[blparent] Intro

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

Hi Nicole.  I've done the stepmom thing for a long time.  Well, sort of 
unofficially.  We never got married, but I've been in the lives of my 
boyfriend's kids since they were twelve and sixteen, and now they're 
nineteen and twenty-three.  The nineteen-year-old calls me Mom because he 
wants to, and I get along with both of them really well.  I've given them a 
half sister they love to death and spoil shamelessly.  We spend most 
holidays with my boyfriend's ex wife.  Overall, it's been a pretty good 
resolution.

There were definitely some bumps in the road.  Most of them had to do with 
blending families, not blindness.  My first and biggest piece of advice 
would be, don't try to be your stepson's mom.  You'll never pull it off, and 
you shouldn't want to.  He already has a mother, no matter what the 
situation is.  She may or may not be a good one, she may or may not be in 
the picture, but he already has a mother; he doesn't need another one.  If 
there are two parents involved, let them handle the big issues, like 
schoolwork, discipline, etc.  Encourage them to work together and not use 
the kid as a weapon against each other, especially if the divorce was recent 
or bitter.  In my case, the three of us resolved, and pretty much stuck to 
it, that the kids came first.  Our feelings aside, we tried to make the best 
of it for the kids because it wasn't their fault that we had put their whole 
world into a tailspin.

That being said, it doesn't mean you have to sit back and get walked on. 
You have the right to ask for and expect to be respected in your house. 
That goes for anybody, your stepson or anyone else.  That's different from 
him doing his homework, it's common courtesy.  Especially if he doesn't live 
with you all the time, when he comes over, you have a right to ask him to 
follow your rules because he is in your house.  This is where  things got 
tricky with my stepson at times.  He ended up sitting on the porch more than 
once for calling me names because I wouldn't allow anyone to speak to me 
that way in my home, and for a while he wasn't permitted to be there at all 
because anybody who refused to tell me he was leaving, whether he sneaked 
out or walked right out the door without saying where he was going and when 
he would be back, wasn't welcome.  But once the battle of wills is over, 
things usually smooth out just fine.  You're getting your stepson at a 
younger age, so you might not go through as much, either.

As far as your blindness goes, just use all of your senses and your common 
sense.  I heard my stepson taking coins from a piggy bank once and called 
him on it.  He denied it at first, but he was caught red-handed, so he 
eventually admitted that he had taken the coins to play the arcades at 
Wal-Mart.  I told him that from then on I expected him to be honest with me 
because I would rather have him tell me the truth than steal from me, and I 
would have given him the coins if he had asked me for them, but if he 
started stealing, I could never trust him in my house anymore.  He has done 
other things to shake my trust, so I'm not sure the talk made much of an 
impression on him, but it impressed his little sister who heard it.  She's 
mentioned it a few times since then, and she tells her friends her blind mom 
has eyes in the back of her head, hiding under her hair.

Like I said, I've got a lot of years in as a blended family veteran, so if 
questions come up, ask away.

Jo Elizabeth

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may 
kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at 
evening.--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
-----Original Message----- 
From: Nicole Hutchins via blparent
Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2015 7:19 AM
To: blparent at nfbnet.org
Subject: [blparent] Intro

Hi, I am relatively new to this list. I am not yet a parent but in May I'm 
getting married and so I will   have a stepson. He is nine years old. I 
would just like to get some information here as to maybe some tips and 
things. I have never had children of my own so this will be a first for me, 
but I'm really excited! I'm looking forward to having a family. I hope to 
get some skills and ideas from this list that I may not have already. And 
build upon the ones I do have. I know that having vision challenges is not 
going to determine whether or not I'm  a good parent, but I know there are 
some limitations with that so hopefully I can work those out and maybe get 
some help here as well  if they arise.

Nicole
Sent from my iPhone
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