If you’ve ever been around a teen aged girl who is about to turn 16, you know that it is a time full of excitement, anxiety, anticipation, trepidation, all that. Then if you take that and double it, this is just where things started in our house at this memorable time. Complicate this with the fact that our girls only get along about 1/16th of the time and then try to dance the dance of not treading on their Mother’s territory too much and now you begin to get the flavor of what this time was like for me.
One of our girls had been talking about this birthday for nearly three years. In her mind she had created some vision in her head of a magnificent Ivanka Trump style coming out party or something. As we got closer to the actual time to start planning exactly what we were going to do by way of celebration, the first hurdle was bursting that inflated balloon of hers. For many reasons, we just weren’t able or of the mind to go broke throwing them a party. So after seeing them through this revelation, we attempted several times to actually sit down as a family and discuss the possibilities. Each time, an argument would arise out of the differing opinions Father and each daughter had of what they really wanted to do. My husband and I suggested that we impose a deadline, and that the first thing which needed to happen was these two sit down and come up with a list of names of those they wanted to include. Double the people, double the space required, double the food, double the expense etc. So they sat and attempted to work together on it, ended up working independently on it, fought over it, combined lists, hacked away and finally came up with a list of boys and girls to invite to something. Ok.
Next we threw around some ideas. As we discussed different activities and places we thought kids would want to go, and that we could afford, each idea one girl came up with, the other would shoot down. I noticed one of our daughters (the shooter) who usually speaks her mind, was getting more and more quiet during this process. My feelers were up. The issue for us was that where we live, there is a very limited number of venues for party’s like this, and though just half an hour away there are many more possibilities, that made it inconvenient for parents to provide transportation etc. besides the shooter shot down all the destination ideas her sister came up with so what we settled on was this. We would allow the girls to each pick a friend or two and we would rent them a stretch to take them to the mall down the highway for a day of fun and shopping. Dad would follow in a separate car and hang out at the mall sort of keeping tabs but not interfering. After that, we would allow them to invite all the girls on the list out to dinner at our country club. Then we would go back to our place, where they could have the guys over for snacks, games and movies in our rec room, out by midnight. Then the girls could sleep over.
There were a lot of other elements to this but you get the gist of it. Due to their inability to work together, they had now procrastinated to the point where we just hoped people could come. There was no longer time to send out invitations so the girls did the word of mouth at school deal. Once they waded through the hurt feelings and believe it or not, confrontations from girls who hadn’t been invited. These kids now a days…would you ever have dreamt of saying anything to someone demanding an explanation as to why you weren’t invited to their party? Unbelievable.
Now to the subject of the girls’ Mother. Maybe partially because she didn’t know what to do or where to start, maybe because it wasn’t as big a deal to her as it seemed to be to the girls, maybe because of affordability maybe a little of all those things…the girls’ Mother seemed disengaged in the process. One of the girls came to me and said their Mother wanted to take them shopping for little gift bags for the party. The things she was talking about getting were, in the opinion of our daughter, like little girl stuff. I nodded an understanding but said, you know, maybe you could throw a couple of other ideas at your Mom, still get her involved, but sort of alter her course. I said give her a break, she’s trying. So the idea of a cake came up, maybe their Mom could provide that but it seemed that between the girls I picked up on the fact they thought it was not a good idea to ask her. It seemed their Mother was getting her feelings hurt and I was told she was making comments like ” it sounds like your Step Mother has it all handled”. Well great! This is probably the most negative thing you’ll read from me about my Step kids’ Mother. But this 16th birthday illustrates a pattern I have seen repeatedly from her. It’s called in some circles passive aggressive. To not take action, then wait for others to feel pressed to do something…anything…then come back with negative comments and criticisms which serve no purpose but to make everyone feel bad, is an all too familiar methodology of hers. This is where time and again, though it is difficult and painful, I just flat choose to take the higher road. The kids do NOT need me ragging on their Mother. We had asked if their Mom would like to bring her significant other (who we really like by the way) and help us host this get together at our house, which is by far more able to accommodate large groups of people than her place is, but she declined saying that she thought she might be out of town. Well unfortunately, as it turns out, he lost his Father shortly before the girls’ birthday, so it was necessary for them to be with his Mother at this time and that was completely understandable. So we made sure their Mother and her friend knew they were invited for Birthday dinner and they did attend it. They even sat with us and my husband’s parents and it went just fine. Anyway, I suggested that the girls start a dialog with their Mother on how they should wear their hair, what they should wear etc., trying to get her back into the mix. This seemed to work well, she ended up making them hair and make-up appointments and getting involved that way. So as you can see, sometimes I really have to work at helping the girls and their Mother find a way. I do it for the girls, I do it for their Mother and it’s ok no one ever really notices or knows, if it works to promote harmony then I’m happy.
Prior to the party I decorated the house, I came up with a special cake design, a cell phone with all kinds of text short hands on it, it really turned out cool. An inside joke as I complain at the amount of time they spend on their phones all the time. Hopefully the girls appreciated the trouble I went to on it, though I doubt it. I do hope they remember it though. I went out and got a slew of party snacks. Cleaned cleaned cleaned. My Mother sent a bunch of the coolest balloon bouquets to decorate with too. The day had arrived! Limo shows up, one friend of theirs runs a half hour late! A half hour! I’m pretty sure my look said it all when she bounced in and said sorry, then bounced outside like it was no big deal. Ahhhhh. Photos and off they go. I spent the next few hours finalizing preparations, forgetting ice cream for the cake and pulling myself and our baby together. To the club we went and we all had a nice dinner. The girls were all anxious to get back to the house because boys were supposed to arrive at a certain time. And now this gets us to the shank of the evening.
