| Are you failing in the area of step-parenting?
Some of you have been a step-parent to a child or even a couple of children for a number of years and even now, it is not working out the way you have expected. You may have even felt like 'Why am I even bothering?', or 'When will things start to get better?'
The answer to these questions and some of the ones you may have that you are not voicing out to anyone can be dependent on what your expectations were to begin with. Then again what you may see as you failing could have absolutely nothing to do with you.
The child/children may not want to give you a chance so all your efforts may seem to you as though you are not trying enough and it's actually no fault of your own. If you had the expectation that when you become a part of this new family and become a step-parent to your partners children, that they would automatically like you because you are a nice person, you may need to think again.
The process of the children accepting you as their step-mother or step-father can be a long tedious one. You have to give the process time. This could also be longer for one child and shorter for the other. Patience will have to come into play here. Allowing the children to accept you in their own time will help them to not feel as though they are being forced to accept a situation that was the decision of their mother or father and not theirs. This then has little to do with you.
The children are just trying to get used to the change that has taken place in their lives.
If the problem is nothing to do with the children but has to do with your partner and how he or she feels you are treating their children, then this is a matter for the adults unless the children are feeling the same way.
Sometimes the biological parent, after raising his or her children for so long is used to a particular way of doing things. They may now feel as though you are interfering where in fact you are not. The change is what they have the problem with. This could also be the same for the children. What seems like an intrusion to them is actually not an intrusion but change. This needs to be recognised and addressed.
What looks to you as failing may not be failure on your part.
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