Bonding with the New Stepson
Mar 2, 2010 12:13:29 GMT -5
Post by Mikey on Mar 2, 2010 12:13:29 GMT -5
As many of you know, I moved to Texas to be with the girlfriend and try the whole family thing. A small problem, but one that may loom larger on the horizon, has percolated at the house over the past week or so. Was looking for some insight, anything if just a nugget of info to help me with this one.
Moved in with the girlfriend over New Year’s. She's a teacher now working in school administration - that bit may be important later as you try to make sense of all this. Between the two of us, we have three kids. I have a 7 year old daughter and she has a 5 year old girl. They are great, I understand them both perfectly and I can easily deal with them. Her son will be 10 this summer, and she warned me three years ago about how difficult he is. Sure enough, she wasn’t lying. She pointed out to me last night that my disgruntlement with her son is becoming overtly obvious, and she’s really worried that without my full approval, he’s going to end up scarred for life or something. (Particularly given the lack of effort put in on his father’s part on being anything more than a glorified babysitter every other weekend.) I can see where she’s coming from, but I’m not sure to what extent which 1) the resulting damage would actually be and 2) I need to adjust my expectations for him.
I can deal easily with our girls. Being a guy, I’ve learned long ago that females are born insane, so if something happens and I don’t understand them, I can make sense of it. It’s okay if I can’t completely relate with them, because I can pass them off to Mom – she can deal with the little girl drama that comes up twice a week or so. Beyond that, they’re cute, they love me, they’re well behaved, and I can play with them seamlessly.
But our boy… I’m struggling to relate to him. He’s not hugely into sports, which is a step back for our relationship right off top. When I was 10 years old, I was playing organized baseball and basketball, and playing playground football and soccer. I was outside playing sports with my friends all the time, and then I was watching games on TV at night. Not EVERY night, but 2-3 times a week. He doesn’t have as much interest there. He hasn’t had many opportunities to play organized sports (due to his father, long story again) but he is gonna play flag football this spring. We practice together outside a couple times a week, something he really seems to like. I think there’s some serious potential for us to bond on this front. He likes watching football, but comes and goes on other sports. Nevertheless, I think I've got him moving the right direction here. (At least from my perspective.) Like me, he likes video games. Unlike me, he's not much of a sport gamer. I'm bored by most of the stuff he plays.
Elsewhere, more gaps. I can’t relate to much of the stuff he is interested in. He likes Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and Pokemon. He dresses the whole skateboarder style and keeps his hair on the shaggy side, both things out of my circle so to speak. His mom encourages him to find the things that interest him and fit his personality, and I think that’s great. But being the stubborn, like the things like I like guy that I am, those are dead zones to me. And I can’t get past the fact right now that had I been around his entire life, I would either have a better grasp on these things or he would’ve morphed further into my likeness. I always wanted a son to raise as my own – I now have this chance (to some extent) and there’s little natural connection. I feel like I need to meet him in the middle on these things, but I don’t wanna fake it. His mom loves the whole Harry Potter thing, too – my way of interacting with her on that is to blow her off and tell her she’s a dork. She gets that humor, but I can’t deal with him in the same fashion without risking hurting his feelings. The girls have good senses of humor already; he doesn't. He's literal about EVERYTHING.
The girlfriend has shown me several of his writing assignments from school. Anytime he has the chance to write, he writes about me. About us going to GameWorks and me and him figuring out how to get a gazillion tickets so he could get some stuffed animal. About the day we cleaned the fireplace together. About playing in the snow together. He ADORES me. But at the same time, the way he expresses himself drives me crazy. He’s a hugger. That’s great for my girls – I love that from my girls. But we’re supposed to be GUYS. The two primary make relationships in my life – my dad and my brother – I don’t think I’ve shared a serious hug with either of them in 10 years. So again, something I’m not familiar with. A hug before bed, that’s one thing. But an out of the blue hug with an accompanying “Mike, you’re awesome” verbal caption and I just wanna tell him to get the hell off me. Gimme a fist bump or a little punch on the shoulder, not a hug. Three paragraphs about him, and three ways I am struggling to connect, as I keep thinking of myself when I was in 4th grade and we’re NOTHING ALIKE. If I was 10 years old again, and we went to the same school, we would DEFINITELY be hanging out with different friends.
