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#and are not like trying to sabotage him or anything or choose the weirder choices. Like last time there werent that many
beanenigma · 5 years
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Having step-parents - a writing guide on new families - part 2
Cinderella’s  evil stepmother? Having a new mom? Which one really is it? What about a stepfather? Are they always as bad as they sound in media? 
Hi, I’m Isabella and last week I told you about my nine half and step siblings. You can find it HERE. That guide was getting pretty long, so I decided to break it into at least two parts. So today, I’m talking about step-parents. My credentials is I had 6 step-parents along the way. 
Still, as I said in the previous part of the guide, I want to give a disclaimer that this is based on my particular experiences (and my siblings’) and it doesn’t pose the absolute truth - but it’s still more real than what I normally see around. 
Getting a new step-parent is a very interesting process. There is a myriad of aspects that can influence how this experience is going to go: how old you are, how well all of the parts handled the previous divorce (mother, father, child), if said stepparent was involved in some way in the aforementioned divorce, how mature are all of the parts, how willing the stepparent is to accomodate for you, etc. I’m going to try to go over all of the parts, focusing on the roots of this experience, hoping it can be useful in your writings.
Mommy? Daddy?
How your character calls their step-parent is really a matter of how they feel about their step-parent and when they met said step-parent. 
I always feel like it’s so weird characters in books and movies call their step-parents coldly by their names, even if they met these people when they were children. 
In the distant times of 2002, when I was about 5 years old, my dad introduced me to his friend. At the time, he told me to call her aunty Lena. 
Aunty Lena became my step mother months later. She was my darling companion for the next 6 years. She gave birth to my sister and she made sure her two older daughters were nice to me. And I loved her like another mother. I kept calling her Aunty Lena, though, and I still did even when she divorced my dad. Because that’s how she was introduced to me, and it sounded like someone who was family. Because I grew up with her.
Around the same time, mom started dating Luiz, who she introduced to me as Uncle Lu and I later started calling Uncle Lulu (including in front of his employees, which embarrassed him). He would come to live in our house, meaning he would be as close as anyone could be. I never thought of him a new father like I thought of Lena, mostly because I thought him to be sort if weird and uptight. My mom told him this, which made him loosen up which made him ever weirder, but sort of endearing, because I knew he was actually trying to impress me by being more casual. I still call him uncle to this day. 
HOWEVER, later, in the cringy times of 2010, when I was around 12, my dad introduced me to Melissa, who had become my stepmother just recently. Despite loving her two boys - and later my sister -  for the next 6 years, I tried to call her anything other than her name. I tried nicknames, but it never felt natural. My middle sister (Aunty Lena’s daughter) had more success in this area. 
The reason for that is because our new stepmom would pick at any detail she could and continuously sabotage our attempts to feel at home on her house. She never antagonized us directly, but in several occasions it became clear she was competing with us for our dad’s attention. 
Alternatively, I frankly don’t remember when my mom introduced Eddie into our lives, but I’ve been calling him by the nickname from the start. Not having any other children, he walked into our family with open arms. He pampers me and is always getting me stuff and taking me places. I’m not sure I’d call him a new dad - because out of the two of us, I’m the responsible adult - but he surely is my family now. 
Finally, just last year, when I was 20, dad introduced the three of us to my new stepmother, who I have no problem calling by her nickname and that was super kind on accommodating the three of us in her life.  
So as you can see, how your character refers to their step parent depends on a variety of factors, and it’s up to you to choose how it goes in your story. 
Previous divorces
After a couple of divorces, things start to get hairy. Children miss their parents, resent the new step ones, have to addapt to new routines, to seeing their parents less, learn how to deal with this new set of circumstances, including new siblings, new houses, new people. But parents also have messy business going on inside their noggings. 
Sometimes, your current step parent was unvolved in the previous one’s abandonment. When you’re a kid, that hardly matter because people won’t tell you anything and even if they do, you don’t understand what it means. When you’re older, there are decisions to be made. If you’ll take a stand and chose one of the person’s side. 
Previously, I always took my father and mother’s sides. I regret that decision only once in my life, but what’s done it’s done and I know I did the best I could at the time. Your character will be under a lot of pressure from emotional change. He won’t always make the best or most logical choices. But just know that supporting their step-parents when their parents frick up is an option and it should be considered. 
