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 [...]
No One’s the Bitch is a blog by a mom-stepmom team about building happy mom-stepmom realtionships. Jen (the mom) and Carol (the stepmom) are close friends now, but they didn’t start out that way at all. Jen has knocked the ball out of the park with two must-read posts in the last few days:
How to [...]
Posted in Tips on Jan 5th, 2008
One of the building blocks of improvisational comedy is the “Yes, and…” rule. When improvising a scene, you accept and build on what your partner does. The quickest way to kill a scene is to block or deny a suggestion. “Yes, and” is about more than not blocking, though. It’s about co-creating or collaborating on [...]
A long time ago, a friend told me that the best parenting advice he’d ever been given was to say yes as much as possible to your child. An aunt of his had given him this advice when his baby was first born, and over the years he found himself noticing that he was often [...]
One of the things that keeps me from feeling overwhelmed by other people’s stuff (and that helps keep me from feeling like a nag at the same time) is our house lost and found. It’s a big basket that we keep on the window seat in the dining room. When I find something laying around [...]
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 Discipline, Parenting, Perspectives, Tips on Nov 18th, 2007
By Katherine Shirek Doughtie
I think one of the trickiest paths to navigate between mom and step-mom is this issue of how to “discipline” the children. Jill and G and I are extraordinarily lucky in this regard because we all have very similar notions of what and how much “discipline” should be doled out.
Basically, the [...]
“Nothing in my life had ever prepared me to become that dreaded, hateful figure in someone else’s life: a step mom. And yet here I was marrying Robert and as a result becoming Patrick’s step mom. The concept frightened me to no end. What if Patrick would grow to hate me and want to blow [...]
Posted in Boundaries, Perspectives, Tips on Nov 9th, 2007
By Katherine Shirek Doughtie
One of the very hardest things Jill and I ever had to negotiate were our “boundaries” — which is rapidly becoming an overused word to define just about everything that annoys us about another person. Boundaries are those indefinable barriers between people that are only visible when they are crossed. [...]
Books Boundaries Co-parenting Communication Discipline Divorce Food Holidays Introductions Links Logistics Love Miscellaneous Movies, TV & music Parenting Peacemaking Perspectives Pictures Play Quotes Remarriage Stories Tips
