Let me be clear: I love my step kids very much. They add joy and light to my life and I truly can’t imagine living without them.
However, I don’t love them like they’re my kids, or like I’m their mother.
I’m NOT their mother.
I actually have a daughter of my own who would be right pissed (and with good reason) if I loved my husband’s kids just the same as I love her. I love them a lot, but it’s not the same and none of us expect it to be.
My advice on this topic is not the advice you typically read on social media, where women seem to enjoy taking swipes at each other for not being able to generate the right kind of warm fuzzies for their stepkids.
Here’s why I think those stepmoms have it all wrong:
1. When you love a child like your own, you have an expectation (conscious or unconscious) of being loved back. It puts a lot of pressure on the child to love you in a way that feels good for you without considering what they need. If you think you can love a child like a mother does, but without any need for them to reciprocate, let me hear how that’s working out for you in a few years from now. Most of my clients are women struggling with late-stage rejection of love that felt so reciprocal for the first few years.
2. If you have children of your own, you’re setting them up for a nightmare of sibling rivalry with the steps. Even bio-siblings suffer from feeling like they are not getting all the love they deserve because of an older brother or sister, or because of a new baby. Kids would have zero sense of security if they believed their mom could love someone else’s kids as much as she loves them. It’s as if you could pick up a couple of random kids from the playground one day, and bring them home to love.
3. You risk activating a loyalty bind in the child. Children are not wired to have two mothers at the same time (no reference to same-sex parents here).
In order to love you as a mother, they have to kick their own mother out of the nest (in their heart) – more often than not, doing that makes them hate themselves and feel they deserve to be punished. This is a source of many inexplicable behaviours from step children; they punish themselves for loving you too much, or for secrettly wishing that you were their real mom.
4. This idea of how you’re supposed to feel about your partner’s children puts unrealistic expectations on yourself. Perhaps you’re feeling pressure to make this relationship “perfect” in some way.
Some kids are much more naturally lovable than others, as are adults. You don’t fall in love with everyone you meet – it’s even hard to produce genuine feelings of basic goodwill towards some individuals. It’s pretty easy to love preschoolers who are cute and behave well, and exponentially harder to love surly, aggressive teenagers. I have a free download on hard-to-like kids which you can linked at the end of the post.
5. You’re missing out on the beautiful, authentic relationship you could be having with them as an important, caring adult in their lives.
They can love you they way they do an auntie, or their best friends’ mom, or the next door mom, or a coach, teacher or mentor.
I love my husband’s kids very much. I feel close to them each in their own way, so they can come closer or hold me at a distance according to what they need in the moment.
It actually takes a lot of love to do that.
Here’s a link to my free pdf guide:
Playing Hard To Like: 10 Challenging Step Kid Personalities And How To Win Them Over
Essential Stepmom 