My first experience with teenagers were with youth group members and students in my own classroom. There was always an exuberance about them, a little testiness…but all in all, really good experience. (let us all remember that at church parents are near, at school, principals are near….but in the step mother world….no protection is offered you!) Then came my first teenage children, they didn’t arrive as babies, but as 13 and 17 year olds. You can imagine the growing pains of being the mom of a 4 and 7 year old one day, and the next the mother of a 4,7,13,17 year old. Add to it that I didn’t get 17 years to prepare for knowing them and you’ve got a pretty good idea of where we were starting. In fact, I had only seen my new children three times in my life before I married them. We lived 400 miles a part, we had talked on the phone a bit, emailed a bit, and they knew for about 6 weeks before our marriage that they would be moving to Arkansas….and not a part of Arkansas that is modern….we were moving them to the deep dark pine forests 17 miles from a Wal Mart even.
The growing pains for me involved everything from how to keep laundry attempted for six people when I was flailing with 3 to what in the world do you do to feed 2 children who do not eat any of the foods you’re accustomed to eating. We won’t even discuss how it worked out that I married an anally organized single dad with children who were well trained and added them to a wife/step mother who didn’t know alot of home keeping systems and her children were not even sure socks ever came from a dresser drawer….. Then the whole budget thing…..my gosh, my husband’s new salary in Arkansas was 2/3 what he was used to making and my teaching salary didn’t help alot, so we were both poorer than we’d been alone, with new stresses, and both of had ex spouses and visitation with other family in the mix…our life was a plethora of issues to be discussed, roadtrips for visitation to be made each weekend and very much exhaution on all fronts year one and two.
My school faculty in tiny bend in the road, 20 miles from my home, had much fun that first year. They teased me about how we survived 20 mile commutes with 5 people in my honda civic, the backpacks alone filled the trunk each day. They loved to do a shoe count each morning to see if I managed to get everyone shod….and some days Madison didn’t. My faculty were kind, spending time with my children before and after school, trying to help them find community in a place they were unfamiliar with, being city kids. Country kids you see, have an entirely different life than my step children had experienced. In our neck of the woods, hunting, four wheeling, and fishing was THE preferred activities, not hanging out at the mall.
Fast forward to 2009. My two oldest children are grown, and out of the house. One was married last weekend in Oklahoma at 24 and one is a freshman in college. I have a testosterone driven natural fifteen year old son and a tween who is hormonally affected occasionally that I also birthed still at home. It turns out that much of what I so believed had something to do with me being a step mother and not their mother, was simply a symptom of that dread period known as “teenage years.” I shake my head in wonder at what I was thinking during those days….heaven help my children, I changed their clothing choices, we adopted new house standards for behavior, and most offensive to me now looking back….I truly thought so many things that happened had anything to do with me….when it was simply teens being teens.
Can you imagine from their perspective? Dad meets a Mary Kay lady who lives in a tiny Arkansas town. He spends 11 weekends in a row while they are with their mom, driving to see this pink card carrying woman. She’s from a place where they dress for dinner, say yes ma’am, and expect children to be well done. There is no movie theatre in her town, nor mall, nor even a place to get dinner. When you drive down to visit there…well…the house you’re going to live in has TWO bedrooms for SIX people and two of them are under 8….and worse than that….the wicked step mom to be is also your teacher, youth worker, and club leader at high school.
It is amazing we survived as a family. The roads often required navigation around boulders of “we aren’t all on the same page” thinking….changes had to happen on all sides….and respect for each other had to occur whether or not we agreed with what the other thought or did….but to learn to allow differences, respect change, and to encourage personal space…..God manuevered us through the hurts and heart changes…..and I am thankful!
