My stepdaughter earns $120 for babysitting over a week of agonizing work dealing with an obnoxious 7 year old. The kid is the granddaughter of the neighbor, and a good con artist, to boot. The kid nearly sets the couch on fire, breaks the blinds, lies, makes excuses, and seems to have a good, yet untreated case of ADHD going on. It would have taken a miracle for most babysitters not to kill this child during the course of a week’s time.

So after working so hard to earn her money, your kid goes out and blows it on food for her group of friends at the mall. She also buys a backpack, and other menial crap. The money she worked all week for was gone in a matter of a day. It’s her money and she should be able to do what she wants to with it, right? Or should she have been taught how to manage it better? Is it too late to teach her anything? She’s 16.

Teenagers today in general can’t seem to hold on to a dollar to save their lives. Impulsiveness and irresponsibility come from the challenges they face in the face of authority. They feel they have little control over their lives, and if they want to spend their money, then they will - on whatever they want to spend it on.

Where does the irresponsibility come from?

It’s been debated that kids taught about money from an early age might actually have a better understanding and respect for it. Some kids save it in their piggy banks, while others have bank accounts set up for them by their parents so they can learn to deposit it as well as withdraw it when they want to buy something.

Maybe the banking plan comes from the double step theory. Instead of having cash available at your immediate disposal to spend, it’s better if more work has to be done to get your hands on it.  If you have to actually go out or get a ride to the bank to use your card in the ATM or worse, go inside, maybe it might deter kids from careless spending. Somewhat analogous to keeping a gun in the car as long as it takes two steps to get it ready to shoot. The gun has to be unloaded – maybe the piggy bank should be too – right into the bank.

What’s my problem?

I’m planning on teaching my son about money early. I want him to understand what it is, how it works, and see that when it’s gone, it’s gone. I don’t want him to fall into the same traps I’ve fallen into in my life. I just want him to know that it’s ok to save it. The last thing I want is for him to have his life revolve around it and not care about anything else. I’m not going to do to him what my mother did to me.

I don’t really know if it’s as much of a problem as it is a self worth issue. Maybe it’s a problem of self worth. I was taught that unless you go to college and get an education with a real job to make real money, you were nothing. It’s still brought up and thrown into my face at least weekly to this day.

How does it relate to my life?

It’s an ongoing internal struggle. I have no problem saving money, when I have extra to save. I just don’t feel as a productive member of society if I’m not out there earning a bunch of money and making a name for myself by doing so.

This is what my mom led me to believe. Am I less of a person because I’m raising my son at home and not out there making over $100,000 a year? I know money is important, and it’s a necessary evil, but it isn’t everything in life.

I feel like what I do is worth far more than any amount of money, but my mother wouldn’t know that because she never had to do it. My grandmother raised me while my mother worked. It was easier.

I guess if it were that important to my mother, she would have made sure I learned the proper lessons relating to money. She should have made sure I went off to college as I should have at 18 years old, and started my life the way she thinks I was supposed to.

The problem was, I was too stubborn and sabotaged my education, and my future. I did this because she went about it the wrong ways. She would scream at me and call me an idiot if I didn’t understand something. So, I stopped asking. I guess she thought I was an adult, or smarter than I was as a teenager.

I don’t want this happening to my kids. Inevitably, they will grow up, find their own way, and probably make a lot of mistakes instead of doing things right. They will be like me and learn the hard way. I just wish they would listen. I can honestly say I have a good grip on reality from my vast array of life experiences thus far.

I want my kids to know what it is to write a check, learn about credit cards and the easy dangers of them. I don’t believe in hiding credit card issues, or banking from children to “protect” them and “let them be a kid.”  There’s no reason my kid can’t go out and play in a tree house 5 minutes after we have a talk about obtaining and having credit cards and what they are, what they do, and what they can do to you if you are not careful with them.

I will teach my son how to write a check, deposit money, withdraw money, and be careful, not paranoid, about protecting his identity.

These were things that were never taught to me. I never had the understanding of anything related to money. I just liked having it and blowing it, like my stepdaughter. I think maybe it’s time for her to have a crash course lesson in the value of money. Then again, maybe she just needs to learn the hard way.

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All too often, I speak with parents who complain of getting little sleep because their 2 year old kicked them all night in bed. If they never had allowed their child to hibernate in the same bed with them in the first place, this obviously wouldn’t be an issue now.

Parents do enough for their children. They wash them, feed them, change them, wash their laundry, coddle them, play with them, etc. Why do they have to sleep in the same bed with them too?

It’s dangerous for a baby to be sleeping in bed with parents as much as it is denying them good independent sleeping skills.

Where do you draw the line?

It takes consistency and a little firmness. Kids need to understand from an early age that nighttime is for sleeping. They do not need you to be in their room “rocking” them to sleep, holding them while they fall asleep, or patting their backs to fall asleep. They just need to sleep. And so do you.

There’s no reason a 4 month old baby needs to have a midnight bottle of warm milk to get back to sleep after waking. Babies this age generally do wake up in the middle of the night, but it’s up to you to teach them that night time is for sleeping and not crying or playing.

A 4 – 6 month old baby should be in his own room, in his own crib, sleeping without the help of you “rocking” him to sleep at night. If the baby has colic or is sick and needs comforting, that’s a different story. Both of these reasons are acceptable for comforting the baby in the middle of the night. I’m talking about all the rest of the time.

