more recently.  I have always realized that it is important to keep things in perspective and I have always tried to see all sides of the story and to put myself in others shoes, but lately I've realized that sometimes I let my emotions get in the way of doing so and find myself jumping to conclusions or making assumptions that could be adding to some of our struggles with blended family life.

When there's already tension or even animosity between the birth parents in a blended family, it can be easy to let your emotions get the best of you in situations that arise and we can become too focused on our own perspective of the situation to be able to work through things and problem solve currently.  It's also all too easy to forget that children have an entirely different perspective of things than we do as adults, and we can jump to conclusions based on what our children are telling us.  I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't always think of this and am probably guilty of jumping to conclusion or making assumptions based on things my stepdaughter tells me!

In my previous post, which I'm shocked to realize was made over a year ago!, I talked about how we were facing a custody battle with B's mother.  Unfortunately this is something we're still dealing with.  Due to family health issues that our lawyer is having to deal with everything has been on hold for the last year.  That in itself has proved to be extremely stressful, add on top of it planning a wedding and the stressed ended up being nearly unbearable at times.  Yet me made it through the year despite challenges with the custody battle, everyday blended family life, changes in employment and planning and paying for our wedding (we're officially Mr & Mrs now!), and I feel it has strengthened my relationship with J and has helped me to grow as a person.  Furthering the personal growth I've experience in the last year I realized that some of why we continually face such turmoil as a blended family is because we're not looking at things from the other sides perspective, or forgetting how our daughter may perceive things and in turn may explain things in a way that we could take out of context.  For example, we've known for a long time that our parenting style is much different than that of B's mom, something that shouldn't be a problem but has managed to cause a lot arguments.  It seems to have also warped B's idea as to how parents should parent.

Somehow along the way it seems that because of the difference in parenting styles B has decided that J and I are too strict and that I am rude and mean because of how I handle discipline as a stepmother. Because of B's perspective on parenting between the two families, I find myself suddenly donning the crooked crown of the evil stepmother.  At first I struggled with this.  I was angry, especially because it led to B acting out towards me and J and being very disrespectful, something I simply do not put up with.  We've had to really focus on addressing B's perspective of what's going on and explain to her that as parents, we are not here to be her friends and make her happy every moment of every day.  We're here to raise her to be a responsible and respectful young adult.  Recognizing her difference in perspective of the situation and helping her to understand things from a different perspective has helped for us to work through some extremely frustrating situations with her.

Another way that perspective has become an important lesson is realizing that mommy dearest has a very different perspective on the world in general than we do.  This simple fact could very well prove to be the most difficult life lesson I ever have to face, but now when we're faced with an argument I try to make a point of taking a moment to try to see things from her perspective before we even respond to anything she has to say to J.  This isn't easy but so far it seems to at least help us to keep us from jumping to conclusions or making assumptions and helps to avoid escalating things to an argument (she doesn't need any help with doing that!).  We'll see where this lesson takes me, and our crazy little blended family.  I am hopeful that in the long run it could help bring some semblance of peace to our lives but I won't be holding my breath.  At least it might make it easier for us to face difficult situations as they arise.