If they express frustration, you ask them how they can address that with him. If they complain about him, you ask them how they can communicate that to him in a way that might help them get more of what they want from him. You teach him the skills, if he doesn’t already have them, to walk away from them when they’re throwing a fit, and use the same sorts of techniques I am talking about here with them as well. Encourage him to reward them for sane behavior and to ignore them when they’re being ridiculous.

Don’t solve things between them. Redirect them to him with thoughts on how to approach him about that. Teach them to handle it themselves. Do the same with him. If he’s complaining about the kids, suggest ways he can handle encouraging more of what he wants to see from them. Don’t step in and rescue anyone with anything but information they must then implement themselves.

Pretty soon they will be able to figure it out on their own and stop looking to you as a savior.

When one of them gives you a message for another, you ask them “Do I have a little red flag attached to my ear?” When they look at you in confusion and answer no, you say you didn’t know that you were a mailbox. Then ask if they think they can come up with a way to convey that message to whomever it is without you being in the middle of it. If they struggle to come up with a place they could leave a note or something, maybe it is time to create a home message board that everyone checks. If you want to encourage them to look at it, leave a dollar tacked to it at random now and then, or otherwise leave thank you messages or treats of some kind to be found there. And be willing to say “It’s not my fault you missed out on the chance to go since you didn’t check the board yesterday. Those are the consequences. Next time you know how to prevent it.” Then walk off if the whining continues. It isn’t your problem if they had the chance and didn’t use it.

As for being civil to each other, tie your respect and their privileges to it. To do that, sit the whole family down to have a conversation.

Explain to them that you have realized you have been doing something less well than you should have as a mother, and that is both communicating expectations and prioritizing and rewarding maturity, civility and self sufficiency in some ways around the house. Explain that you intend to try to change that, and that you are going to explain what that means.

What it means is that you’re going to try your best to stop rewarding childish drama around the house. If people are yelling, you will be leaving the room. If they want help solving something, they will have to come to you specifically and ask you to help mediate. If they come to you and complain about mistreatment, they will get the question “What do you think you can do to handle them differently next time?” You will not jump in and rescue them from it.

Also, you will start rewarding mature communication and problem solving with more privileges. The kids who show you how mature they are by not letting anyone get them so worked up they are yelling about things will be the same kids that will get to do more things they want to do with friends, or whatever else are age appropriate desires of theirs. Tell them that you respect them as growing adults when they manage to communicate, even with someone intensely frustrating to them, without getting excited. Tell them that when you see them argue and stomp and slam and whine, you think of them as children and thus won’t get the special privleges an adult would.

And you tell them the psychology secret: When someone gets you upset enough that you are screaming and stamping and slamming and such, they win. It doesn’t matter what you said, what you threatened, what punishment they get later. Deep down inside they know they won because they got you to lose control. So the only real way to win a battle with your sister is to handle it in a way that doesn’t get you upset and angry. Adults are able to understand this and solve problems with other tools, including getting help in finding a solution from other people by brainstorming ideas. Children stomp and slam and use sarcasm on each other.

Tell them they have every right to use those negative and childish solutions, but that you will be disappointed to watch it, and you will be rewarding people when you see them use other tools besides those of a child.

And then you really need to do so. Watch them. Tell them you’re proud when they get it right. Talk to them about ways they could have handled it better when they come to tell you the unfairness of the universe.

Ask them a lot of “well, can you imagine what it’s like to be in her shoes? What might meet both of your needs better?” That sort of thing.

What you are doing is taking the whole set of patterns into meta awareness and saying that you will help them think it through, but you expect them to work on solving it themselves like adults.

It doesn’t work instantly, but it does work. Give it six months of being consistent about it, and you will have different kids. Everyone still loses it once in a great while, but mostly it won’t be worth the embarrassment to them to know they’re disappointing you and shooting themselves in the foot and not really getting any true measure of control anyway.

The first thing you do is to step back and really think about the answers to their questions, and then make time to answer them.

For example, if the kids complain that you will get master a drink, but not them one, you ask them “Do you really want an answer to that complaint, or just to whine at me about the unfairness of the universe like all children do now and then?” I suspect that will make them blink. If they say they want a real answer, give them one.

Explain to them “My job as a mother is to behave in a respectful way as much as possible while teaching you to be self sufficient and independent. That means that most of the time I would be failing in my most important task as a mother if I more that occasionally help you out with such things that you are completely capable of handling for yourself. I am showing you respect by believing you can take care of such mundane things. The relationship I have with (Master’s name here) is a different sort of relationship. It is one that only two consenting adults can sanely enter into. He doesn’t need to be taught to be self sufficient by me. I am not his mother. I have agreed as part of our kind of relationship to sometimes do things for him that I would not do for anyone else, including getting him a drink sometimes, or what have you. I am showing him respect in our different sort of relationship by so doing, where I would be failing at respecting you to do the same thing with the same frequency. This is one of the many ways that you must consider what the most important objective is, rather than only looking at the action to decide if something is fair. It isn’t always the best answer to treat everyone exactly the same if their needs are different. If I bought you all green pants for Christmas because your sister wanted a pair, the rest of you would not be so thrilled. You have to take my actions in the context of my priorities. In this case I am showing you respect by believing you can do for yourself and should do so.

You may have to have this conversation ten times, but with each successive time you will get more sighs and eye rolling and less challenging of it in the future.

After you have explained it once or twice, start responding with a question to open the conversation “Can you tell me a reason you think I might do things differently between (Master) and you? If you guess right, you get a (treat of some sort. Depending on child anything from a hug to ice cream, to getting out of setting the table toinght, etc. Just something they will value but will be of low cost to you).” This helps them internalize thinking about it for a few attempts. After a few more of those you start to answer with “I bet you can guess if you want the answer to that, but if not, feel free to follow me into the kitchen while I work on dinner and I will explain for you.”

that option almost happened for you two recently. I saw how it tore you to shreds so know it isn’t an option for you. I think that things may change once your woman/child has her baby and gets on meds. When is the baby due?

I also have a blended family. I was a mother of 3 when I met my husband, and we now have a toddler together. We have a 15 year old, an 11 year old, a 7 year old and a 2 year old.

I know that I am in your position, with the only difference being my children adore their step-father and he them. However, there is still a whole lot of tension because he has so little parenting experience and often feels I am too soft on them, or they take up too much of my time, and they get grumpy that I want to do some stuff with just him.

I know I take most of the misery on myself because I feel so dang guilty all the time. I feel *really* guilty that my husband ended up as a father of 4 when he could have chosen some girl with no kids and had all that attention to himself and not have to get home from work to homework, chaos, noise…etc. I feel guilty sometimes when he is strict with the kids and they get that “Alex is so mean to me” whinge.

Basically, my guilt doesn’t help things because it’s hard then for me to step outside the situation and say “these are your issuse, talk together about them and stop using me as a crutch”….I feel sort of “well, I brought them all together so it’s my job to make it all neat and happy”

I might make a promise to myself that next time the arguments start I’m driving myself to the spa until someone calls to say it’s over…:P

*hugs* for you

Karen