You have to do what works for your family. Sometimes things just don’t work, and it’s impossible to squeeze blood from a stone. There can be variances in child rearing that are not taken into consideration with many families. There are traditions, folk tales, fallacies, old wives tales, and even our own parents and grandparents “remedies” for babies. Everyone has a suggestion, comment, and interpretation of what is the “right thing to do” vs. what probably is not.

Maybe you have a 2-3 year old child that you co-slept with from birth for a few years that is “normal” in every sense of the word, not clingy, not insecure, not needy, etc. What if you have the opposite? The thought is that once the child is sleeping with you, he will never want to go to his own bed. That might be too generalized of an opinion, but on the other hand, it might be true.

What if you have your second baby and decide you aren’t going to co-sleep with this child and the child turns out to be independent, self confident, and a good solitary sleeper? Personally, that sounds like the winner to me. Would you repeat this action if you had a baby number three? Or would you go back to co-sleeping like you did with the first one?

What about SIDS?

Figure out what you’re afraid of. Are you afraid your child is going to silently succumb to SIDS while you’re catching Z’s of your own in the next room? Do you feel guilty while listening to your baby cry because he doesn’t want to be sleeping? Are you a nervous parent anyway? You need to assess what the problem is and take action. It will only benefit you, and your child, the sleep you both need.

They do make SIDS monitors. It’s been proven that, more often than not, babies suffocate while in bed with their parents who are keeping them there to “protect them” from immature death. SIDS monitors are very effective by having motion sensors to detect the child’s breathing while in their crib. It works the same way as a regular baby monitor would, so there’s no reason to not have one if you are concerned about your child’s safety while not in their presence all night.

But sleeping in the same bed brings us family closeness

In my opinion, whether or not you are doing “attachment parenting” is not a good enough excuse to keeping a child in the same bed you are sleeping in. There are always exceptions to the rule for many different plausible reasons, but typically speaking, a child should be in their own bed at night. There’s plenty of time for baby to be close to you during the day. This is another sore spot for many and has caused many heated debates over the political correctness of it.

For some families, maybe it really does work. For others, it simply doesn’t. Does it make you a bad parent if you don’t do one or the other? In either case, absolutely not. In fact, I’m sure for some, attachment parenting is something they have perfected and have found great success with, and their children have turned out wonderfully because of it. It just wasn’t an option for us.

How it worked for us

Matthew was four months old when he went to his crib in his own room. He was in a bassinet from birth for about 6 weeks, then moved into his crib which stayed in our room. Once he was able to turn and see us and know we were there whenever he wanted something or didn’t want to sleep, he would start screaming. That just didn’t work for me. I made the decision to then move his crib to his own room.

We decorated the room with a Teddy Bear theme and hung stuffed animals in corner hammocks and put posters up to give him things to look at. The late night bottles had stopped long ago, so he was already used to not being fed in the middle of the night.

We had a SIDS monitor set up in his crib and left our dog outside his door at night. We darkened the windows of his room so he didn’t wake up at the crack of dawn in the morning. We bought a humidifier for his room, and added a nightlight and a little stereo system. Things were good.

I think he liked having his space.He would lie in his bed and “talk” to himself. He would stare at and bat around his crib toys. He had things to look at, music to listen to, and a comfy room.

Of course, there were nights he would cry because he didn’t want to go to bed. His bedtime was 7PM, and that was when he was put down in his crib for bedtime. If he cried, he was patted on the back for a few minutes and gingerly told, “good night” and we would leave the room. Sure, there were nights he wouldn’t stop crying, but I didn’t think going in there to “soothe” him was going to do anything at all but get him riled up again, or lead him to false hope that we were going to stay, or bring him into the other room with us.  So, we made the decision to stay out.

It worked for us, and it is what I would personally suggest to any parent. I think most babies are going to cry when put into their cribs – it’s a normal communicative reaction when they want something else.

I just didn’t believe in sacrificing our sleep, or our child’s independence, and his ability to learn to self soothe, to go comfort or pick him up when he cried in his bed at night.

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You want a better life for your kids and family. You’re stuck in a house that you’re upside down in by $100,000 which was supposed to be your retirement fund through the equity houses are supposed to have. The problem is, you have no equity. You have no future.

In late 2003, a friend bought a 4 bedroom, 2 bath house in Las Vegas for $200,000. It was hard to find any house at that time since California investors were snatching up properties left and right. They had large initial down payments readily available so it was easy for them to qualify. They were outbidding the average person and it wasn’t easy to get a house.

It was the time to buy, right when home prices were still affordable. If your lease was up on a house rental, or you were ready to take advantage of becoming part of the American dream and buy a house to settle down, it was a good idea to act. Realtors tell you it’s a large bank account that will continually appreciate as no more land is being made, obviously, and you believe them. It’s supposed to be the truth.

So, you make an offer, and buy the house. You and your lesbian partner are so happy to finally have a house you can call your own. Things seem really good for the first couple of years. The house gets appraised for $160,000 more than you paid for it 2 years ago, and you couldn’t be happier. You take out a $60,000 home equity line of credit to either put into house upgrades or pay off bills, school loans, or whichever works out for your needs.

Then the bubble bursts in late 2006. It’s a gradual mess, only getting worse by the year, and you try to sell your house but can’t. Homes around you start to depreciate because ARM rates are adjusting to all time highs, and homeowners are starting to lose their properties. It it their fault? Are they irresponsible people?

