Adjusting

August 18, 2008

It’s a lot more work, having three kids rather than one. It’s also a lot harder having stepkids versus just having your own kids! You know your own kids, and have since birth. You know their personalities. You understand them. You’ve taught them YOUR way, under your rules and your home-culture.

When stepkids come along, all bets are off. You don’t know them. You don’t know what is “normal” for them, what sort of home they’ve grown up in, or how their personalities have developed over the years. Literally, you are strangers to each other. And now here you both are, shot like arrows into the bull’s eye of life’s massive target.

I’m quite calmer now than I was yesterday, here at work this Monday morning, in an environment I understand! As an accountant, I expect things to be organized, in order, in their place. But I’m still miserably stressed from one of our first orders of business this past weekend: taking the kids on their first clothes-shopping trip.

Before we flew out to San Diego, I expected that John and Jodie would have a hard time adjusting to a new home, a new state, a new life without their mom, their family, their friends. But it seems that it is I who is having the hard time adjusting! I’m not used to having so many people in my house. I feel so crowded and closed in.

I also don’t appreciate kids who aren’t respectful. I could tell even on our trip to San Diego, after knowing them for only a few days, that they aren’t used to having a parent in charge. They aren’t used to having boundaries or rules to follow. They seem to be unaware of the concept that the parents make the rules and the kids are supposed to do what the parent says. They seem to have the idea in their heads that adults are there to serve THEM.

Sometimes the three of them and Joe too, talk to me all at once. I can’t carry on 4 conversations at the same time! And sometimes I feel Joe compounds the problems. He takes the stern “don’t do this, don’t do that” approach, when I feel that a calmer tone and a “let’s do it this way because…” approach is more effective in the long run. My thoughts are that instruction, and not commands, are more effective. Much of Joe’s approach may be his military background.

Back to our shopping trip. Like I said, it was a miserably stressful experience (probably even more so because I hadn’t taken my meds). It was extremely difficult to find clothes that John and Jodie liked, that Joe and I approved of. I guess that’s normal for teens and tweens.

I found so many cute things in the girls’ section, but Jodie didn’t like any of them! When I was young, I would see racks and racks of those cute, colorful, trendy outfits that I wanted, but my mom couldn’t buy. I wore a lot of hand-me-downs from my older sister. Some were in better shape than the others. But as most tweenage girls do, I wanted to wear what the other girls my age were wearing!

Now, I CAN buy those cute, colorful, trendy outfits, for my own (step) daughter, but she’s not interested.

Finding jeans for John was nearly impossible. He’s got a big build and wears a 34” waist, but a 28” or 29” length, and we could hardly find 34W jeans with less than a 30” length.

And while we’re concentrating on getting one kid outfitted, the other 2 insist on being loud and getting in the way. I include my own son, Nathan, in that – in fact he was probably the worst of the 3.

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Nathan is usually quiet and keeps to himself. John is defiant and thinks he’s the boss of everything. Jodie is a talker and never shuts up! I didn’t read much of Ghost over the weekend, partly because I’m slowing down as I pass the halfway mark. But partly also because I couldn’t concentrate from Jodie talking so much! She wouldn’t shut up. She has to talk incessantly.

And it would be different if she was saying something useful, but she just yaks about what ever pops in her head. Actually, I’m not even sure her words go that far! I have never had much patience with people who have to talk all the time. About nothing.

Joe had one of his “talks” with the kids, and as punishment took both their laptops away for the week. Besides Jodie’s indiscretions – snooping in my back room without asking, demanding that I should have “at least unlocked the doors” to the car, when we were getting ready to go somewhere which I don’t remember, and opening our bedroom door without knocking even after I just got through saying not to bother dad while he was napping (which of course was an excuse for us to get some personal time), John had stayed up playing on his laptop until I woke up at 12:40 Saturday night (Sunday morning), after I had said to put it up at 11:00, after we had dinner and watched Moby Dick on OETA Movie Club.

Both John and Jodie think they have to have their noses in everyone else’s business. If Joe and I are having a conversation between ourselves, one or both of the kids will perk up and say, “What? What are you saying? I don’t understand what you mean. I don’t remember that happening. Was I there?” I wasn’t TALKING to YOU!

Another time Jodie ticked me off was last week or so when Joe got home from work. He and I were in the bedroom talking, with the door not completely closed but cracked. Jodie came up to the door and demanded, “Why is this door closed?”

I wish I’d thought quickly enough to say, “It is none of your concern. Young lady, when a door is closed, it is none of your business what goes on behind it.”

Ugh. Grandma Fern said they pull the same garbage with her, and it makes us all wonder what went on in California. Their mom was constantly ill and in the hospital. Their grandmother and other relatives were likely focusing their time and attention on her. The poor kids were left to their own doing, with little to no parental supervision. I asked them once, what did you do while your mom was in the hospital? Jodie spent her time at her friend’s house. John spent his time alone in his room.

So that’s what went on in California – the poor kids weren’t getting the attention they needed. They sure can’t help that. It isn’t their fault. And now Joe, Fern, and I are left to deal with it. And like Joe said recently, we’ve got a lot of work to do.