Is it possible to parent your bio child & Your step child in the same way?

Parenting was harder than usual this December holiday…especially step parenting!

Today the kids went back to school. I cannot tell you how happy I was to wake up to a 5:30am alarm and get back to a family routine for 2024 again…. #honestparenting

We stayed in Joburg this holiday and spent time with family and friends, spent as many days as we could soaking up the sun next to the pool and chilled as hard as we could on the days we didn’t. It was a holiday we wanted and planned for. What I didn’t plan for was how much harder parenting felt with the kids this year. There were days where I would look at Tristan and just tapped our for a few hours. It felt like I needed to talk a 1000 times before the kids would listen and even then it would be a negotiation of WHY before things would get done. I was honestly just tired on some days and then other days the kids would be little angels and I would feel awful for complaining.

My biggest reflection this holiday is HOW DIFFERENTLY I parent my daughter and parent my bonus son. “Is this ok?”

There are ways I can handle situations with my daughter, talk about it and move forward without second guessing myself or worry if I’m overstepping a parenting boundary. I’m her mom and she is my daughter so its clear cut. But, with my bonus son I felt stuck between a rock and a hard place at times. He was with us for 70% of the December holiday and routine with him and for us was completely out of wack, which I think was also a contributing factor. There were moments where I needed to be firm and step in as a parent when Tristan wasn’t around, BUT boy oh boy when Tris was around, I would literally step back, call him and walk away.

My honest moment of utter vulnerability was when I pulled Tristan aside a few weeks ago and told him how I was struggling to show up for Jordi the way I needed to and asked him to help me. I just felt out of sync. I felt out of my depth and didn’t know how to show up as his stepmom. There were HONESTLY certain parenting situations and certain conversations that I felt just needed to be handled by his dad, HIS PARENT. I’ve never felt like this before and it was a blady hard pill to swallow. I felt like I was a crappy stepmom, a snappy partner at times and just felt so out of place and out of control in my own home.

Tristan and I spoke about it A LOT. We are still talking about it. I DON’T KNOW if you can honestly, hand on heart say that you parent your bio kids and step kids the exact same way. Hell, I don’t think parents with blood siblings parent their kids the same way, so why am I struggling with this so much?

Friends, our reflections, after many hours of talking about this was that WE NEED to normalize “single parenting in blended family homes”.

Single parenting in a blended family home?? What do we mean by this?

We mean, that as much as you function as a family unit, as much as you have shared values and show up as a family in every sense of the word, IT IS ALSO important to carve out time and talk about who steps in and steps out when it comes to YOUR CHILD and HIS CHILD in the blended family dynamic. There are just certain things as the parent of YOUR child that you would naturally gravitate towards and from our lens THIS IS OK. It doesn’t separate you as a family. It doesn’t make you any less blended than you are, it just gives you a safe space in your blended home to know you don’t have to have it all figured out for EVERYONE ALL THE TIME. That it is OK if you handle certain situations as a family, as a (step)parent or if you feel you need to pass certain things back to the bio parent to manage and handle and support them in the background.

Be honest with yourself. Be honest with your family and show up in ways that are BEST FOR YOU AND THE KIDS.

That’s what matters at the end of the day. This is what matters in OUR HOME.