Not necessarily the case

Medical bills, illness, divorce, or other unexpected life events can be the reason for homeowners to start having financial issues. You start working overtime or 2 jobs, cutting back where you can, just to make your house payment. You buy a car that gets better gas mileage and find cheaper childcare for your baby. You never see your older child at all, as demanding high school extracurricular activities prevent this from happening due to your new working hours.

You don’t go out to dinner, continue to wear jeans with holes in them, cancel cable TV, and keep the house at a somewhat warmer temperature than you are comfortable in. You’ve maxed out your credit cards to help pay the mortgage and ever increasing food and gas bills, along with the cost of living. Then the credit card companies up your interest rates to 32% even though you haven’t made one late payment.

Are things getting better yet? Not quite. You watch even more people abandoning their homes by walking out on them due to lenders not working with them when they can’t afford to make their payments. Your property is depreciating even more. You put a “for sale” sign in your yard and it sits there for 2 years with no one coming to look at it. Why? Your house isn’t worth nearly what you are asking for it. You just want to break even, as it can’t possibly be about the equity right now, as there is none.

What are the choices now?

It seems as though gay and lesbian parents are getting the “stick” twice fold. There is nothing that can be done about our lack of help in the system. Maybe we’ve been together for many years. Doesn’t matter… we have to file as single on our taxes. If we are lucky, we can each claim head of household on our taxes, if there is more than one child in the house. That’s about the best we can do.

Trying to get a school loan while having a really good income is getting more and more difficult. It’s not fair that they don’t look at the fact that you and your partner can’t get married legally, therefore, it looks like you have more disposable income than you actually do.  They won’t give you a loan, and you can’t go back to school to better your life.

You have no retirement left, and you’re in your late 30’s. There won’t be any social security by the time of retirement age, so this is a huge factor. Having to pay for individual health insurance, while your partner can put herself and the kids on her insurance because you live in a state that doesn’t recognize gay and lesbian relationships, is another problem. That’s another $400 out a month that married couples don’t have to spend.

No one is able to help you. So, what are the choices? File for bankruptcy? Lose your home to foreclosure? That’s great on the credit report. If you’re planning on moving to another part of Las Vegas, that’s one thing, but if you’re planning on moving out of state where foreclosure isn’t hitting so hard, it’s even worse.

So, what’s the answer here? I don’t think it’s fair that someone’s credit has to be ruined because of no fault of their own. It’s not as if these people haven’t been working hard and putting in more hours, spending less time with their children, and cutting back to pay for a house payment that they can’t sell, can’t get rid of, have no equity in, and are upside down $100,000 due to an unstable economy. The  housing market crash is a very real problem for the gay and lesbian community, and it’s forcing more and more people to go bankrupt or foreclose and destroy their high credit scores.

I guess it all comes down to what’s most important.

Credit can be repaired through time and careful tactics down the road. It’s inevitable that all people will pay the price by having unavoidably high interest rates and penalties due to their low FICO scores, but it can ease up in a few years if you prove yourself credit worthy and responsible with money.

Personally, I think having a sense of financial stability, happy family, progressive community, a valuable education, and a fresh, new start is in store. While many will disagree with me by thinking “you got yourself into this mess”, it really comes down to a matter of what’s feasible or not. One way or another, you are going to pay.

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Have you ever walked into your kid’s room early in the morning and spotted the shape of something all too familiar on the floor in the darkness? You hope you’re just having a nightmare, but know the chances of that are slight.

The immediate dread that sweeps over you as you recognize the shape of the foreign matter is mind blowing. What’s even worse is when you realize it’s a fat pile of warm shit, freshly deposited by your almost 3 year old son.

Why the hell would he shit on the floor of his room, yet care enough to wipe his ass and throw the soiled toilet paper in the toilet? Doesn’t make any sense to me.

It’s not just another day

The day seems normal when I wake from the typical mundane banging of the doors at 6:30 every morning. I put on some clothes and meandered silently down the hall to see what was going on. I was prepared to tell my kid to go back to bed and watch TV for a little while since it was too early to be up on a Saturday.

My son was in the bathroom, naked, trying to wipe his ass, as usual for this time of the day. He was inspecting the poo on the tissues carefully, and depositing each ply into the toilet, one by one. Even more oddly, he was seemingly singing to the poo stained towelettes on their way to their pool of doom. Whatever. At least he was trying to wipe his own butt this time. The toilet had been running, so I figured he had already flushed the poo down, since there was none in the toilet.

He usually leaves his crusty poo butt for me to clean up an hour after he’s done his business. I thought this day was no different, and I quietly went into the bathroom to help him with the remaining mess. We washed our hands and I walked him back across the hall to his room.

My day just got worse

I opened the door to his room and told him to get his shorts on and lie down. I turned on the TV and noticed the familiar shape on the floor, smack in the middle of his room. I couldn’t even believe what I was seeing. I flipped on the light, as I was sure it had to be something else, and nope, it was what I thought it was.

I don’t know if my initial reaction was anger, disbelief, or laughter. The last thing I wanted him to think was that I was laughing about it. I had to think about it for a second and make sure it wasn’t one of the dogs. No, they were all locked up in different rooms of the house during the night.

Ok, so my potty trained 2 ½ year old kid shit on the floor of his room. Why? What on earth prompted him to do this?

