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It's not easy being Step-Mother

Parenting
 Photo; Courtesy

“I think I was very naïve about what marrying a man with children would entail. I thought the children would immediately like me and we would be one big, happy family but I was so wrong. It takes a lot of time and effort to get to the point where your step-children can tolerate you, let alone like you. Then sometimes, just when you think you have made progress, they do something that reminds you they will never love you like their mother. I have learned to lower my expectations. No one is ever really prepared to deal with being a step-parent,” says Wendy Malinda, the founder of Living In Step Africa, an organization that coaches women and men dating or married to people with children from previous relationships.

“Sometimes when you are young, you fall in love and think you have met your soulmate and you start building a life together only to grow older and realize that the perfect union is not so perfect,” this is what Wendy explains happened between her husband and his ex. Although he and the mother of his children never got married, they had two children. They drifted apart after some years and they went their own way.

Shortly afterwards in 2011, Wendy met her husband Tony now 41. She says they started out as friends but fell in love. Wendy, now 31, says she was enjoying a flourishing career in IT and marriage was never really something on her mind.  They started out as friends but they soon fell in love, were discussing marriage and the wedding bells rang in 2014.

“He used to talk about his kids even before we started officially dating and although I had never met them, they seemed like really nice children – you know every parent says their children are the best. Even when our relationship got serious, I didn’t meet the children and it bothered me but I am not pushy so I said to myself he will let me meet them when he is ready. One day after dinner, he said we could go home and meet them and when I did, it was pretty awkward. There was no formal introduction, I just introduced myself as daddy’s friend and there was an awkward silence after that. The kids went about watching TV and that was that. There were a lot of awkward silences to follow and although it was uncomfortable, I got used to it and they also realised I wasn’t going anywhere.”

Wendy has two step-children – a 16-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl. She says she thought the girl would warm up to her quickly because “being young, I could relate to her like a buddy and I am up to speed with what kind of things young girls like. For example, I know who Justin Bieber is, so I thought she would see me as a cool buddy but that didn’t happen. It took time. With the boy it was even worse because, as the older one, he felt the need to play the role of a protector and to stay loyal to his mother. So sometimes when we would be doing a fun activity and his mother would call, his tone would all-of-a sudden change and he would act like he is not enjoying spending time with me. At first that used to hurt me but I realized it is not personal. Children get conflicted and they do not want to make their mother feel like a step-mother is going to replace them.”

Two steps forward then three steps back

Step parenting is sometimes about taking two steps forward, only to take three steps back, Wendy says. She says once she received a call from her step-daughter and they chatted about how her day was and it seemed they were making significant progress so she said: “I love you.” Wendy says the silence was awkward, “The silence that followed was loud and it seemed like it lasted forever. I just hang up the phone and made a note in my head never to say that again.”

The children stay with Wendy and her husband full-time and this brings the question of how to discipline, or whether to discipline at all. Wendy says she initially used to leave the disciplining to her husband but as she started to play a more active role in the children’s life, she earned her stripes to discipline too.

“I do not believe in spanking children. I will just have a talk with them and tell them if they have done something wrong. If it is something major, I’ll talk to my husband about it and he will pick it up from there. Initially it was hard to tell the kids to do chores. There was a time I asked my step-daughter to clean the dishes and the eyes she gave me just scared me. They were piercing. It was like she was saying – what is this woman telling me? I had to change tact quickly and instead I told her if she washed the dishes, she would get an ice-cream treat. It worked, but I soon realized that was not a sustainable way of getting things done. For how long can you bribe kids?”

Cordial relationship with biological mother

When it comes to family events like the boy’s visiting day, she says it was a very uncomfortable affair in the beginning and she had to reach out to his mother and ask if they could alternate visiting days. “At first, we would all turn up for his visiting day. My husband and I would go with our food and his mother would turn up too with relatives and some food. I felt like the odd one out and the time could not seem to pass fast enough. Now that we alternate days, it is a lot better. Thankfully the children’s mother is a decent woman so we do not have tiffs. I am also not a drama queen. We are not going out of our way to go for coffee dates or anything, but we are not feuding either. We are cordial.”

Wendy says there will always be people who question and look down on blended families but she says she takes it in her stride.

“I sometimes meet someone I knew from my university days in the supermarket and I’m with the kids and they will ask how it is that I have such big children. I simply say they are my children from another mother and that shuts them up.”

LISA courses for blended families

Living In Step Africa offers six-week sessions that last an hour-and-a-half each and cost a total of Sh30,000. Wendy is a certified step-family coach. She says most of her clients are women between the age of 25 and 35 who are married to or are dating men with children. Wendy has developed a curriculum for blended families and during sessions, participants are taught how to deal with the ex, how to discipline children and to discuss finances openly because this is one of the leading causes of break-ups.

There are some people who prefer one-on-one sessions which cost Sh3,000 per consultation.

Wendy’s vision for LISA is to take it across borders and build it to a place where it can be her primary job. “As the A in the name LISA suggests, I want to open branches across Africa, specifically in Uganda and Nigeria.”

Wendy intends to get children of her own in due time and she has this to say as we conclude, “I am not naïve anymore. I know the love between a biological mother and her child cannot be compared to that with a step-mom. But that being said, when I have my children, I will make a conscious effort to be fair to every child.”

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