Remember me saying how quiet one of the girls had become during the initial planning phases? I should have known it was a sign of trouble to come. She took me aside one day before the party and told me of her concerns.
We twins are so very different. If they weren’t related, they would never choose to be friends. They run in vastly different circles, are petty and ugly to each other often, have different interests, likes and dislikes, tastes, styles what have you. And I’d say one is probably more popular than the other, though at times I’m not sure it’s for great reasons! Anyway, she shared with me a story from back before I knew them, of a time when they had tried to have separate birthday parties at their Mom’s house. Apparently most all the kids she invited came, no one her sister invited came, and it was hurtful and devastating to her sister. She was sort of afraid of a repeat incident. I listened and told her I could appreciate how she might worry, but that unfortunately there isn’t a way to shield someone from hurt like that. But hopefully now that they were all older, things might go better. Well it wasn’t exactly for the same reasons, but it didn’t go better. In fact, in spite of all the planning on our part, the bottom line was that our girls’ inability to get along and pettiness toward each other caused their party to become a disaster.
We had instructed the girls that their party was to be contained downstairs and to the main level only as needed; and that after the boys left, all sleeping was to happen down in the basement in those rooms. We might as well have sang the National Anthem for as much difference as our instructions made to them. The first thing that happened was no boys came. None. Then one boy came. He was the “boy friend” of the daughter we were concerned about. Of course she had insisted to her sister that she not invite her “boy friend” as she didn’t want it to turn into them as a couple and everyone else being ignored. Then what did she do? Proceeded to act just that way when her boyfriend arrived. Here we go. This boy, whose personality struck me to be just one level more exciting than a card board cutout, stood in a corner downstairs we heard, interacted with no one, and when he came up for the cake cutting, I had to force him to participate. Of course in his defense I guess, there he was, the only boy amidst all those girls. Hey it could have gone one of two ways. He could have had a ball and really played it to the hilt or he could dummy up, which is the route he took. Ok, so he finally has about all the fun he can take and bolts. We were left now with the girls and the drama which ensued.
We put the baby to bed and sat in the main level living room. One by one, our girls took turns coming to us to complain about the other. On and on and on. What was occurring downstairs meanwhile, was a division between two groups of kids who didn’t care for each other in the least. To be certain, it would have taken a very socially skilled individual or two to make the situation work. Our girls not only didn’t posses those skills, but because of their own actions, negativity and immaturity toward each other, they made it so much worse than it would have been already. If you were one of the girls who had been invited, it wasn’t as if our girls were discreet in any way about their hostility toward each other and one another’s friends; it must have been extremely uncomfortable for them. My husband and I were embarrassed for our girls, for ourselves, and hurt that we went to all the trouble and expense to make this a nice memory for them only to have it turn out like this. As it became clear the whole night was going to go like this, we finally pulled our girls aside and discretely told them to put their big girl pants on, go down there and act like hosts, stop the foolishness and that we would deal with them later. In disgust and quite angry, after a while we went to bed.
We woke up the next morning to find that the girls had split up into camps and regardless of our instructions, one had brought all her buddies up to the floor where all our bedrooms are and right across the hall from the nursery. Not the plan. The others had stayed down in the basement. So much for our privacy, as apparently they needed an entire physical floor between them to be able to finish the evening and that was more important than our instructions. I sat out some breakfast items and puttered through my morning as they drug themselves around, ate…some spoke, a couple said thank you, some had left early, some during the night I guess, most said nothing to us. Don’t even get me started on the lack of social graces most of these young people have. I blog about that later.
Many things were said that day after our guests all left. Not all of it bears mentioning. Let’s suffice it to say we told our girls we had never been so disappointed in them as we were that night. Their nastiness and hatefulness toward one another was over the top, unfortunate and now a matter of public record. Lord knows what those kids had to say at school the following Monday. That was the girls’ problem. And I’m sure it was a problem. We told them this behavior would no longer be tolerated. It had gotten completely out of hand. They had been an embarrassment to themselves, to each other, to our family and owed their guests and us an apology; not to mention the fact that neither one of them needed to ever mention again having a party in our home at our expense, wasn’t going to happen.
We have no idea whether or not when the twins grow up, they’ll have anything to do with one another. We hope they do. They may not. In the meantime, we try to urge them to mature past their negativity and petty jealousy. They either will or they won’t.
Lessons learned :
- It doesn’t matter how hard you try sometimes, in the end your kids are in charge of their own behavior. All you can do is try to provide what you can, teach what you can and be proud when you can…deal with your disappointments as they come and love them inspite of those.
- If you have kids who don’t get along, you might think twice before you create a scenario where their animosity becomes public. Had we had any idea what we were in for…
- Sometimes, as Step Mother you really are the peace keeper. It’s ok, someone has to do it. Maybe you’ll be remembered for it maybe you won’t. Point is, as the StepMom , you have a unique opportunity to have a positive influence on what goes on with your family. At times its easier for the kids to talk to you than it is for them to talk to either of their other parents. Up to you whether or not and how you utilize the opportunity.
- You can’t save people from themselves and you can’t save your kids from learning some of life’s hardest lessons. Though it’s sort of like being made to watch someone you care about fall off a cliff, I’m not sure saving them these life lessons would be beneficial to them at all. It’s hard to watch though.
Good Step Mom
