Jane's Posts

Sep 15 2004 10:32 am

Patronizing?

Oh, you mean, I have an opinion that you don't agree with?

Don't know what you'd do with a step parent like me? Ok, get off the rhetorical soapbox, and offer what you'd say to a kid in that circumstance.

It seems pretty clear that many (read, many, not all)people on this net are here because of concerns they have not as step parents, but that they are concerned about step parents. That was my mistake in judgement.

I still think that it would be really big of people to not think of their kids as chattel, and that's what the whole concept of 'feelings' in reference to how the relationship between a step parent and a child affects Birth parents. It's too bad that people's insecurity (yes, I still stand by that notion) won't let them accept that their spouse has moved on, and that their children are not their's to maniupulate (don't feel that way about her/him. don't call them that).

I'm simply promoting that the child's feeling be taking into consideration, and many of the people challenging me on this issue seem more concerned about the BM's feelings. Patronizing? I guess so, in that I'd expect that adults can better rationalize their feelings than kids should be expected to, and allow for the fact that they don't own their kids, nor their kid's feelings.

A fight! Four syllable words being thrown around. Things are really picking up around here.

For the record, I came here to deal with SPing problems. I couldn't care less if my biokid calls everyone she meets "Mom." I am SO all over considering the kids' feelings in everything.

It doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong about the title "Mother". The fascinating thing about SPing is that you are bound to people you never directly chose to be part of your life. In other situations you can just walk away, divorce them, not return their calls, whatever. In SPing you have to figure out a way to deal with this other person who's influencing your children and your ex and your weekends and your finances.

What you appear to me to be doing is coming at this from the perspective that BM is "wrong." Whether or not she is wrong is irrelevant. Her feelings are a factor in your life now. You have to consider them in your decisions about the wisest course to take in any situation.

jane

Sep 15 2004 10:01 pm

However, just out of curiousity, would you feel the same way if your son or daughter got married and called their new inlaws "mom" and "dad?"

Deb R.

Thank you. I never got this "mom" thing really before now. I just forbid Lee to ever call her ILs "mom" or "dad," even if I'm dead.

jane