What Did You like or Dislike About Your Step Parent?

I did not have a step mom until I was 24. I love her as much as my own mom. She treats me,brother and sister as we are her own. She knows her role. She has always been super nice. She has never been pushy. I absolutely love her.

I don't have any step parents but I am a step mom.

I notice a LOT (especially on this board) that there are a lot of issues when it comes to step parenting, and that I generally hear from other moms (who aren't step moms) that as a step parent you AREN'T the mom so you shouldn't try to be anything like a mom, and you should STEP back.

Then I hear from people who had step parents and they say "my step mom/dad treated me like their own, and I loved them like they were actually my mom/dad or have a great relationship with them."

So, generally speaking, bio moms are going to be sensitive to anyone else raising their kid or having any type of say. They are always going to tell you to step back. Kids just want you to treat them like their own, with love and respect. If you have other kids, they don't want to feel like they are any type of third wheel. Take what both say with a grain of salt, for everyone's situation is unique.

Every blended family has different circumstances, what works for one won't work for another. Being a step mom is a dance, sometimes you have to step UP, sometimes you have to step BACK.

A step mom cannot REPLACE a mom, but she certainly has her role to play. If I followed the advice of all the sensitive bio moms out there and stepped BACK, my stepdaughter would not be learning to swim, dance, tumble, play music or have friends. She would not have birthday parties or matching clothes. These are the things I stepped UP to do that weren't benign done by Mom, and couldn't be done by Dad because he works.

Look at your situation. Talk to your husband. LOOK and LISTEN to your stepchild. It might take some "dancing" but you'll find your place. Above all, love your stepchild as if he/she were your own. The rest will fall into place.

i had a step mom "equivalent" (my dad and her were together for 8 years and lived together for 6 but never official got married) from the age of 7-15. i called her by her first name. she wasn't a horrible person to me and honestly she introduced me to some very different things than my own mom would (mostly girly things) but we were never super close. i also had a step sister who i HATED all 8 years bc she was seriously a mini single white female type and soooooooo annoying.

my step mom never took a super active role in my life but just as much as she had to since my parents had 50/50 custody so i did spend time with her. however, like i said we were never super super close. i dont remember telling her i loved her or vice versa. she was around and i liked her for the most part.

my dad and her had a bad break up and she hated my dad after tht. my older brother and i would go visit her (in our old house) but she would just bad tlak our dad the whole time so we stopped talking to her. it's now been close to 15 years since we've spoke and i am fine with that.

i also have a step dad and he came into my life when i was 18. he is a great guy and helps me out and is an AMAZING papa to my son. most importantly i respect him bc he treats my mom great and has made her really happy. i call him on fathers day and etc but i just call him by his first name. if for some reason him and my mom broke up, i would still talk to him.

i am also a step mom myself and have been for almost 4 years now. i LOVE my step son and treat him the same as i treat my 2 1/2 year old. he was a little over a year old when my husband and i got together so he doesnt remember a world without me. he and i are VERY close. he has even told me he wishes that i was his mom... which both warms and breaks my heart (bc i wish his mom would stop being so self centered and be a better mom to him so he didnt have to wish another person was his mom). he calls me by my name but sometimes he will call me "mama" but usually just being silly. he knows i am his other mom and we do tlak about that but i do not ask him to call me mom.

i plan on us always being super close bc i do not show favoritism nor do i resent the fact that i am helping to raise someone's child. i am VERY involved, i meet with hist eachers, communicate with teachers, communicate with his mom (good and bad), i enroll him in sports/gymnastics, i read him stories, etc. like i said, i treat him as if he were my own. we always tell each other we love each other and i try to let him know just how special he is.

What I like about my step-dad: He genuinely cares. He always tried to be a good parent.

What I don't like: He tries to take the place of my dad (and I didn't even care for my dad) - it's fine to have another "dad" but don't try to be a replacement!, he doesn't understand boundaries, he isn't respectful to my mom. And, now that I'm a mom myself, he doesn't understand to back off and let me parent my own kids when he's around.

My ex-step-dad raised me. He was married to my mom from the time that I was 5 until I was 26 years old, and he is a very good man. He treated me like a daughter, yet was always respectful of my relationship with my dad. He was every bit as involved in my life as my mom, and more involved than my dad was. He had/has personality quirks (don't we all?) that bugged me, especially when I was a teenager, but I loved him even during those more challenging years. Now, even though he and my mom have been divorced for 13 or 14 years, my brother and I help take care of him. He has MS and is blind. He will always be a very important part of our family.

