Stepmom Upset She Now Has To Spend Every Weekend With Her 'Clingy' 5-Year-Old Stepson — 'I'm Tired Of Dealing With This'
She seems to have forgotten that he's just a kid — and that he was here first.
Joaquin Corbalan P / Shutterstock.com Blended families are often no picnic, and figuring out how to be a good parent and a good stepparent at the same time can be a real challenge. But one stepmom seems totally uninterested in striking the balance, and it's getting her a lot of backlash online.
The stepmom wrote into an advice column because she's upset she has to help care for her stepson.
A stepmom is upset she has to care for her stepson every weekend.
Admittedly, her situation is complicated, and her 5-year-old stepson Corey does sound like a bit of a challenge. But what seems to be missing entirely from her view of the situation is the simple fact that he's just a little kid who has been through a lot because of his parents' divorce and his dad's remarriage.
Because of this, her letter to Slate writer Michelle Herman's parenting and marital advice column did not go over well at all — neither with Herman herself nor others online.
She wrote in because a change to the little boy's mom's job and childcare arrangements means he'll now be spending every weekend with his dad and stepmom, and she feels like that's more than she can handle.
She said her stepson is too 'clingy,' makes the weekends 'miserable,' and she resents having to care for him.
The stepmom explained that she is dreading her husband's new custody arrangement, which will have Corey at their house every Friday through Sunday.
"Corey has a lot of trouble every time he switches over from his mom’s house to ours," she wrote, "and tattles that his stepsister 'isn’t following the rules' — but it’s because his mom is a helicopter parent, while our house is about independence-building."
This, she said, makes him "clingy," which in turn means "the weekend is miserable for everyone." She also complained that the new school and daycare pick-up arrangements on Fridays, as well as having to take Corey to his weekend activities like soccer, are "expensive and inconvenient."
She wanted Corey's aunt to help out on Fridays, but the aunt refused because she already helps care for the little boy on other days. Her husband also refused to make an issue of it with Corey's mom and family.
"I know that the divorce was unfriendly, but it’s been nearly five years, and I’m tired of dealing with this," she wrote. "How do I get my calm weekends back?"
Nearly everyone felt the stepmom was being wildly insensitive to how a situation she helped create was impacting her stepson.
Right out the gate, the stepmom's letter landed like a lead balloon with people online — especially since its second sentence revealed just how messy and unfair this situation was for Corey.
"My husband has a 5-year-old son, 'Corey,' from his first marriage," she wrote, "and together we have a 5-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son."
Two kids the exact same age with different moms? Sure sounds like Corey's dad left him and his mom because he cheated and got his now-wife pregnant, which makes the stepmom's complaints downright egregious.
As Slate's Herman put it in her fairly scathing response, "This is a 5-year-old whose father left him and his mother. For Corey’s entire life, his dad has had another family… and his dad’s second wife makes it very clear that having him around more than [a] few hours once a week is a burden. Why wouldn’t he act out?... Of course, Corey is 'clingy.'"
Or, as a person on Twitter more bluntly put it, "deep chaos and dirtbaggery happened here, and she's just talking around it," adding that they "almost admire" the stepmom's temerity.
It all underlines a very simple fact that all too many stepparents seem to forget: their stepchildren were here first.
It's not like stepchildren are a surprise when you enter into a relationship with someone with kids. And you are not entitled to a life free of whatever "burdens" they present. They predate you. That is the life you chose.
At the center of this and many blended family stories is a child acting out because he's a child. In this case, two-thirds of the people charged with caring for him can't be bothered to do so with empathy and inclusion. He's 5 and neither deserved nor asked for the blowback of his parents' relationship dynamics. How he responds to that is nobody's fault but the adults'.
And with all due respect to this stepmom and stepparents like her everywhere, if you wanted a perfect, cookie-cutter life free of entanglements, you shouldn't have chosen to get with a person who already had a wife and kids.
But you did. So buck up, be an adult, and lie in the bed you made — and accept that said bed isn't going to come with "calm weekends" for at least a decade or two.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.