In other times, divorcees might see themselves getting involved with their children’s new siblings that have nothing to do with them. My step mother’s ex-husband grew to really like my youngest sister, for example. These new kinds of families get real complicated really quickly. And taking advantage of that would be a great idea and I’d love to read something like that. 
Maturity
Some people are not ready for the responsibility of receiving a sad child of divorcees into their homes. Some people are not used to a reality where not all children are shared and attention from their betrothed needs to be divided. Or they’re not mature to divide how they feel about their spouse about how they feel about their children or their spouse’s children. 
This section is here because of one of my stepmothers. She frequently competed with me and my sister for my father’s attention, frequently invented plots we it our mother’s would plan against her and her daughter, and one time even vandalized one of my books because she was mad at me. All the while, trying to make me and my middle sister feel bad about not liking her. When my dad divorced her, she constantly tried to guilty my sister (her daughter) into pitying her and spy in my dad - which my super smart 7 year old of a sister refused and told her to get lost.
She was everything that media said she would be. But when I think of her, I’m not angry at her. I never did anything to antagonize her when they were still together. Because I pity her. She’s not evil, she’s not a bad person. She’s just immature and we all knew it. Out of my six experiences, this was the only truly bad one.
But also, no one is obligated to accept this treatment. At one point, I told my dad I loved him and my sisters, but that from that day forward I would not go to this woman’s house again. I was mature enough, at around 18, to separate what I felt about my dad and sister from  what I felt about this woman. And to feel confident in my dad’s love for me to tell him I wasn’t comfortable with this in a non-violent way. And I had the luck that my dad did the same and eventually chose me. Once again, this is not a choice that worked for me and it’s not one  everyone can make.
Certainly it would make things interesting. Want examples? Instead of killing parents, try a hard divorce. Try someone choosing themselves over feeling bad at a house. It doesn’t have to be traumatic to work or feel realistic. 
Accommodation
The main reason for me to love some of the step-parents that I had is because they accommodated me in their lives, in their homes. Like Aunty Lena, who gave me a bed and closet space in her house. Like Uncle Lulu, who got over his distaste for dogs because I loved them so much and wanted one.
Again about my stepnightmare, she would never have a bed for us at our house and refuse to give us closet space. She’d put down matresses for us and they had to be at their daughter’s room and nowhere else we wanted to choose. These were things that at the time didn’t seem like a big deal - we were hardly ever there - but when comparing to the way Aunty Lena treated me, it was clear that something was wrong. 
And this is a major thing I think good step-parents do and it breaks my heart in fiction when it goes under appreaciated. Because it’s no easy feat to open your heart and house to a little person who is literally the product of a love that came before you. And to do it graciously, treat them as your own and help provide for them is such a great effort that I would love to see it praised more. 
My sister’s grandmother and my ex-ex-stepmother’s sister
Getting new step parents doesn’t stop at having step and half siblings. It means that you have a whole new step family. Step grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and everything else.
It gets confusing so easily when telling stories. I’ve grown accustomed to asking people if they want the short version of the long version. If it’s the short version, I say “an old lady did this when I was at their house”. If they agree to the longer version (and they normally do), I say my sister’s grandmother was a german old lady who would make pickles and plant flowers. They ask why is she not my grandmother too, and then I explain the whole three divorces thing. 
This would very much vary from person to person: how easily they get attached to people, if they live with the new family, if they’re welcomed by the new family. In wife #2’s family, all of the aunties and uncles were my a uncles and aunties because I was still a child. Their mother, however, wasn’t my grandmother. She was Mrs. Paula, because I didn’t feel like she felt like I was her grandchild. 
In angry lady’s house, all of her siblings I called by name - because I was older by then and I didn’t feel like they wanted me in the family ( just like said wife). HOWEVER, gossip I heard points that these people were the ones who constantly told this woman off for being rude to me and my sisters and wanted us to stay around. Their children, my sister’s cousins, I love them to death - and I recently found they still love me too. 
So take into consideration all of the family mess that can happen. In a post-apocalyptic environment, for example, I would go looking for some of those people. Just imagine someone trying to leave a resistance for your lost sister’s cousin. The leader doesn’t understand: “this person isn’t even your family”, but they don’t know. 
You never know until you’re in it. 
As I said before, this is a very short guide and it could never encompass the myriad of experiences that compose new types of families, but I did my best. If you feel unsure about any step-situations in your story, shoot me an ask. Also if you have any suggestions on topics you’d like to hear about for your writing. 
And again, I’d really really appreciate any adition you can make with your own experiences.
Happy writing!
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