I had two step-dads growing up but my first step-dad was like my real dad since he raised me. I also had a step-mom and my husband has a step-dad and step-mom that are of course my in-laws. The one most important thing that I've seen in everyone is whether they treated me like one of theirs or not. My dad treated me like one of his because he married my mom when I was a toddler. My other step-dad either yelled at me or ignored me. My step-mom hated me because she didn't think my dad should treat me like his when he wasn't my biological father. She came around though and eventually treated me like her own. My husband's step-mom married his dad when he was 11 but makes sure that we're all aware of our position in the family. He has two brothers with her and his dad and it's very clear that we're the steps and need to stay an arms length away from their family. It's heartbreaking! We have 5 kids and his brothers have none and it's still that way. They're the family and we're the steps and we're reminded every time we're around them. My husband's step-dad treats us all like we're his kids. We even forget that we're the steps. =) That's my pet peive. I don't like being treated like I'm a second class citizen because the step is married to my or my husband's biological parent.

First of all not all step parents are evil, while I know there are those who are and have had friends who had evil ones, I was/am one of the lucky ones.

My Other Mom (sorry step has such a negative association and I can't stand it). She is kind, caring, easy to talk to, she is by far the best listener I know. She always (married my dad when I was six) treated me as her own. They waited to have children so my siblings are much younger than I am. So I was an only child of hers for a long time...even after my siblings were born I was still her kid. She introduces me (then and now) as her daughter, it makes me so proud that she truly deaply loves me. And now I have even more love for her because my kids adore her as much as I did/do! She's always been straight with me. I really can't say anything she did wrong...yea we had growing pains when I was little, I was daddy's little girl and a HUGE handful.

My other dad...AMAZING man. I am so proud to call him my dad. He has never treated me differently from his son (step brother) and my sibling he has with my mom. He too has been my confidant. I guess the thing I respect about him most is he never gave up on me...I was horrible to him when he first married my mom, much more so with him than I was with my other mom.

I am truly lucky to have four parents who love me and I know I can count on them anytime. When I have exciting news or need a shoulder to lean...I usually go to them first.

My bio-parents are wonderful too, don't get me wrong. However the three of us are all EXACTLY alike and we have a difficult time communicating, we assume too much.

Your kid is young. There is going to be turmoil under the best of circumstances. Your child can't grasp the adult relationships in the world around him. Relationships between a child and anyone else take time and work.
I had a fabulous step father. I guess I'm lucky, but I really loved him.
I had a pretty okay step mother. She was jealous of me and my sister. She was jealous of anyone in my dad's family including his own mother and siblings. If she wasn't the sole center of his world 24 hours a day, we all paid for it. Especially my dad. But he stayed married and devoted to her until the day he died. When my sister and I had our children, she crocheted beautiful baby blankets and made things for them. We were gracious to her. There just never was a real bond though, by any means. We went through the motions and I'm not sorry we did. She was married to our dad, we didn't have much choice. We didn't want to cause trouble for HIM.
I've been a step mother. My stepsons didn't like me at all. The oldest one was a gem and really sweet to me before long, but the youngest was a hold-out. He was very protective of his mother who after 12 years of divorce when I came along still had no job, no boyfriend, no life. Somehow, that was all my fault and there I was, thinking we could all get along and she wasn't having any of it.
Blended families are difficult at best.
All I know is you can't try to force anything. That never works.

Being divorced myself, I know that it's hard for kids to transition back and forth between parents. It kind of comes with the territory. Especially for little ones, even if there is no prospective step parent involved.

Just my opinion.

My stepmother drank a lot. I was expected to care for her children and had to stay out of school to do so much of the time. I wasn't allowed to get a job because of how much they were at the bar. My dad beat my little brother with a belt at 6 months old. I took him into my bed and kept him with me for 3 years until I could leave home. She didn't take me to school leaving me to walk 2 miles in the snow, rain, cold, and I ended up with frostbite once because of it. She also lied to my dad telling him that I was lazy and didn't clean. I did most of what did get done. On the rare occasion she cleaned house she stunk of body odor so bad I choked when coming home and finding her that way. My dad came home from the bar with her one night while I was doing dishes. He threw me on the floor and beat me because of her lies.

My stepmother was a massive pig, didn't work for many YEARS, stayed on welfare and didn't actually marry my dad for a long time so she could get the welfare. In the end, after 28 years with my father she took a lover into his home while he was dying in a nursing home.