A mom and a stepmom share stories, ideas, friendship and family
Posted in Co-parenting, Communication, Tips on Jul 17th, 2008
The three day rule was Kathy’s idea. If something happens that upsets one of us or that we’re mad or hurt about, we have to talk about it with the other one within three days. If we can’t bring ourselves to do that, we have to let it go. It’s no longer “mad-able”. It can’t [...]
Posted in Communication on Mar 1st, 2008
Last night G and I were out at a party at our friends’ apartment. It wasn’t rowdy. There was no loud music. At midnight, someone came up and knocked on the door and said in an annoyed voice, “I understand your need to hang, but I’m trying to sleep.” We all quieted down right away [...]
Posted in Communication, Peacemaking on Feb 28th, 2008
Pain looks different from the inside than it does from the outside.
From the inside when we act out in pain, we see ourselves as victims. From the outside, when we act out in pain, we look like monsters.
Outsiders who haven’t lived through a similar kind of suffering don’t see the pain; they see the actions.
The [...]
Posted in Communication on Feb 26th, 2008
Back in the early days when Kathy and I weren’t getting along, I read her blog a lot. A lot. And her book, too.
A stepmom blogger recently found from watching her blog stats that her stepkids’ mom was reading her blog, and that she was visiting the blogs of the stepmoms she linked to. [...]
Posted in Communication, Logistics, Tips on Dec 4th, 2007
In addition to our single email address, we’ve also set up a shared online calendar. We use Google Calendar, which lets us use as many color-coded sub-calendars as we like, with individual levels of privacy and editing rights. If seeing all of the calendars becomes too overwhelming, we can check a box to display or [...]
Posted in Communication, Tips on Nov 27th, 2007
Last year we set up a single email address for both of our houses. It instantly autoforwards to all of us (Kathy, G, and me) at our individual email accounts. It’s the email address we give to the kids’ schools, summer camp and extracurricular organizations, and this way we all know that everyone gets all [...]
Posted in Communication, Tips on Nov 9th, 2007
Kathy’s post about communication started me thinking about what my own tips on communication would be. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
If you want to use labels to describe people, use positive ones that emphasize the current relationship. I like the phrase “the kids’ mom” better than “my husband’s ex-wife”, for example. [...]
Posted in Communication, Logistics, Tips on Nov 4th, 2007
By Katherine Shirek Doughtie
When trying to run childrens’ lives from two separate addresses, good communication makes all the difference. During the period of time when we were working out our boundary issues, communication was at an all time low and it was hellacious. Bits of logistics were exchanged between me and the kid’s [...]
Posted in Communication, Logistics on Nov 2nd, 2007
The Doughtie Houses Exchange (The DHX) was originally the name we gave the envelopes we’d send with the kids in their backpacks to deliver to the other house. (Don’t worry — this isn’t our only method of communication. We also talk on the phone and email constantly.) But our kid-mail system was symbolic for both [...]
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