Dealing with Your Adolescent Stepchild

You can make life around your household easier if you try the following:

• Don't take it personally. Think of your stepteen as somebody who is hormonally impaired (he is!). Try to be tolerant, and give it time.
• Don't try to compare or compete with the other bioparent. Be more yourself than you've ever been in your life.
• Spend time alone with your stepteen doing activities that interest you both.
• Be neutral about your partner's ex. If provoked by the stepteen about him or her, take five deep breaths and take the high road. (“We're very different people. I'm glad you have both of our influences in your life.”)
• Don't push for affection, attention, or response.

Encourage your partner to follow these steps:

• Reassure his kid that he'll never abandon her emotionally or physically, and that nobody (meaning you) will ever come between the two of them.
• Spend time alone with his kids doing things they used to do, such as talking together and playing games.
• Occasionally side with the kids against you (ouch) and, also occasionally, let you and your stepchild side with each other. (United fronts are important, but let it be a front, not a stone wall.)

Your partner should let you and your stepchild work out your own disagreements (boy, this can be hard). Both of you can help matters by following these pointers:

• Be nice. Your stepchild is sensitive in his new body and hormone-laden mind. Try not to nag. Work with him, perhaps at a Family Meeting to find ways to get information across. Write notes. Leave simple messages on the answering machine (“James, the garbage man comes on Wednesday, so please take out the trash.”). In How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish suggest using very short communications: “James, Garbage!”
• Let Go. You're looking for balance here, giving her more autonomy while remaining involved in her life. She needs room, but she also needs guidance and interest.
• Show you care. He'll treat you with nonchalance, but you show you care anyway. Don't be put off by his seeming indifference. “Kill 'em with kindness,” is what I say!
• Be aware of transitional periods. The coming-and-going transitions can be worse with teenagers than with younger kids, simply because they tend to be moodier anyway. Give them time and space to adjust.

Discipline and the Stepteen

Adolescents thrive on the balance of caring and positive discipline, but things are complicated by this step business. It usually takes a long time for a teenager to respect a step's authority enough to do what you ask her to do.

• Go slow. Build rapport before asserting your authority.
• Talk about it. Verbal communication is the most important aspect of discipline. (Communicating with Stepchildren.)
• Hands off! If it needs to be handled, let the bioparent do it. Do you really think any self-respecting stepteen will listen to you? Discipline should always be lighter for teenagers than for younger kids. Allow consequences to be as natural as possible; let them demonstrate what they've learned.
• No scolding. Voicing disapproval just doesn't work. Saying, “You're gonna flunk chemistry if you don't study” may be taken as a challenge. He's not dumb; he knows very well what will happen if he doesn't study. Don't make him prove it to you. Show him the respect of letting him make his own decisions, and live with the consequences (so long as nobody is in physical danger).

The World's Dangers

Kids are exposed to temptations of sex, drugs, and alcohol everywhere, at almost all ages. By the time your stepkid is 13, she's already making decisions about becoming involved with chemical substances. Sex rears its head early, too. If you're not used to teenagers, it may shock you what they are like, what they are into, and what they are exposed to. My primary two words of advice? Be knowledgeable. Be knowledgeable about the risks and dangers. Be knowledgeable about the “norms.”

“You're Having a What? Gross!”

For a teenager between the ages of 13 and 17, the idea of having a pregnant mother or stepmother is just about enough to make him curl up and die with embarrassment. Sex feels like his domain (even if he isn't doing it, he sure is thinking about it). Your stepchild doesn't want to know that you are having sex. The idea is repulsive, horrifying, humiliating, and oddly titillating (and that there is some titillation makes it feel even more uncomfortable!).

Unfortunately for your sensitive stepchild, remarriages are often more sexually charged than first marriages, especially at first. And sex is harder to ignore. In his book You and Your Adolescent, Laurence Steinberg says, “When parents stay married, adolescents tend to write off their expressions of physical intimacy as affection. When parents are single and dating, this self-deception is more difficult.” When there's a pregnancy, this difficulty changes to impossibility.

There's more on general reactions to a parent or stepparent's pregnancy and to the new baby in Bringing a New Baby Into a Stepfamily, but here are some specific hints for teens:

• Look for the positive intent. When 14-year-old Ramona screams, “You're just as bad as a cow!” upon hearing of the upcoming little wonder, look beneath the cruel words to hear the fear of displacement and anxiety about sex. (It doesn't make it okay for her to behave like that, but it may make it easier for you to cope with her reaction.)
• Don't automatically limit your stepchild's involvement. Willa's 14-year-old stepson Barry attended childbirth classes with her and her husband Hank, paced with her up and down the hallways during her labor and, though at the last minute he felt too squeamish to watch the delivery, was one of the first people to hold baby Brianna.
• Encourage them to be involved in their baby brother or sister's life, but don't assume that they'll automatically baby-sit.
• A new baby in a parent's life when a teen is already struggling with separation issues may make her feel even more displaced. Think about holding a special ceremony to mark a stepchild's entry (or re-entry) into the world of being a sibling. A teenager may laugh when you bring it up, but it will matter to her. She'll feel cared for and thought of.

Stepteen Advantages

There can be some wonderful advantages to being the stepparent of a teenager. Teens desperately need adult allies who aren't their bioparents. If you play your cards right, you can be the confidante, the “other” grown-up, the understanding one when the bioparents don't have a clue. The same teenager who is so beastly to parents that they want to turn her in for a new model often shows her very real charm, enthusiasm, compassion, and fresh view of life to other adults. And that may very well be you.

Excerpted from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Stepparenting © 1998 by Ericka Lutz. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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