The infamous stepmom to real mom relationship, you’ve all heard the dreaded stories. You know the ones that make you cringe and kneel down to pray to the good lord above that you never, ever have to endure them personally, hell maybe you’ve even had nightmares about these stories. As a stepmom to not one but TWO children with TWO very different mothers I will tell you that not only have I had the nightmares but I’ve also lived the nightmare and somehow I’ve lived to tell about it. The road of stepmotherhood (I totally made this word up) has been paved with many, many colorful expletives; a few grey hairs (thankfully only a FEW), some tears, okay who am I kidding a lot of tears, and some very unhealthy coping mechanisms, but please don’t tell my husband I admitted to this. And speaking of my husband, even though I considered against it more times than I can count, I decided to keep him through it all too.

So even though the road to friendship with your stepchild’s mother is painted with many shades of black and grey once you’ve walked it for a little while and put some work into it, you will start to notice some color. Basically what I am trying to say is that it doesn’t always HAVE to be a nightmare; the way your relationship unfolds really is a matter of choice. If you want to have a good relationship with the mother of your stepchild, you have to make a choice to put in work and if you choose not to, your relationship simply won’t happen. You can’t be lazy about it, you can’t procrastinate and put it on the back burner hoping it will just miraculously evolve on it’s own, relationships are not like Darwinism, and despite what the popular children’s book asserts you can’t make ‘something from nothing’ it requires real conscious purposeful effort and if you don’t put in the time you won’t see the results. It’s a pretty simple equation. And though your relationship might start out as a diamond in the rough once you polish it a little it will eventually start to shine. Unfortunately, awesome stepmom to real mom relationships are a rarity these days and I have a really hard time wrapping my head around why that is. We’re all adults here aren’t we? It shouldn’t be this hard. But of course those dreaded things called feelings have to interfere and make things complicated; I guess that’s what makes us human right?

So maybe you’re wondering why I’ve been asked to write on this topic and the reason is that I live this rarity. I have that stepmom to mom (ex) relationship that people often only ever dream about. And I’ll let you in on a secret; we’ve both worked really, really hard to get here.

Whenever I talk about my relationship with Serena (my stepsons mom and husbands ex), people are instantly fascinated. “Wow, you had her over for dinner? Your child stays at her house too? You guys go to parent teacher interviews together?” And the reason that people are fascinated is because this type of thing is virtually unheard of. Sure, a lot of families are civil but how many people can say they genuinely would go so far as to call their stepchild’s mom a friend? Not many. Making a ‘friend’ out of Serena has made a very positive impact on not only my wellbeing but on her wellbeing too. Not to mention, it really helps for Landyn (my stepson) to see all of the people he loves, loving each other.

So like how do I do it you ask? Well, you sprinkle some magic fairy dust on her pillow when she’s sleeping and viola friendship happens, just kidding, if only it was that easy right? It’s not! But really though, I am going to share with you a few tips that I’ve learned during the adventure of making a friend out of my husbands ex and I hope that these tips might help those of you who are struggling to do the same, and if nothing else our story may offer a glimmer of hope to those who are feeling a little lost.

1. Keep you husband in check – The key to your relationship with your husbands ex is ensuring that their relationship is solid too. Their relationship should come first; after all they are the ones who produced the child that brought you all together. Encourage their communication and ability to be respectful to one another, this is VERY important. And whatever you do, don’t let their relationship bother you. That tiny human that you welcomed into your life needs their relationship to be healthy. I can’t stress that enough.
2. Introduce yourself – Tell her who you are and what you’re all about. Let her know that you aren’t there to take her place and that you only hope to be another person to love her child. Also, make it very clear to her that you won’t lock her child in a room and make him or her scrub the floors with their bare hands or miss out on the royal ball, this is very important.
3. Be Inclusive – Include her when you can. We share equal time with our children so we have a one-week on, one week off rotating access schedule. There are many times when something important falls on our week or vice versa, for example the first day of kindergarten fell on our access week. Instead of being an asshole and making her miss out on this milestone experience with her ONLY child, I invited her over first thing in the morning so she could get him ready for school and drive with all of us to take him to his first day of kindergarten (my husband would have never thought to do this, he is a man after all). Because of this no one had to miss out and Landyn was super excited to have us all there. It was a great morning and no one got hurt; I even have a picture to prove it.
4. Treat her child like your own – Even if you don’t necessarily love her child the exact same way as you love your own, at least treat him like you do. Treat her child with respect, love them, be there for them, and show her that you care about them. If they have a Christmas concert, make an effort to attend that concert, do something special for them on their birthday, help them with their homework. It’s the little things that mean the most.
5. Communicate – take the time to let her in and get to know you, relationships take time, but you can’t have a relationship without communication. Send her a message every now and then about something her child did while in your care that she might think is funny or cute, send her a picture of her child. She misses him when he’s gone and this helps her to see that he’s happy, loved, and well taken care of. It’s worth the effort, I promise. I am constantly sending pictures, videos, snapchatting etc. you never know what kind of day they might be having and your picture or video just might make their day.
6. Buy her Gifts – I don’t care what you say the quickest way to any woman’s heart is with gifts: wine, chocolate, coffee whatever her vice is, make special occasions special and take her child to pick something out for her that she’ll like. Husbands aren’t always the most thoughtful at these kinds of things especially when it involves their ex, they have a hard enough time remembering to purchase gifts for their own wives as it is, so this task will most likely fall onto you. Any child on mother’s day will want to buy their mom a gift, take them to pick her out something and if you can’t do that help them make her something. They’ll be so happy to have something to give her and she’ll appreciate the effort. I was so touched this year when I received a gift from my son for mother’s day that his stepmom provided him to gift to me.  As a side note my heart can totally always be won over with gifts!

Lets be real though, we certainly didn’t reinvent the wheel on this and there are loads of other families out there who are co-parenting like champions so kudos to the moms, dads, stepmoms, and stepdads who all put in an effort to enrich their child’s lives with happy, healthy and respectful relationships. Our next adventure takes place in March when we will all (Serena included) take the plunge into a ten day vacation to Disneyworld, and yes we are all driving in the same vehicle and staying in the same house. Now, I’d like you to take a moment and pray for us. I bet you can’t guess what my next post will be about…

Like what you see? Check out Alysia’s last post Confessions of  Step Mom.

MEET ALYSIA

My name is Alysia, I became a mom at the young age of 22 completely by accident, to a sweet boy by the name of Cohl. Cohl’s father and I separated when he was only seven months old and for awhile I did the whole single mom gig. Fast forward a couple years and I met my now Husband, Kyle. He already had two children of his own from two separate relationships. When we joined forces or households if you will we were met with many challenges as you can imagine. We’ve been at this blended family thing for 5 years now and I like to think we’ve become pretty good at it. And if that wasn’t interesting enough we thought we would add another child to the mix; he just turned four in December. And to think there was a time in my life when I vehemently insisted on having no children at all, ever. Apparently the universe had other plans for me, because somehow I ended up with 4! And now I can’t imagine a life without them in it.

On top of being a mother I am a wife to a soon to be retired military veteran, I am an ER nurse at heart and a nurse practitioner by career. I enjoy writing as a hobby, reading, travelling and I’m really, really good at shopping!

My life motto follows the quote by C.S Lewis

“experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn”