Christine Benvenuto knows that “his, mine, and ours” doesn’t cover it. She checks her “mama privilege” and shares her story of blending a family.
____
“‘Mama this, Mama that.’ You have no idea how discouraging it is to hear ‘Mama this, Mama that,’ all day long.”
Our family is a work in progress. So,too, is my awareness that I have an important role to play in facilitating the relationships between my children and their stepfather.
|
My husband is a father with years of experience raising kids. But when it comes to being the stepfather of my children, he is brand new. He’s jumped onto the parenthood train with three children who are anything but newborns. They’re actually established, highly opinionated, eccentric people–people with youthful versions of baggage all their own.
My kids used to being single-mothered. They’ve long been accustomed to directing their needs, wants and remarks to one person—me. “Mama this. Mama that”. All. Day. Long.
♦◊♦
Our family is a work in progress. So,too, is my awareness that I have an important role to play in facilitating the relationships between my children and their stepfather. Even the words “our family,” meaning his and mine, sound odd and ambitious when either of us says them, both daring and exhilaratingly full of potential.
It helps a lot that my kids love my husband. They know him well. He was my friend, and then my boyfriend, long before he became my husband. So long, in fact, that it’s funny, and slightly embarrassing, how mama-centric they remain. The truth is we all recognize that our marriage is a game changer, and we all want closer, deeper connections. The kids just don’t always know how to go about making that happen.
That’s where I come in.
I don’t have to tell my husband how to relate to the kids. What I do sometimes help him see is how important he is to them
|
My children have been slow to consciously understand the effect of their actions, or non-actions, on family dynamics, so sometimes my job is to nudge their self-awareness into existence. The most obvious example of this is telling them, and repeatedly reminding them, that when they only make eye contact with me at the dinner table, their stepfather feels excluded from the conversation. Feels, in fact, like they don’t even know that he is there.
A little awareness that someone else is present and wants to be counted works wonders. He wants to be counted in an ordinary, parental sort of way. So when my daughter wanted her stepfather to participate in her birthday plans and asked me, “Should I invite him to join us?” my answer was an immediate “Nah-uh. Why don’t you try exactly what you said to me: ‘This is what I’d like to do. Can we?'”
♦◊♦
I don’t have to tell my husband how to relate to the kids. What I do sometimes help him see is how important he is to them. I share the expressions of affection they might still feel more comfortable making about him than to him.
I point out the indications that are to me even more emblematic of their attachment, the many signs that they don’t just want him involved in all family endeavors, but now assume he will be—like it or not. It’s not only that they know who to turn to with math homework help (hint: it’s not me). It’s not only the big occasions, like their desire to turn Fathers Day, once a reminder of loss and lack, into a celebration of him.
There’s no question that the hardest thing for me is to check my mama privilege. I have to remember that I’m not the only adult in the house.
|
It’s also the day-to-day fun stuff. For example, I recently pointed out to my husband that when one of the kids asks me to join in a game of baseball, football, or whatever ball, the invitation is to join the two of them. Stepdad’s participation is a given.
♦◊♦
There’s no question that the hardest thing for me is to check my mama privilege. I have to remember that I’m not the only adult in the house. I’m no longer the sole authority on everything under the sun available. It can be tough to let someone else into the decision making process when you aren’t used to there being another person willing to share responsibility for a decision’s outcome.
Parenting solo was lonely at times but It was also simpler than the duet version. Group negotiation takes more time. When it comes to these three children, I’m the expert, and I’m used to making automatic decisions. I have to remind myself to slow down long enough to give my husband a chance to add his perspective to the mix. It complicates individual decisions. Hopefully, in the long run, it will also result in richer, more complex family bonds.
♦◊♦
Sometimes sharing the parental limelight can as easy as recognizing where my strengths end and his begin.
For example, I’m our household’s master chef and baker, but that’s dinner time. Morning, in my view, is an interval in which to slowly, over several hours of black coffee drinking, work your way up to facing bran flakes from a box.
So my husband encountered no competition for his fantastic multigrain pancakes. He taught my kids to make them along with his method for greasing the grill, the latter to my mind a quirky process entailing wasted butter and paper towels. I will never adopt his method, even should I find myself (unlikely!) capable of producing a fully cooked and edible pancake first thing in the morning. But there is nothing more endearing than the sight of those buttered, blackened paper towels balled up next to the stove when one of the kids has been making breakfast and my husband is nowhere around.
When the five of us began to spend family time together, my children and I brought some of the rituals we’d observed together as a foursome with us, holiday observances, family traditions like starting birthdays by singing children awake, and culminating them with banana-chocolate cake and gifts at the very end of the day.
We’ve also begun to create family rituals together. We’ve mourned beloved animals and adopted new ones, hosted wonderful parties, improvised on religious practices to fit our ages and inclinations
|
My husband introduced us to rituals of his own. For example, he invited my kids into the world of horses, everything from grooming, riding, and stable-mucking to a thrice-yearly date to watch Triple Crown races on television, complete with mint juleps and virgin mint juleps, made from mint leaves growing in a mad tangle outside his—now our—front door.
We’ve also begun to create family rituals together. We’ve mourned beloved animals and adopted new ones, hosted wonderful parties, improvised on religious practices to fit our ages and inclinations. We’ve traveled together to places new to us all and taken turns introducing our little group to the unique facets of the places we visit. Then we’ve swapped and enjoyed the hundreds of photographs afterward.
For all our efforts, sometimes families blend in mysterious ways.
♦◊♦
My 10 year old tells me a story one night at bedtime. Playing with two other girls at our house that afternoon, she and her friends decided to have some adventures inside our truck. (No, she is not allowed to play in the truck and yes, she knows this.) When her stepfather spotted her, he called to her and suggested, in no uncertain terms, that she and her friends continue their game outside the truck.
My daughter describes the incident, thinks it over carefully, and offers her conclusion: “I think he’s trying to be more of a father-figure type.”
As soon as I’m able to stop laughing, I agree.
♦◊♦
Photo: Andrechin/Flickr