Soon to be Step Mom needs some advice
I'm engaged to an awesome guy, who has an 8 year old son. The BM isn't too bad, she and I have communicated via email and we get along fine. There are occassionally issues, but compared to some horror stories about BMs that I read, I don't have more than annoyances with her.
Here's the deal. I never wanted kids before, but I have had some very negative experiences with them in the past, which I think has influenced my perspective on kids. I like my fiance's son, but I am always glad when he goes home (we have him every other weekend and Wednesdays for a few hours) because he is very high energy, emotionally immature (acts 5), and I suspect has a very mild autism. The boy, "J," loves me, and in fact has told his mom that he is nicer to me than to her, his dad, or his stepdad! He and I don't have any conflict, because J knows I don't let him get away with anything, so pushing boundaries won't work with me.
I work in a place that is very mentally straining. I love the work, but it takes a lot out of me mentally. On days when I know we have J, my blood pressure will start to creep up at work hours before I get off. Basically, I start getting many symptoms of anxiety. There is no doubt to me that he is the trigger, because I have monitered it over a couple of months, and it literally only happens when I know he will be at home when I get home. I can't relax at home when he is there, because he is sooo high energy, squealing at tv, laughing so loud it makes me cringe, bouncing off the furniture, etc. Others know what I am talking about, I'm not alone here.
"B," my fiance, has tried to rein J in. Problem is, he was alone for 3 years after his divorce, and allowed J to do whatever he wanted. Now the consequences of that are coming around. J was allowed to stay up til 2am if he wanted, when we first started dating. I stopped that when we moved in together, and now J has a 9pm bedtime. B is working with him, to teach him to clean up behind himself, because I commented that J thinks everyone should do for him because in the past B HAS done everything for him. The boy is 8 years old, and still wants B to come wipe his butt after he goes to the bathroom. He tries to get J to calm down when I am home, and not to bounce off the furniture, but that doesn't always work (as it won't with kids).
Basically, I end up going into our bedroom and shutting the door and reading, which isn't healthy as a future family. I am high strung and restless from the moment he gets there, til hours after his mom gets him Sunday evenings. I try not to get snappy, because he's just a kid, and it isn't his fault that I am not a "kid person." While B understands how I feel, and doesn't resent me for it (it was BM who wanted to have a kid, not him), I fear he will if I continue to implement changes (even though they need to be done, for everyone's sake).
I don't want to be the parent. It is HIS job and BM's job to raise J, yet I am the one who is having to step in and say "hey, he is 8. He needs to throw his own Capri Sun away. He can pick up his toys before bedtime, and before he goes home. He doesn't need to just eat chips, yogurt, and chicken nuggets. He needs to brush his teeth. No 7 year old (at the time) needs to be up at 2am." Amazingly, J adapts very well to my changes in his routine, only fighting B over bedtime (like any kid, "I don't want to go yet," the usual). Kids like rules and routines.
However, B has acted passive agressively in the past a couple of times, allowing J to stay up way later (midnight) when I had work the next day. He said he didn't realize they were keeping me awake, and I told him that was beside the point, he intentionally allowed J to once again set the rules. We discussed it, and it hasn't happened since.
Y'all, am I making the right decision? For a woman who never wanted kids, I am going to have one, for better or worse on October 9th. Is it normal to have this "fight or flight" instinct when I know J will be there, because of how high strung he is, and how I react to it myself? Thanks for letting me vent, and for any advice you can give.
First I want to say you have
First I want to say you have a very good handle on being a parent IMHO, you are exactly right when you say, "Kids like rules and routines." It is true, they need them.
I myself was in much the same situation. Within weeks it was clear to me that the oldest of my dh two sons was the one in charge in his house. He regularly beat on his little brother and my dh would just shrug it off, the younger one was never allowed to voice his opinion becuase it just did not matter, whatever the older one wanted he got. The older one still fights me on the limits that exist in our new home, the younger one is finally able to express himself and has gone a little crazy with it, but he is easily reined in when needed. My dh is also passive aggressive, he hates fighting, which is trait about him that 75% of the time I love. It is only when it comes to outside influences that I go bonkers.