I stood there in disbelief, staring at the pile. I had to deal with this tactfully, and it was too early to even think, let alone exhibit tact.

“Matthew, what is this on the floor?”

He brilliantly stated, “It’s poo, Mommy.”

I said,  “I see that it’s poo, Matthew, what is it doing on the floor of your room? Why isn’t it in the toilet?”

He said, “I made poo on da foor, Mommy.”

I stared at him, and back at the poo, and back at him. I repeated, “Why did you do that?”

He had no answer for me, as I expected. He just stared at me blankly.

I told him, “I’m going to clean this up now and put it in the toilet where it should have been put in the first place. I don’t expect to see you ever do this again. You know where poo goes, right?”

He said, “yes, poo goes in da toilet, Mommy.”

“That’s great. He knows where poo goes. I can’t believe I have to deal with this today.”

I went to get tissues to clean it up. I was fine, other than nauseous from the poo on the floor. I didn’t want to make a big deal of it to further encourage this behavior. It was when I bent down to clean it up and he started laughing at me that I had a problem.

I asked him if he was laughing at me. He nodded his head with a big smile. That was a mistake.

I asked him, “ Do you think it’s funny I have to clean up your poo?” He again nodded.

He got a swift pop on the butt. I asked him again, “Do you think it’s funny now?” He started to cry. Hopefully, he got the point that it’s really not funny, something I certainly don’t approve of, and isn’t encouraged to be done again. And laughing at me was no laughing matter right now.

I told him, “Don’t ever do this again. If you ever do it again, you will clean it up. It’s your poo, you know it’s supposed to go in the toilet, and if it ever happens again, you will clean it up.” I asked him if he understood, and he agreed that he did.

I told him to stay in his room until a little later and wait for me to come and get him, and I went back to bed.

Not that I could sleep. I lay there thinking how other parents have told me horror stories of their child’s defecation issues and I was always so proud to never have had those issues. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was about to start having problems, and that my son was about to regress from his potty training.

What’s all the stink about?

So, why do kids do this? I know most kids go through this “poo and pee” stage, where they are curious about their bodily functions. I know they like having something they can control, especially when they have little control over anything else in their lives, being the ages they are. Was that it?

Maybe something has upset him. Maybe I’ve made him upset or feel insecure in some way. Maybe he just did it to see what would happen, how I would react, who would find it first, and what the repercussions would be. Maybe he just wanted to do it.

Regardless of the reason, nothing that I know of has happened to him that would make him feel like he would need to do this.

At least I’m not alone. I should feel lucky to never have had to deal with excretory issues from my 2 year old. He’s never given me a single problem since he’s been fully potty trained for the past 6 months.

I guess maybe I shouldn’t expect so much out of him.

If I could only be so lucky, it was a one time, solitary occurrence, never to happen again.

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You feel as if you’ve done everything right as a parent, yet your child continues to push you to your wits end. You think you are doing it right, they think you are overbearing and unfair in your expectations.

You are on their case continually, yet they never seem to get it together. Their homework isn’t turned it, they’re late to school, they can’t even vacuum the rugs right.  You ask yourself, “What’s wrong with my kid?”

Common behaviors of a passive aggressive person

•    Your child sulks when you tell her she needs to get her chores done and it makes you crazy.
•    She doesn’t show any incentive or interest in helping out with the family chores.
•    When she does actually start a chore, it takes forever fro her to finish, and it’s not done adequately.
•    She lies to avoid confrontation.
•    He conveniently “forgets” to do his homework or take out the garbage.
•    She does her homework, but doesn’t turn it the next day at school.
•    She isn’t receptive to parental suggestions and considers them to be “lectures.”
•    She makes excuses for her behavior and puts blame on others.
•    He thinks he “knows” everything.
•    She refuses to keep her room tidy after years of you telling her it’s important.
•    She text pages you instead of wanting to have face-to-face discussions or have questions answered, even after you’ve told her you would like her to call instead.

Does this sound like your child? Though infuriating, there may be some ways to help her figure out what she is doing before devastating consequences fall on her later in life. You need to understand it to be able to work on it.

First thing you need to do?   Take a good look at yourself and your partner.

What is passive aggressive?

Passive aggressive is “acting out” our grievances in a subtle, manipulative way as to not have it look like we are being anything other than innocent so we don’t lose what’s so valuable to our basic core – our parental dependency.  It’s lying in its purest and natural form.

The term, “passive-aggressive” came about during World War II when military soldiers were showing signs of reluctant compliance and procrastination to follow orders, though they weren’t directly verbally insubordinate.

Passive aggressive is a term used to describe the expression of negative behaviors, feelings, resentment, and aggression in passive, unassertive ways through procrastination, retaliation, and stubbornness. It is common for a person to display this passive aggressive behavior when angry with a specific person, or when they have no say in the relationship with that person.

It’s a personality style that often isn’t understood or realized by the person exhibiting the passive aggressive behavior. They might actually be unaware of the heavy impacts they are causing on others due to their behaviors, and might have guilt and feelings of sadness if and when they realize it.

Often times, people exhibiting passive aggressive behaviors feel misunderstood and “put out” because they fail to see how they are provoking a negative response.

Learning to lie is a loss of personal integrity within a person. The passive aggressive person will not only lie, but make excuses so perfectly that they confuse the parent into thinking their motives were actually something different than they really were. And it’s all to save the relationship with the parent they have so innately from birth.