On top of all this, he’s been diagnosed with some form of depression (not ADD, that’s important, I think), the doc says it seems to be related to his strained relationship with his father. Thus, she says my influence on him is huge, something to the effect of my role in his life being to show him how to be a man. His mom explained to me that while he’s on the intellectual level of a 6th grader, he’s got the emotional state of a 5-6 year old. If mentally stimulated in school, he’s top of his class. However, when he gets stuck with a boring teacher – like he does this year – he gets bored, his grades tank, and he gets in all kinds of trouble for generally being obnoxious. We can’t make the ten minute drive from school to home without him making stupid noises and me having to tell him to shut up. Then after I do that, he will quietly be obnoxious attempting to get the girls to laugh or get them in trouble. Rinse, repeat. Punishment does no good. He KNOWS he’s being stupid and will stop, then will start right back up. Punish him, and the problem is solved for the day, and then it picks up again the next day. And he recognizes it the whole time.
There are many times where he talks way too much, and often with me, he’ll come to me to talk about something and go right to the middle of the conversation. I compare it to doing a science experiment without research or hypothesis. For instance, we’d been playing Mario Kart a few weeks back. I stagger out of bed half dead in the morning to make everyone breakfast and he comes into the kitchen and says, “You know where the turn goes to the left, I think there’s a hole in the trees there and you can shoot thru.” Nothing inherently wrong about anything he just said, but having zero context to what he’s trying to get across, it drives me crazy. His mom will tell him to slow down, back up, and explain himself. I don’t feel comfortable doing that, so I just nod and agree and go on about my business. He’s so observant, and I can often see the wheels in his brain turning during a conversation. Before we moved out here, he drove his mom crazy with all the details, “Who’s gonna sleep where, where are we gonna move such and such, where will sister’s toys go?” Hilarious, because his mom is EXACTLY the same way regarding planning the tiniest of things (whether it’s scheduling a day at DisneyWorld or simply grocery shopping at Target), but so much of his thought process is so irrelevant that I just want to tell him to chill out and not worry about it, but I don’t want to suffocate his independent thinking. He’s completely random with these kind of things and I guess it just throws my laid back personality all off whack.
At heart, he’s a great kid. A really smart kid who can probably do whatever he wants in life so long as he finds something and sticks with it. I want to be a positive influence on him, but I don’t know how to make the connection. I’ve really only had to deal with him for 10 weeks now, but I’m starting to feel some pressure. After reading all of this, I think I'm coming off a bit unrealistic and maybe a little selfish, but I don't know.
Sorry this is so long… just had to get it all down as a starting point. Any advice or suggestions or anything?
Moved in with the girlfriend over New Year’s. She's a teacher now working in school administration - that bit may be important later as you try to make sense of all this. Between the two of us, we have three kids. I have a 7 year old daughter and she has a 5 year old girl. They are great, I understand them both perfectly and I can easily deal with them. Her son will be 10 this summer, and she warned me three years ago about how difficult he is. Sure enough, she wasn’t lying. She pointed out to me last night that my disgruntlement with her son is becoming overtly obvious, and she’s really worried that without my full approval, he’s going to end up scarred for life or something. (Particularly given the lack of effort put in on his father’s part on being anything more than a glorified babysitter every other weekend.) I can see where she’s coming from, but I’m not sure to what extent which 1) the resulting damage would actually be and 2) I need to adjust my expectations for him.
I can deal easily with our girls. Being a guy, I’ve learned long ago that females are born insane, so if something happens and I don’t understand them, I can make sense of it. It’s okay if I can’t completely relate with them, because I can pass them off to Mom – she can deal with the little girl drama that comes up twice a week or so. Beyond that, they’re cute, they love me, they’re well behaved, and I can play with them seamlessly.
But our boy… I’m struggling to relate to him. He’s not hugely into sports, which is a step back for our relationship right off top. When I was 10 years old, I was playing organized baseball and basketball, and playing playground football and soccer. I was outside playing sports with my friends all the time, and then I was watching games on TV at night. Not EVERY night, but 2-3 times a week. He doesn’t have as much interest there. He hasn’t had many opportunities to play organized sports (due to his father, long story again) but he is gonna play flag football this spring. We practice together outside a couple times a week, something he really seems to like. I think there’s some serious potential for us to bond on this front. He likes watching football, but comes and goes on other sports. Nevertheless, I think I've got him moving the right direction here. (At least from my perspective.) Like me, he likes video games. Unlike me, he's not much of a sport gamer. I'm bored by most of the stuff he plays.
Elsewhere, more gaps. I can’t relate to much of the stuff he is interested in. He likes Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and Pokemon. He dresses the whole skateboarder style and keeps his hair on the shaggy side, both things out of my circle so to speak. His mom encourages him to find the things that interest him and fit his personality, and I think that’s great. But being the stubborn, like the things like I like guy that I am, those are dead zones to me. And I can’t get past the fact right now that had I been around his entire life, I would either have a better grasp on these things or he would’ve morphed further into my likeness. I always wanted a son to raise as my own – I now have this chance (to some extent) and there’s little natural connection. I feel like I need to meet him in the middle on these things, but I don’t wanna fake it. His mom loves the whole Harry Potter thing, too – my way of interacting with her on that is to blow her off and tell her she’s a dork. She gets that humor, but I can’t deal with him in the same fashion without risking hurting his feelings. The girls have good senses of humor already; he doesn't. He's literal about EVERYTHING.
The girlfriend has shown me several of his writing assignments from school. Anytime he has the chance to write, he writes about me. About us going to GameWorks and me and him figuring out how to get a gazillion tickets so he could get some stuffed animal. About the day we cleaned the fireplace together. About playing in the snow together. He ADORES me. But at the same time, the way he expresses himself drives me crazy. He’s a hugger. That’s great for my girls – I love that from my girls. But we’re supposed to be GUYS. The two primary make relationships in my life – my dad and my brother – I don’t think I’ve shared a serious hug with either of them in 10 years. So again, something I’m not familiar with. A hug before bed, that’s one thing. But an out of the blue hug with an accompanying “Mike, you’re awesome” verbal caption and I just wanna tell him to get the hell off me. Gimme a fist bump or a little punch on the shoulder, not a hug. Three paragraphs about him, and three ways I am struggling to connect, as I keep thinking of myself when I was in 4th grade and we’re NOTHING ALIKE. If I was 10 years old again, and we went to the same school, we would DEFINITELY be hanging out with different friends.
On top of all this, he’s been diagnosed with some form of depression (not ADD, that’s important, I think), the doc says it seems to be related to his strained relationship with his father. Thus, she says my influence on him is huge, something to the effect of my role in his life being to show him how to be a man. His mom explained to me that while he’s on the intellectual level of a 6th grader, he’s got the emotional state of a 5-6 year old. If mentally stimulated in school, he’s top of his class. However, when he gets stuck with a boring teacher – like he does this year – he gets bored, his grades tank, and he gets in all kinds of trouble for generally being obnoxious. We can’t make the ten minute drive from school to home without him making stupid noises and me having to tell him to shut up. Then after I do that, he will quietly be obnoxious attempting to get the girls to laugh or get them in trouble. Rinse, repeat. Punishment does no good. He KNOWS he’s being stupid and will stop, then will start right back up. Punish him, and the problem is solved for the day, and then it picks up again the next day. And he recognizes it the whole time.
There are many times where he talks way too much, and often with me, he’ll come to me to talk about something and go right to the middle of the conversation. I compare it to doing a science experiment without research or hypothesis. For instance, we’d been playing Mario Kart a few weeks back. I stagger out of bed half dead in the morning to make everyone breakfast and he comes into the kitchen and says, “You know where the turn goes to the left, I think there’s a hole in the trees there and you can shoot thru.” Nothing inherently wrong about anything he just said, but having zero context to what he’s trying to get across, it drives me crazy. His mom will tell him to slow down, back up, and explain himself. I don’t feel comfortable doing that, so I just nod and agree and go on about my business. He’s so observant, and I can often see the wheels in his brain turning during a conversation. Before we moved out here, he drove his mom crazy with all the details, “Who’s gonna sleep where, where are we gonna move such and such, where will sister’s toys go?” Hilarious, because his mom is EXACTLY the same way regarding planning the tiniest of things (whether it’s scheduling a day at DisneyWorld or simply grocery shopping at Target), but so much of his thought process is so irrelevant that I just want to tell him to chill out and not worry about it, but I don’t want to suffocate his independent thinking. He’s completely random with these kind of things and I guess it just throws my laid back personality all off whack.
At heart, he’s a great kid. A really smart kid who can probably do whatever he wants in life so long as he finds something and sticks with it. I want to be a positive influence on him, but I don’t know how to make the connection. I’ve really only had to deal with him for 10 weeks now, but I’m starting to feel some pressure. After reading all of this, I think I'm coming off a bit unrealistic and maybe a little selfish, but I don't know.
Sorry this is so long… just had to get it all down as a starting point. Any advice or suggestions or anything?
rant, but suburban kids nowadays just don't think of going out in the back yard to play sports, or get on bikes to go to go to a nearby field or park. Organized sports and summer camps are popular, but in my development, which has an outdoor basketball half-court and an open field, kids only get into a game of basketball or softball if a dad organizes it. Video games, internet, and cable tv tend to keep kids indoors, and concerns about safety discourage parents from letting elementary school kids room the neighborhood. My son plays sports so much that he's very fit, but some of his friends are expanding like chia pets. When they come over on a nice day we actually lock them out of the house to get them away from the TV and fridge. 
