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bonusmom, Children, datingAdad, school, stepchildren, stepmom
H (age 9), sweetly: “BB, will you wake me up for school tomorrow?”
Me: “Of course.”
H: “So the way my mom does it…”
Me: Growling inside, am ready to get up and go. But I’m supposed to be the grown up and figure the child may benefit from continuity of care.
“My mom sits by my bedside, then puts her hand on my chest and says it’s time to wake up honey. “
Me: (Experiencing a strong polarity response): Note to self. Use any sweet word but honey.
H: “…then she says something motivating.”
Me: Ooh. Tomorrow is the first day of dance class. This may actually work nicely.
The alarm goes off at 6:15a.m. I wake up groggy from staying up late the night before (probably to Google search something related to child care), and drag myself up to her room.
At her bedside:
Me (NOT siting at her bedside) Kiss her cheek gently and say: Sweetie, it’s time to wake up.
She slithers in bed, and after a few minutes finally partially opens her eyes waiting for the motivating sentence.
Me: “It’s dance day.” Boom. Who said this stuff is hard?
H: “Can I skip school and just go to dance?”
Me: “Wouldn’t that be nice? No love. How about you see dance as an after-school treat? Is this waking up routine supposed to last so long? The world is passing us by child. Let’s do this.
H: “Well that’s not very encouraging. My mom tells me something I can look forward to immediately.”
Me (Throwing away the notion of continuity of care) start walking to the door: “Well you can look forward to breakfast.”
H: “But that’s not motivating.”
Me: “See you downstairs.”
Note to self, do not get involved with wake-up routine, EVER.
Bahar Anooshahr 
Ahhh, the joys of “well my mom does this”
I know Laura. Who knew a grown up could be so affected by this simple sentence. Here’s my enlightened self sometimes sees it: they get thrown about from mom’s house to dad’s house. Moving around is hard enough. Now they have to remember each house’s rules too. So they say mom does it this way. What are your thoughts? How do you handle the comparison?
Peanut doesnt get thrown anywhere. We have full custody of her. She throws out “my mommy does it this way…” To show that i am NOT her mom. Everything ive do so far has failed. So i dont know how to deal with it actually. You?
It’s a tricky position we are in. It’s true we are not their moms. And maybe mommy does it differently at her house. We do it our way here. If everyone did things the same way, life would have no surprises 🙂