Step-parenting is not for the faint-hearted

With high divorce rates and separation of cohabiting couples, step or blended families are increasingly becoming the norm for most people.

A blended family is where one or both partners have at least one child from a previous relationship and are living together as a family. For Olorato Ntwaagae, 34, a mother-of-five: two stepchildren and three biological, it has not been a walk in the park.Ntwaagae was only 22 when she got married.

Her husband, separated from the mother of his two children, had full custody of the children. When she moved in with him, she found herself the instant mother of a nine-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy.

However, having known about the children during their courtship, Ntwaagae felt capable of successfully taking up the new responsibilities of being a mother. After all, all she had to do was love them, right?

“Before we started living together, the children and I occasionally talked on the phone and seemed to get along. Also, my husband had done a fairly good job of preparing them for my entry into their lives,” she says. Ntwaagae, therefore, assumed that forming a bond with the children would be easy since they were already familiar with one another. She was wrong.

“It took months for us to be comfortable around one another and adjust to our new lives. The connection was not as instant as I had thought it would be,” she remembers. Another factor she had not considered was that she would not have her husband to herself, like most newly wedded women did.

“Still in my honeymoon phase, I wanted to spend a lot of time with my husband. However, this was not possible because I had walked into an already established family and it wasn’t just about me and him, but about the children as well.” She says her husband’s ex-wife also turned out to be a stumbling block in her efforts to gain her stepchildren’s trust.

“Each time the children returned home after a visit with her, they would ignore me and try to keep me at bay. They would also refuse to eat my food and disobey me. I later got to learn that their mother would tell them that I would poison them and that since I was not their biological mother, I had no authority over them,” she said.

To win the children over and to hasten their acceptance of her, Ntwaagae would be overly nice to them. “Step parenting is not for the weak. It requires a lot of emotional investment that can wear you down. Had I known what I know now, I would have gone for counselling before I got married, if only to prepare for the challenging life that was ahead of me,” she said.

Mother of eight, four of who are stepchildren, Tebogo Lebotse-Sebego agrees that it is a continuous learning process with its ups and downs. “We are still going through the transition process. For us it has been even more demanding because there were many dynamics to manage,” she said, the biggest challenge they had to tackle, being the different value systems amongst the various families.

“Most of the kids stay with us and we try and impose our beliefs on them but it gets challenging at times because they have other families who may not necessarily have the same beliefs and approaches to parenting”. The most important thing, Sebego says, is to be real with children. “Kids have great intuition. They know if you have negative energy towards them.

And so, from the onset, my husband and I agreed that there would be no “us” if either of us had negativity towards each other’s kids. We agreed that would be the relationship decider. So it was a case of if this makes the kids miserable then we call it quits. So, we had to make it work,” she said.

To make it work, Sebego advises that the couple must be a team, united against the kids and the other parents. “You cannot take sides and you cannot be inconsistent on how you treat the kids. Let it be clear to the other parents that for long as you are the ones raising the kids, it’s your parenting style that takes precedence.

“Also, don’t be shy about making time alone with your biological kids because kids are fragile and it is important that they know that they are each special. But most importantly, open your heart fully and embrace your partner’s kids. Love them as much as you love your own. Do that and the good Lord will take care of the rest,” she said.

EXPERT TAKE
Rabiya Mahomed McGeoff, Couples and Family Therapist, at McGeoff Counselling Clinic says that while sustaining a good relationship between members of a traditional nuclear family requires a lot of effort, it requires double the effort where blended families are concerned, but it can be done.

“Do not expect an immediate bond with the children, cautions McGeoff.  “Many stepparents have high expectations that the love they show for their stepchild will be reciprocated immediately, but this is far from the truth. It is a gradual nurturing process that requires patience. Also, do not force a connection with your stepchildren”.

She explains that since stepfamilies are borne out of loss: through death, divorce, or separation; the children, therefore, need space and time to grieve the loss and disappointment of not seeing their biological parents living together in happy marital union.“While most adults can deal with a failed relationship and move on to new love interests, children are always many steps behind.

Their biological parent should, therefore, give them time to adjust to the separation before introducing a new “father” or “mother” to them.

“In many situations, the children blame themselves for their parents’ separation and, therefore, need constant reassurance that they are not the reason for this,” she said.McGeoff adds that in step parenting, children often display great loyalty to the biological parent not living with them. For instance, even if the parent is a criminal or a social misfit, the child will still have a desire to be with him or her.

As the stepchild begins to form a close bond with their stepparent, such children begin to feel as if they are betraying their biological parent and this can cause them great psychological anguish. To deal with this, McGeoff advises parents to give children the assurance that there is nothing wrong in developing a fondness with their stepmother or father, hard as this may be for some to do.