Anyway, from what you have written above, it appears that there is likely something going on with the boy, and if it is an Autism Spectrum Disorder, the best thing you can do is coach him and model for him appropriate behavior. There have been studies that remarked how Autistic Children will raise their level of ability in a mainstream environment where more is expected of them, but left in a closed special education enviroment the improvements did not happen. A word of caution though, coaching and modeling will only go so far, if he truly is a child with this issue, he will only come so far, there will always be somethings that are a little "off".
True love means accepting the bad with the good. You must also love yourself. If you truly want to make a go of it with Dad consider a couple things; therapy for you, work out your kid issues, not saying you will want to become a baby making machine, but to help you find a way to accept the time your fiance will spend with the boy, and maybe even enjoy some of that time also. You might also encourage your fiance to have the child screened for developmental delays, with the issues you are talking about I would be surprised if it wasn't an issue at school and an 8 year old would be in 3rd grade. These issues will only get worse for him when he hits middle school.
I hope I have said something that helps. Good luck!
Thanks, NottheBradyBunch6.
Thanks, NottheBradyBunch6. That really helped. J has already been tested, and diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder. He goes to a class once a week for it. However, the traits he exhibits indicate to myself and a friend of mine (who's mom is a teacher) that mild autism fits much better. He is OBSSESSED with trains. Literally the moment he wakes up, trains. All day long, trains. Wants to watch them on DVD, on Youtube, plays with toy trains, talks about them to the exclusion of everything else. He will cry if his dad won't let him watch trains on the one working laptop he has (which he uses for work). It's hard to explain here, but I have never seen another child in my life so one-track (pardon the train pun, it has invaded my life completely now!). If I try to divert him to something else, he gets edgy and wired up, sometimes spazzing out, like he can't change subject.
When I mentioned the possiblilty of autism to my FH, he (not suprisingly) got defensive, and said J has been tested for everything, and the only thing he came up for was the auditory processing disorder. I dropped the subject, rather than cause friction, because it isn't my kid. But the emotional immaturity is starting to wear on FH, because last night at a restaurant, he told FSS to stop rolling around in the booth and sit up straight. Then to stop blowing bubbles in his Sprite. Then to quit trying to climb behind him in the booth, to stop acting like he is 4.
I told him later that he has to own up to creating who FSS is now, behaviorally. That for 3 years, he let FSS act like a toddler, and voila! Now he has an 8 year old toddler. Challenge him: what do you think would be some good steps to fix that, baby? So before J left to go home last night, he made J pick up his trash and put his toys in his room. Small steps are better than none.
Lucky for me, I am not a "baby making machine." I got myself "fixed" before my FH and I started dating, and he is fixed as well, so no more kids. I think you are also right, in that I have to teach myself to be around the kid, which I am slowly doing. I treat it psychologically like one would desensitise themselves to a phobia.....and it works, most of the time. Until he gets waaaaaay wired up, then I just go for a walk or go back to our room. My FH realizes immediately what is wrong if I take his dog and go for a walk, and usually when I get back about 30 min later, he is actively working to calm J down.
The bad thing is that J looooves America's Funniest Home Videos, Amazing Videos, and SPongebob. He gets wired over watching them,and FH lets him watch them while he is trying to calm him down, which is an epic fail. The kid won't watch something that isn't considered "stimulating." So even though FH is trying hard to make me happy, and be understanding, he ends up pretty much failing at calming J down. Reading books to him doesn't work, because he will interrupt to talk about trains (they never go away, I sincerely hate them now).
I find myself now trying to arrange to be away on kid weekends. I was planning to go spend this weekend with my best friend, but cant afford the gas money to drive to her place an hour away. We had J last weekend, because BM "messed up" and got her weekends screwed up (we fixed this by setting up a Google calendar for us to share).
I too have a Google calendar
I too have a Google calendar and with 4 kids and all their activities it is a godsend, truly the inventor should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, because it brings a measure of peace to my days.
I hope you can find a way to make it work, it sounds like your fiance wants to, and that is the larger part of the battle. Best Wishes!