Step-Parenting Teenagers: Conundrums

Again I'm left alone with the children, who are behaving more than characteristically (Moody and Sullen is one, Clueless and Belligerent is the other) and who are now (as of yesterday) both officially teenagers (14 & 13, respectively). Today it isn't so that my wife can go accomplish something that she particularly wanted to do; it's so she can go and work.

A lot of the time when my wife and I are together, we don't talk to the children a whole lot. They kind of stay in their world while we stay in ours except on those occasions when we plan something more like "family time," which usually is a meal (most meals, actually), a movie, or something like that. When my wife leaves, usually I spend a great deal more time with the kids, and we talk quite a bit. Sometimes, that's pretty good. Usually, it's insight into a world I'm pretty sure I didn't want insight into.

For instance, Moody and Sullen got all worked up about this or that, and when the reply that I offered her included the idea that "love" might have been the motivation, she launched into a wonderfully weak, faith-based tirade about how love isn't real, being merely the product of chemical reactions in the mind. She's quite insistent that love is something fake and that all people that fall for that deception are stupid. That's kind of how she thinks, typically, unless she's playing one of her "woe is me" card that constitute about 2/3 of her deck (the rest are "I know everything" and "I hate people"). I talked my talk about how I feel she's mistaken, and it was, of course, to no avail (she's a teenager). I then proceeded to talk to myself (in my head, not aloud) about how it's a phase, she's a sullen teenager with very little experience, and how she's probably, as much as anything, trying to either get attention or evoke some kind of defense mechanism (the truth of almost every card in her deck). I let it go until she pushed it some more, and then I just asked her plainly whether her mother and I are stupid, deluded, or faking it entirely, as well as her commentary on what exactly prompts her to tell me that she loves me (and her mother) several times a day. She kind of froze on the first question and dodged it and then said that she tells us that she loves us because she's supposed to and that she won't do it anymore. Did I mention that I love kids?

Clueless and Belligerent decided this entire conversation had to be punctuated with exhibitions of her drawings of Japanese cartoon characters along with her own opinions on the matter, which she openly admitted are "clueless." See, it wasn't about her, so she was attempting, failingly, to make it about her (that's part of her style). She's even wearing a shirt that she got yesterday that says "it's all about me" on it. Then she decided to take the conversation over with a treatise on how we would treat them if we loved them the way she thinks love should work, which was essentially a pat on the head, kiss on the cheek, Candyland fantasy centered upon the last four or five things she did that got her mild reprimands and how if our love was as real and strong as we say it is for them that we wouldn't have really cared because those things just weren't a big deal. When I pointed out how it was a bigger deal in context of the ongoing situation, Belligerent came to the table and proceeded to argue with me, finally pointing out how essentially they've whined to my mom about it enough to where my mom decided to tell them how I should be handling these things. Clueless and Belligerent literally invited me to become the family disciplinarian (of her, Moody and Sullen doesn't want that) so that I can spare my wife the details of their transgressions (so they don't have to deal with her frustration with them also, I think). I'm not sure what to do on that because I'd be harder on them than my wife is... but I think a taste of what she's ordered is a good idea here, at least for a little while.

Actually, this is what it's like pretty much every time I get left home with the kids. I get this kind of discussion unless I spend pretty much the entire time either ignoring them or making them milkshakes that placate them completely. Of course, the whole discussion comes up because they do something that I notice and then decide to push me when I call them on it (today, Moody and Sullen was blatantly doing something we've told her about 1100 times (no exaggeration) not to do, putting our foot down the day before yesterday... and trying to hide it, poorly, when I saw it and called her on it). Then it was on. Should I just let stuff slide? I don't think so. Not just letting it slide makes things go like this, though. What a conundrum.

Here's the thing... I'm a step-parent.. not a parent. I live in uncertainty of how much discipline I can lay on the kids and with a nagging background fear of the eventual reaction "you're not my dad, so I don't have to listen to you" erupting from one of them (to which, their mother asserts, there will be a volcanic eruption on her part so violent that the children had better run for it). The hard part is that the children just don't listen, and then pushing on them a little seems to make the situation way worse. I don't like this trap....

Then there's the good-man question about it. It really stresses my wife out to come home to hearing this kind of discussion took place, particularly with the kinds of things the kids say. On the one hand, I could keep it to myself, probably, and ease her stress, but it seems like we're not a "team" there, particularly because I'm not properly disciplining the children (because I'm the step-parent, not out of lack of want to do it), i.e. I don't really dole out any punishment and they don't really listen to me if I "suggest" something, even strongly. On the other hand, I feel that parenting works best if my wife and I work as a team, and because she's scarier than I am with the discipline, they actually listen to her (and they resent me later for "telling on them" and feeling like their mother is angry with them more often than not as a result).

I think I'm going about this the good-man way: I address the children's issues, I discuss it with them maturely and directly, I make strong suggestions as to how to modify their behavior or help their problem (depending on which situation it is), and then when there's no change (100% of the time, literally), I bring my wife into it partly as backup and partly to keep her appraised of what's going on in our family. Unfortunately, it stresses her out and seems only to aggravate the kids. I am, however, still glad to do this so that she can go do the things she wants and needs to do, which is probably the most good-man part of the whole thing.

Perhaps I'm venting too much.... I'm a little stressed though, too. The truth is, I think, that parenting is tough stuff (particularly with two teenage girls)!