Lying and manipulative behavior are learned. Passive aggressive is a masked, indirect form of aggression. It is a retaliation as punishment for what has been done to us. Kids will find ways to sabotage parents if they are not given what they want, whether consciously meaning to or not.

It has also been defined as a defense mechanism on an unconscious level.

So is it a learned defensive behavioral tactic or a mental disorder?
Maybe it’s just another label.

Who’s to blame? Whose fault is it really?

While debatable, it’s probably the parent’s fault, and starts in the early years of a child’s life.

Psychiatrists have said many times that this behavior stems from alcoholic and drug addicted parents or even overbearing ones.  It is often typical of overbearing, dominant mothers and passively weak fathers. What if this isn’t the case in your home? Maybe your child is fostering some anger issues that need to be medially evaluated.

When born, children have the innate ability to alert us to their basic needs through crying. It continues through childhood, but when we back off on being attentive to their basic dependency needs, kids have to find other ways to keep the dependency fire kindled with the parent, while still getting their needs met.

The parents need to not put their children’s dependency needs off because they are too lazy, unable, or unwilling to meet their child’s basic needs.

It’s a vicious circle, and needs to be stopped.

What to do about it?

A parent needs to teach their child to honestly, assertively, and directly address their needs instead of learning to lie and manipulate to get what they want. Kids need to understand the increased effectiveness of doing so will lead to much healthier results.
Parents need to stop being so overbearing on their kids so that the kids are not afraid to be honest and open.

Allowing a child to be open and honest and state his emotions freely is going to have no reason to be manipulative, deceitful, or sabotaging.

You and your children both need to learn how to speak effectively with each other to ensure you have a good, solid, communicative, honest relationship that fosters love and proper growth.

It all comes down to respect. Learning empathy, and having a deeper sense of understanding will help your child to overcome obstacles leading to behaviors you wouldn’t want them to necessarily have.

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You’ve been single your whole life and never had to deal with children. You’ve always had your space, been able to come and go when you want, do what you want how you want, and you really like it that way.

You suddenly become involved with another woman who is recently divorced, with two girls, ages 14 and 8.  It seems to be a lot of baggage, but you weigh it out to determine whether or not you want to be with this person badly enough to try to make it work. And you do.

So you’re going to be a stepparent. Congratulations! You and your new partner have many decisions to make concerning your new relationship and your future together.

You are in for a new experience entailing ups and downs like you have never in your life imagined. Though trying on your nerves, you will get out of your new relationship with your step kids what you put into it. It’s the same as any relationship and they all take work. The difference is, you are now the “other” parent. With this, you will most likely face a different set of challenges, but nothing that can’t be ironed out with a little extra effort, patience, and understanding. A tough skin never hurts, either.

Don’t let ignorance hurt your feelings

Some people are just clueless, and you will have to start to develop “ignorance tolerance” within yourself to be able to deal with issues that arise and you want to blow your top. Keeping your calm composure is important, especially when the kids are near. Remember, you are the parent, and these people are just outsiders who know nothing about you, nor do they need to as it’s none of their business.
Don’t let your feelings become hurt when the school your stepchild attends doesn’t recognize you as a parent to that child. The biological mother will have to make sure to fill out the registration paperwork denoting that you are the “other” parent or guardian.

When you go to the store, expect someone to always mention something about the child’s “dad” if you and your partner are there together. It just seems inevitable, but nothing could irritate a wound more than that.

You might not get any credit with parenting these kids because people are going to automatically assume the child has a mother and a father raising them. You might be scoffed at, stared at, laughed at, or ignored. Some people just can’t see outside the box. Most of the time, justification just isn’t worth it and it wouldn’t matter anyway.

Of course, much of this has to do with geographical location. If you are living in Arkansas, for example, it might be more difficult for a school to see you as the other parent when the other parent would typically be of the opposite sex. In Manhattan, you will most likely find more open-minded people who are susceptible to differences and understand them better. This is something to keep in mind.

Is it worth moving? It might be something to look into if you’re in it for the long haul with this person.

You might be invisible - other times you will want to be

If the kids have another biological parent involved in their lives, it can make you feel like you have no rights to these kids. And rightly so because you probably don’t as the relationship is so new. Sometimes, it can be a very confusing and frustrating role for the new person stepping into these shoes.

There might be backlash from the other biological parent concerning your relationship with their ex and “their” kids. These are things you have to consider, and take with a grain of salt.

Many biological parents might not take so easily to the thought of a gay or lesbian relationship being so close to their kids. The idea is to not involve the kids in any negative behavior, attitudes, or dis services. They are entitled to live the life of a child and not have to deal with parental issues that they could never control anyway.

If your new partner’s ex is liberal minded and accepts your relationship, you can breathe a heavy sigh of relief.  The last thing you want for your new partner is involvement with the courts and the custodial rights to her children being jeopardized because the ex is angry and doesn’t want his children involved in a lesbian household.

Dealing with the gay “issues”

You won’t be seen as a valid, legal parent to these children unless you fight for your rights to be.  Since you don’t have any legal documentation to the rights of your partner’s kids, you have to firstly, convince yourself that you are the child’s other equal parent, and secondly, convince everyone else.

You have a lot of questions to ask yourself, and a lot of things to discuss with your partner. You will need to research, think ahead, and stay abreast of situations that could potentially evolve concerning your children that you might not have even thought of before.

Maybe you live in a state that prohibits same sex couples from parenting or adopting. Maybe your new girlfriend’s parents are homophobic and don’t want their grandkids around you. Maybe there is little tolerance for gay or lesbian lifestyles in the area in which you live.

Is your relationship going to be “out”, or in the closet? Are you going to tell the kids your new partner is their “Aunt Jane” or “Uncle Don” while you keep your relationship hidden from them? Are the both of you going to tell the kids together, or separately? Are the kids old enough to understand but not old enough to really know the difference? What’s going to happen if you tell the kids and the ex doesn’t know but finds out through the kids? What about when the kid goes to school and tells other kids in the class she has 2 mommies?

What if the kids learn of your relationship but disapprove because of what society or your ex has taught them, and cause hardships for you and your partner? What if the kids don’t really understand what’s going on but you see they are being discriminated at school because you are now their “other parent?”

These are all very possible questions of realities to consider.

And these are all concerning your relationship with your partner and the social influences from the outside world reacting to it. What about the actual role of being another parent to these children? Where do you pick up a book to learn that job?

Boundaries and Challenges

You have to realize that your role of stepparent will have it’s own set of boundaries in your new family. There will need to be clear understandings of the previous dynamics in the family, and who had what roles. Discipline, routines, schedules will all need to be discussed, worked out, and amended to fit your new family dynamic.

Will the kids be disciplined by their biological parents only? Do the biological parents want you involved in the discipline of their children at all? What if the kids know of your relationship but disapprove and cause hardships for you and your partner? What if the kids don’t really understand what’s going on but you see they are being discriminated at school because you are now their “other parent?”

You need to know what responsibilities you will be expected to have concerning the children. What is going to be expected of you? Are you going to take a backseat stance so you really don’t have any involvement with the responsibility of your partner’s kids? These are things that need to be discussed early on to avoid potentially devastating problems with your partner in the future.

Always keep communication lines open

Don’t make the mistake of keeping things hidden from your partner if you have problems, concerns, insecurities, fears, or other challenges that might start driving you apart.

It’s typical for resentments to be built up in time if communication is lost for the fear of hurting someone’s feelings. You always need to talk to your partner. Don’t kid yourself and keep yourself closed up because you don’t want to stir things up in the house. Honesty is always the best policy, and if you arrive at tricky situations within your new family, sitting down and talking about it logically will probably take care of problems before they get too large to deal with.

This goes for the kids as well. Talking to kids openly about things going on in their world is going to be equally important. You don’t want to start having problems with your new step kids because they think you don’t care about them or feel they are not worthy enough to you. You have to spend time with them, help them understand things, treat them with respect, and be their coach.

You can’t be a good parent and a strong role model for a child if you can’t demonstrate responsibility through solid communication with those you love.

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It’s a hard call to make. You think you’re doing the right thing for the monetary benefit of your family, but your gut is screaming something different at you while time is running out.

As many others, we’ve fallen on hard economic times, and a man was supposed to be coming to buy my Classic 1966 Chevy Nova. I couldn’t stand the overwhelming guilty nauseous feeling as I waited for 4:30 PM to approach.

Why? I never planned on selling the car, as it was a promise to be for my little boy when he’s old enough to have it.

I made him a promise, and now I was going to renege on my promise for the almighty dollar.

I didn’t know how I was going to be able to live with myself. I had no idea what I was going to tell my son when he walked into the garage the next day with huge eyes asking where his car went. Through tears, I would have to try to explain to him that I had to sell it because mommy needed the money. He would cry and want his car to come back. The guilt wasn’t ebbing, it was only getting worse with the thoughts of the sadness my son was about to endure.

Why should a car matter?

My son is about to be 3 years old. He’s already missing a man in the household. Not that this is an issue, but I don’t want to deprive him of not being able to have the stereotypical guy practices that all men, in my eyes, really should have when it comes to basic, or even advanced mechanical skills concerning cars.

How am I supposed to teach my son about basic car mechanics if I don’t have my classic car with a real engine to do that with?  What kind of mommy am I to sell the car I promised him he was going to inherit from me later in life?

What’s important to me will be important to him

I’m a classic Chevy junkie. I used to race Nova’s and Camaro’s when I was in my late teens in Fort Lauderdale when I wasn’t supposed to. Many times I would win. Boyfriends of mine would try to get me involved in the mechanics of how cars worked, what to do to get them to go faster. I was never really that interested in the mechanics of it, I just wanted to get in and drive them as fast as the car would possibly let me.

Seven years ago, my girlfriend bought me a 1972 Chevy Nova for my birthday. It was all original interior, motor, mileage, transmission, etc. The paint was the only thing that wasn’t original on this car. We yanked the 283 “straight six” engine ourselves with a cherry picker. We searched for a new engine for it and decided on spending $350 at the junkyard for a whole car – a 1973 Pontiac Omega, which came with the motor I wanted for my Nova.

The plan was to put an Olds 350 “Rocket Block” in the car, bore the heads out to .90 over, and install a high performance forged cam with a 383 Stroker Kit. This was all to make it fast.

So, we thought we knew what we were doing. At least we were learning to know something, and we were having fun trying to figure it out together. We learned a lot about cars as the time passed.  It was time well spent and really strengthened the bond between us. We talked about having a baby boy in the future. We smiled thinking of how much fun it would be to teach him about cars and get as involved in them as we were.

It fell by the wayside as other things came up and we kept trying to make ends meet. Four years after buying the car, we sold it to an old man who wanted to restore it for his “grandson” in the military.  We got screwed on the deal. I made a huge mistake and should have never sold the car, and I’m still kicking myself in the ass for it.

For two years, my girlfriend and I poured our hearts, blood, sweat, and tears into this car, and now it was gone.

I vowed never to do something so foolish again, and here I was sitting waiting for a man to come buy my ’66 Nova that I never planned on selling.  We had poured our hearts into this one too. Blood, sweat, and tears, again, into another car, a different bond created. Time, memories, cuts, and bruises. Was it again all for nothing? We have owned this Nova for six years together. It was for our son. What was I doing?

After agonizing for over twenty hours, I called the man and told him I couldn’t sell it, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

What’s next?

It’s going to sit here in my garage until I have the money to do something with it. It needs a lot of work, time, parts, and money invested to be what it’s supposed to be, but at least it’s still part of the family.

I’m one of those people that have a hard time with going back on my word after making a promise, especially one for my baby boy. When he was a few months old, I remember holding him in the garage one night next to the Nova. I showed him the car and though he didn’t have a clue what I was saying, I told him it was going to be for him one day when he was old enough to appreciate the classic that it was.

I promised him I would teach him everything I knew about cars and how to work on them. I told him he and I would work on it together, and he would learn from the ground up how to fix them, understand them, and appreciate their power without abusing it.

How can he be a man without a man around?

Growing up with two mommies isn’t going to deprive him of the things he would most likely had if he were to have a “daddy.”

I’ve already made a vow to incorporate “manly” things in his life so that he becomes a well rounded man as an adult. I feel I would be doing him an extreme injustice of something innate  if I didn’t.  This is something I have put a lot of thought into for many years. He is going to be a “real boy”, with real boy experiences as long as I can help it.

Though maybe ridiculous to some, it’s important to me for my son to be taught these typical “guy” things. Feminists, bring it on. I’m entitled to my beliefs, and I’m going to do it my way. For the sake of the feminists reading this article, I will go out on a limb to say his intellect will be androgynous in nature.

Even If he were a girl, I would still teach her everything I would teach my son. I feel it’s imperative to make kids well rounded, regardless of their gender.

I have many plans for my son as he grows up, and I don’t plan on cheating him out of the things guys are supposed to know, especially because he has an alternative family raising him. He needs to learn to be self sufficient and independent. I will never be able to go back on a promise I make my son, and I will try to never let him down.

He will learn to drive a boat, fish, camp, and work on cars. He will learn how to treat women correctly, and with respect. He will value education and sports. I will teach him how to cook, sew, clean, do laundry, shop, and handle money responsibly.

I guess that’s why Matthew is so lucky. He gets the best of both worlds, and two car crazy mommies, too.

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When is enough, enough? When is it appropriate to finally put an end to the early childhood naptime that we have grown so fond of? Honestly, I don’t see why you would ever want to.

It’s the parents’ time to be able to be productive and get some things done, maybe have some quiet time together, or mentally collect themselves. Maybe we would even like to take a little siesta while our kid sleeps.

I took naps in kindergarten back in the 70’s. It was not an option, but a staple and just the way it was. We had no say in it and neither did the parents, for that matter.

My grandmother swore by it, but then again, she swore to putting A&D ointment on everything too. Though I had no doubt it was necessary because she said so, I actually enjoyed taking my naps when I was a kid.

I’m not big on following the rules and guidelines my parental figures set for me in the way in which I raise my child, but this happens to be one of the rules I actually believe in and fully adhere to.

It does have medical benefits

Sleep is a necessary evil. Enjoyed by some because it comes easily to them, dreaded by others because it doesn’t, it’s not only important, but necessary to the overall contribution to our good health. We, as adults, need to rest our brains, but children need to even more.

Sleep experts, pediatricians, and psychology professionals specializing in early childhood development agree that young children need 12-14 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. Children play all day long and this expends energy and their creative abilities for growth. Without proper sleep, kids not only become unbearably cranky, but their brains are deprived of the rest they need to process thoughts and retain more information gathered through their play times.

Some kids need only 30 minutes of nap time during the day to be reenergized until bedtime because they sleep 12 hours a night on a regular basis. For the child who doesn’t get much restful sleep, or those who really enjoy it, a good 2 hour nap can only benefit them.

While it’s still a parental preference as to how long your child should take a nap for, and how old they should be when they stop taking naps entirely, it comes down to a matter of common sense.  What applies to some family schedules, doesn’t apply to others. It’s your responsibility to set schedules within your family structure to what works best for you.

What if my child doesn’t want to go to sleep?

This really isn’t an option, and it really shouldn’t matter if your kid doesn’t want to go to sleep. If she is put in her room in her bed where she generally sleeps at night and told to take a nap, she needs to do just that. If she lies there and cries, leave her there. She will quickly learn that your word is final if you stay strong and don’t cater to her whims. If you do, you are letting your child control you, and not setting boundaries that really need to be set.

A child at this stage in life is crying because she wants your attention rather than for you to fulfill a need.  She will learn it’s much better to take a nap rather than to cry for a couple of hours.  It will start to dawn on her that you are serious, this is something that’s going to be enforced and demanded, and eventually, she will probably be taking naps with ease.

You are the parent and the one who makes the decisions in raising your child. If you stay focused on what you want to happen, it will happen in time.

Again, consistency is king

My 2 year old takes naps in preschool where the kids range in age between two and six years old. The owner of the school enforces naps, saying it is vital to the overall health of the children. On top of that, she doesn’t want them to be cranky so she has to deal with it throughout the course of the day. Who could blame her?

He also takes naps on the weekends when he’s home. It’s a really necessary break for me, and as well as good for him. Unless he starts waking up continuously throughout the course of the night, I plan on keeping naptime around until he goes into first grade. I won’t let it be an option. I stay consistent with his schedule. He goes to bed at 8 PM and takes naps every day, from 1 PM to 3PM.

Just as he knows dinner is in the evening and lunch is in the afternoon, naptimes are an expected routine.

Establishing good sleep patterns early

There should be no reason for a parent to keep a toddler or preschooler up past 8:30 PM. Boundaries need to be established early on to ensure your kids are getting adequate amounts of rest.

Some argue it’s not the best practice to allow your kid to stay up to where they show signs of being tired such as rubbing their eyes and yawning. Some suggest kids get put to bed before they exhibit those signs, arguing that the child will sleep longer if they are not too tired when put down to sleep. This is debatable, but also depends on the child.

My suggestion would be to set a bedtime and a naptime and do your best to try to adhere to the schedule you are setting. If your kids know from early on that this is the way things are, it makes it a lot harder for them to argue with you.

Make naptime and bedtimes a mandatory routine, and you should be smooth sailing. Maybe you can catch a few extra Z’s of your own.
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Is going to a birthday party for a 5 year old going to kill you? Is it really going to ruin your day that much? Maybe you need to get a clearer focus on what really is important vs. what really isn’t in your life and make the effort to change some things.

I started this website as a play on words concerning our children based on the well known phrase, “Child of Mine.” I did this for a reason. I did it to make the point of putting our children first.

Gun’s N Roses and Carole King wrote songs with this title. The songs are about how we feel as though our kids as precious little beings, and make sacrifices to show the love we have for them.

How often to we actually take those lyrics to heart? Do the words have any relevant meaning in the way in which we raise our children? If this is the case, why is it that we can’t make small sacrifices for their benefit?

Make time for him

If your child is attending preschool, and you receive an invitation to attend a birthday party of a child in your kid’s class, you aren’t going to make even the smallest attempt to go? You aren’t going to have the common courtesy to make the minimal effort of calling the parent having the party to RSVP to say if you will or won’t be attending?

Everyone has obligations and prior commitments in their lives and we all understand that. But to ignore an invitation and not have the decency to show up to a little kid’s birthday party is completely ridiculous.

I think people are so apathetic, selfish, and wrapped up in their lives that they can’t be bothered with thinking about how their kid might benefit from a little outing for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon.

How difficult is it? All you have to do is buy a small gift for the birthday child and you have a free ticket for your kid to do something fun for a few hours. Not to mention gain invaluable social experiences kids of today desperately need.

Maybe I have to chalk it up to living in Las Vegas. When you work in the casino industry, unless you’ve been there awhile with good seniority, you don’t generally have the luxury of having holidays off. Most of the time, they aren’t even acknowledged since you have to work right through them.

Well, too bad for you, but why do your kids have to suffer also?

My son, as well as 40 other kids in his school, was invited to a birthday party for a little boy in his class who was turning 5.

I’m a busy parent and always have many things to attend to. I had contemplated not taking Matthew to this party because I didn’t know the birthday child. When I thought about it, it seemed ridiculous since attending the party would be for my child, not for me. Of course I wouldn’t know him - what difference would that make? My son knew who he was. He goes to school with him 5 days a week.

His mother had rented an inflatable jump house to host the party for a couple hours of jumping fun for 40 little kids. The kids were going to have pizza, cake, and ice cream, which were included in the package. These things run about $275 just to hold the rooms for the kids for an hour.

I gathered my son up, bought a gift, and went to the party.

The mother greeted us when we walked in. The place was empty with only a handful of kids running around. I caught her checking her watch every few minutes and watching the door for more people to arrive.

The look of sadness and disappointment on the mothers face was disheartening. Thirty minutes after the party had started, when she realized no one else was going to show up, she started to tell me how she thought there would have been more kids coming. She kept wondering why no one was coming. We were the only family that showed up.

I think what bothered me the most was walking into the birthday cake room and seeing a medium sized table for gifts for the birthday child and seeing only two gifts on it. It was the most pathetic thing I had ever seen. I felt so bad for the little kid and for the mother.

Was it the mother’s fault for planning her son’s birthday party over Labor Day weekend? Am I supposed to believe everyone invited to the party was out of town, camping, or spending the weekend at the lake? I find that to be highly improbable.

The aftermath is always unseen

Another thing that really bothers me is that every one of those kids will return to school on Tuesday as if nothing happened. A little boy had a birthday party, and parents and kids will assume he had a great time with lots of guests and gifts. The typical birthday party image would be portrayed and not an eyelash would be batted.

Unfortunately, this is the opposite of what really happened, but they will never know.

The bottom line is this. I made a sacrifice for my child when I didn’t really want to go and went anyway. It was actually a lot of fun for my son and I’m glad he enjoyed himself. I didn’t know the other two parents there, and you know what?

I had a really good time, met a few people, and made a few friends - at least for the day.

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