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As the great philosopher, Miley Cyrus once sang: “Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days.”
Okay, in all seriousness, it’s true. We all have those moments where we would give up anything we own for a rewind button or the ability to put our foot in or mouth and have it work.
We have those moments with our mothers, or sisters, our children, and even our husbands. No one is safe from an outburst. It could come at the worst of times, and it could come at the best of times.
But what happens when you have that outburst and say something that hurts your stepchild? Well, it’s no different from saying something hurtful to your biological child, your own mother, or even your husband. The problem is the relationship surrounding the situation.
The stepmother/stepchild relationship is tricky, and exceptionally sensitive. So any type of outburst, accusation, argument, etc., can leave you feeling emotionally desperate, defeated, and even in a slump.
Let me share my story with you. As in any stepfamily relationship, there are flying darts of advice, information, insults, relationships, and he-said/she-said all coming at your family, which can be likened to a dartboard.
So, my stepdaughter, who lives with us, has been feeling sick the last few days. We took her to the pediatrician today who advised us that we needed to keep a diary of my stepdaughter’s activities, eating habits, and the type of foods she is eating so we could determine what might be triggering some headaches she’d been having.
My husband called his ex-wife to let her know what the doctor said about their daughter, and he felt like she was tossing accusations at us. For example, she told him their daughter was not eating right at our house, she sometimes wasn’t eating at all, she was drinking too much soda at our house, and she never had lunch because we never gave her lunch money, and she, personally, would do without in order to give her kids lunch money. As in most stepfamily situations, everybody is usually on the defense, each parental side has a point of view, and each side doesn’t usually hold the other in the highest esteem.
Well, when he got home and told me what happened, I got so angry. I felt betrayed, like there had to be a reason my stepdaughter’s mother was saying these things. I saw how upset he was, I in turn got upset and I said, “Well you know, part of the problem is that she is telling her mother these things.” I then began citing examples of instances where she had made comments about certain things. My stepdaughter came in from the other room and defended herself. I in turn defended my point of view. This didn’t get us anywhere. She turned and stormed off to her room, and I of course sat down defeated, repeating the scenario in my head. Was I wrong? Was I right? Was I rude? Is she going to tattle on me to her mom? Is her mom going to be upset with me?
Needless to say, it wasn’t one of my finest moments in my stepmother journey, and I actually felt like a hypocrite in The Godly Stepmom neighborhood.
Now with your own bio kids, or other members of your bio family, usually, you can just say sorry and love on them. They naturally love you unconditionally. Everybody moves on. In stepfamilies, it can kind of feel like after so much progress, after so much careful work you put into growing this relationship, you just set yourself back to what you feel is irreparable territory.
So when this moment comes, and you feel like you have disgraced yourself, the only thing you can do is work toward progress. Families don’t give up on each other, no matter what. So work to repair and use your support system as well, because it’s not going to be easy.
- Imagine your stepchild is one of your own children. If you have biological children, imagine that this happened between you and your child. How would you feel? I, personally, would want to do anything possible to make sure they knew I loved them and I would desperately want to patch this mess up. You now have a child whose heart is hurt and you are the mother of the house, PERIOD. Do what you do best as a mother, as a woman:
