More thoughts on discipline

As you can imagine, my partner and I have some interesting discussions about my stepson; funnily enough, most often after I have written a rant. Yesterday we were chatting about the fact that my stepson questions pretty much each and every request that is made of him without fail! This is right across the board ladies and gentlemen. Not just requests to do chores etc, every flaming thing needs to be explained and debated, and arbitrated! Sometimes this may be an “ohhhh why dad?” While other times it involves a three page letter of objection, negotiation, counter-negotiation, threats, stomping, door-slamming, tears and room destruction.

Now while I must credit my partner with inordinate patience at these times – I do have my suspicions that his mind disassociates and splits off into another personality, or that he has a serious and undiagnosed hearing problem! Anyway, my charitable partner will usually repeat the request, often several times, in an even and clear voice. This scenario may go on for many, many, many, many, many minutes; a ruckus may escalate, it may result in the child being placed in time out or a favourite toy being confiscated. From time to time the request goes by-the-by; put in the too hard basket, and sometimes, just sometimes the child pulls his head in and actually does what he has been asked to do.

During these trying times, my partner occasionally shows some exasperation, but most often he just breathes a wee sigh of relief (whatever the outcome), and blithely gets on with the business at hand. NOT so the stepmother. Let me at him the insolent little sod. Who the hell does he think he is? I need closure, I need some satisfaction, I need revenge. I mean, we have missed weddings and funerals standing around debating with this upstart! Forget split personalities, I’m developing small communities inside my head – warriors and warlords vying to put an end to this madness. We really do need to find a way to actually get things done as a family without everyone ending up exhausted, frustrated and quite frankly pissed off.

So we had a discussion. My partner loves it that his son has a questioning mind and doesn’t just roll over for anyone. I am concerned that by being a right royal pain in the arse at every turn my stepson is going to have a difficult time making friends and being socially acceptable – not to mention sending me prematurely grey...!

It is a toughie alright. How do we ascertain where to draw the line between what is acceptable as being genuinely inquisitive and bit precocious, and what is outrightly impertinent? The parameters are of course different for the step parent. My partner finds much of the back-chat cute and amusing. Cute only enters my vocabulary when my stepson is asleep (oh, and at school concerts it seems). But seriously, we don’t want to go around breaking kids spirits (or their playstations), but we do need them to be able to judge when to zip it and cooperate, and when to challenge the validity or fairness of a request. I guess the line gets drawn when the questioning becomes counterproductive to the request actually being carried out; that and when the warlords are stampeding menacingly toward the battle-ground.

Grandparents - part one

We have this ongoing predicament (well, yet ANOTHER impasse-type scenario) in our house. It’s called ‘time out’, or more aptly in our situation, time with-out! Now I don’t mean time out in the alternative to smacking interpretation of the term where the child is placed in a safe environment while he calms down and I do my mindfulness meditation so as not to drop him, Hansel and Gretel styles, in the middle of a remote mountain range. No, I mean complete respite; a weekend off every now and again, hell even a night every fortnight would replenish my serotonin levels and give me something to look forward to!

I know when my (now grown up) son was small, I was extremely fortunate to have a plethora of family members living in fairly close proximity who all delighted in having him over night regularly. To me this was how families operated. My sisters and I had grown up with extremely happy memories of weekends at our grandparents (and we have three sets of them...but that’s another story), our Aunties and Uncles, and of our cousins staying at our house too. 21 years later, deep in the Central Hawkes Bay countryside things are very, very different. Family is scarce, neighbours are miles away making it less likely (but not impossible) for ease of impromptu child-sharing/swapping, and the men (well, my partner...) firmly believe in just toughing it out, accepting your lot, and getting on with it. Well, needless to say, for this Auckland princess, this mindset just doesn’t cut it. Get real! Where does it say in any of the books that parenting has to be akin to a prison sentence? Yes it can be a bit like PD in that it has to be done regularly, you can’t just ignore it and hope it will go away, and it is something that you have to see right through to the end, or you will be in trouble. However, the advantage of PD over prison is that you are not incarcerated; you are not trapped, locked-in, physically constrained in such a way as to not have the freedom to make your own choices most of the time. So, you get my point. While parenting limits many of the options available to us, it also offers the perfect opportunity to move out of our comfort zone, think outside the square we grew up in, and most importantly, to really hone in on what is important to us as parents, individuals, and as couples.

This brings me back to the predicament my partner and I face. He of the grin and bear it school of thought and me of the, ohhh let’s share the love, phone his grandparents dogma...

I have to go now. Really have to think this through. Back tomorrow.

It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen...some words of hope

Thanks Rach, and it is true!

A strange thing happened to me late last year at the local school prize giving and concert. I know many of you will be imagining that I am some kind of self-absorbed, uber-bitch who loathes children and only has horrid things to say; well, while this is true for the most part, I do also have a tender side. I’ll admit that it is well hidden, but it remains easily accessible and is capable of functioning fully if needed.

So anyway, on the final day of the school year 2009, I found myself the family delegate attending the end of year function at my stepson’s school. My partner was working, so it was time for me to step up. Given my affliction of pathological lateness I was seated second row from the back in the averagely sized community hall. I sat alone – well there were people around me, but I didn’t have a date as such. My lovely neighbour whom I kind of knew was seated behind me, but essentially I was by myself in the midst of a rather large, small community gathering. Now strange rituals occur in small communities when there is a new face on the scene. People smile a kind of knowing smile that says we see you and we are keeping an eye on you, but we’re not going to speak to you just yet. So I sat and returned the inquisitive smiles of the other parents with a rather timid, what I hoped was a not too desperate, please-sit-by-me, kind of lop-sided one of my own.

Anyway, the splendid spectacle that we were all there to witness began. Sweet-voiced princes and princesses sang and danced their merry little souls all over the stage, and we were entertained with a witty performance that delivered a serious conservation and positive recycling message. What is it about the voices of children singing that can bring the dead back to life? Truly the sound of angels! I glanced about at the faces of some of the parents and grandparents in the room; some of them looked as though they were going to pop with pride and joy at the sight of little Jimmy leaping about on stage pretending to be a piece of litter...the room was throbbing with warm fuzzies, and I turned and smiled my lop-sided smile at my nice neighbour behind me. You just can’t beat community spirit.

So, just as I was thinking I had run the gamut of positive emotions for the month, I recognised the small group of kids who were now cavorting about the stage as my stepson’s peers. Ah, I may get to see the little tyke in action I thought, despite being seated such a distance from the stage. I caught sight of a bobbing blonde head and thought, there he is. He was moving in unison with the other kids in a cooperative manner I found quite unbelievable. The teachers must have drugged him. He twirled and trilled and diligently created clever dance formations with the group and indeed appeared to be having a great time. When the movement stopped for a brief moment and singing their blessed little message to us all became the main focus of the scene, I observed my stepson scanning the room for the face of his Dad, and/or I presume, me. Propelled by my rusty maternal instincts, I rose slightly in my seat so my head stuck up higher than everyone else (never mind my nice neighbour behind me now...) so I could get a clear view of my stepson’s toothless grin. The stars must have been aligned, because at precisely that moment our eyes locked and his wee face lit up like a box of sparklers. The pride and happiness that shot down the hall knocked me back down in my seat, and took my breath away. My eyes welled up and my heart nearly burst with affection! See that nimble and cute blonde boy up there everyone – that’s my stepson!

More anger management

I will admit that for someone who is such a fuss-pot herself, I am remarkably intolerant of other people’s idiosyncrasies. However, in the hope of hurdling the ‘impasse’, I stoically resolved to tackle the rocky path of step-parent step-child bonding in order to forge a blended family like it says in the psychology books. Despite the seething, frustrated medusa-like creature that was raging within me (need...more...meditation ...time...), I really did want this situation to work.

Problems are always solved more easily when broken into bite-sized pieces. I thought about when the most likely ‘danger’ times were for a ruckus to breakout. Firstly there was shower time, room tidying time, bed time, homework time; nothing new here I guess, but defiance certainly took on a whole new meaning when this child was asked to do something he didn’t want to do. Wide berth was the term being screamed by the medusa voices in my head. So I thought, Ok, how about school lunches? This isn’t so much requesting the child to actually physically do something, but rather, participate in making a decision that would directly involve him. I recalled a wee tip from the days when I was parenting my own son, and offered the stepson two choices of sandwich topping (both of which were favourable to me), in order that he may feel empowered, valued and in control of his destiny. I generously asked if he would like marmite or jam on his sandwiches – knowing that (this week) these were his favourite toppings...peanut butter is soooo last month it would seem. As I mentally congratulate myself on how smoothly the morning is running, my stepson gets a pained look on his face as though I am suggesting he eat horse manure. After a few minutes of umming and ahhing, he proclaims how he really just has to have honey sandwiches today...or how about egg, no, no tomato and cheese...no, no...and on and on it goes! Damn, too early for a wine!

Now this incident may sound insignificant in and of itself BUT this type of mental torture day in day out, night in night out, seven days a week, four weeks a month, twelve months a year, causes me to feel limitless rage at the generations of ancestors responsible for this child. All the usual guidelines for positive parenting are out in the ether with flying pigs when it comes to my stepson. There isn’t a word in any language in the history of the world that does justice to his knack of being particularly difficult at (almost) every turn.

So, with things at a bit of a standstill, and the impasse still being like a white elephant in the room, I decided to look up the meaning of the word compromise.

1. Settle a depute by making concessions. Ok, I am still here and I haven’t committed any crime thus far. A concession.

2. Settlement reached by concessions on each side. Are there three sides (adults and child) or only two (adults) involved in our impasse? Things could get MORE complicated...oh give me strength!

3. Put in a dishonourable position. Seems we are already compromising...

Desperation began clawing at my mind; I felt no closer to constructively channelling my anger, I was experiencing only nano-sized inklings of affection toward my step-son and to top it off (remembering that it was too early for a wine...), I discovered that snacking throughout the day, say every three minutes, doesn’t alleviate stress. At precisely the time when I should have be delving into my untapped well of self control I was feeling the spinning top that had become my sanity, heading precariously toward the precipice.

Anger management

My mother always told me 'if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing', which incidentally if you know my mother, is bloody hilarious! Nonetheless I found myself drawing on repressed childhood memories as I struggled with my own limited skills in dealing with my new living situation.
Most of the experts on the topic of step-parenting recommend leaving all the discipline to the birth parent, with the step parent taking a backseat so as not to further fertilise any resentment the child may already feel toward the invader. Now I ask, where's the satisfaction in taking a back seat? We can't take to them with doweling coat hangers and wooden spoons like the good ol' days (more repressed memories), so please let me yell and scream. Please let me make threats about smashed play stations and no pudding...for a year! Please let me jam his bedroom door closed with a thick sock...

And so I began to walk the thin line of appropriateness. Well, to tell the truth, I wobbled reluctantly along and vaguely wondered what the flaming heck I was going to do. What exactly IS appropriate disciplinary behaviour for a step parent when the child clearly needs to go to borstal? I know about the health dangers of withholding strong emotions. I know that I am supposed to set an adult example of how to manage difficult situations, and shit, I also know that this kid is going to be living with me for many years to come; I had better think fast as I drive to the wine shop.

I firmly believe that the only reason all children aren’t popped into return-to-sender courier bags before the age of 5 is because of those instinctual maternal and paternal feelings of love and guilt. Here arises the quandary of the (new) step parent. They feel nothing. They are like Vulcan’s, which to be honest I have always admired! Sound decision-makers, whose judgement is not clouded by myriad emotions and conflicting neurotransmitters vying for dominance. Vulcan’s are pragmatists of the highest order, taking the most straightforward route to resolve a problem. So, you see, for the step parent there just isn’t any tugging at the heart strings when the matter of discipline arises. Its clear-cut mate, black and white, straight up and down; boarding school!

Now this gives rise to two problems; firstly the cost. I mean for pity’s sake, the reason I am investigating boarding school in the first place is my ambivalence toward my stepson. I certainly am not predisposed to spending good cosmetic surgery money on what essentially amounts to expensive babysitting, albeit with a sound education thrown in. Secondly, his Dad would miss him. See, love and guilt. Great. An impasse.