What is it About an Intoxicated Mentally Unstable 17-Year Old Girl Holding a 9 mm Handgun That Makes Me Nervous?

I am glad I am back in Duluth.

I don't want to talk about what happened in Sioux Falls. About Jessica dropping out of school, staying out all night, drinking, hurting the ones that love her most. I don't want to talk about Brian's attempts to corral her behavior, followed quickly by his just wanting her to go away after she brought him emotionally to his knees, and his eventually apathy and subsequent depression. I don't want to mention that I told her to NEVER AGAIN, when angry with me, say the words that hurt me most and how she did it anyway and I told her that was IT- I couldn't do it anymore.

I don't want to talk about how her Facebook profile picture of her standing holding a 9 mm handgun with a mixed drink beside her bothers me and makes me afraid for Brian's life and glad I am not there...

I contacted a realtor. At this point, I don't think I care how much the sale of the house will provide. I just want them out of it, and that responsibility off my back. Self-preservation. I want my dogs with me. I think what Brian does at this point is his life. He needs to get the house fixed up to sell. A stager is coming through to tell him what needs to be done to sell. So far it doesn't seem like much to do, just painting and cleaning.

So, I am winding up that chapter of my life. The best part is that I have probably found my calling in life. I presented on stepfamilies for Northern Pines. Afterwards, many of the people there came up to me with specific questions on their situations or clients. Perhaps that nearly 11 years of my life has not been in vain.

Baby's First Speaking Engagement

Well, the call came this evening. From Northern Pines Mental Health. They want me to speak on stepfamilies.

With my most recent adventures I hardly feel like a success. My relationship with Brian is all but deteriorated. Jessica is off drinking, smoking and refusing to go to school. When telling Brian of my thoughts on my failure in light of this speaking engagement, he disagreed. He feels that Jessica has given me soooo... much experience with stepfamilies that I should be more than qualified to speak on the subject.

The willful child

Oy vey. More stepfamily shit.

Jessica was basically kicked out of Brandon High School for academic behavioral issues. She then went to East Dakota in Sioux Falls. This is where they send Brandon kids with such issues. She missed too much school and was kicked out of there. Today she was scheduled to do testing at Joe Foss, the school for kids not succeeding in Sioux Falls Schools. She purposefully failed those tests. Brian is ready to kill her. She wants what she wants when she wants it.

South Dakota passed a law stating that kids have to stay in school until they are 18. At Joe Foss, they told Brian that they just had a parent arrested because the kid wasn't in school. According to Joe Foss, she will have to go to Lincoln High unless Brandon accepts her as their student again. Brian just did the paperwork to have her transferred to the Sioux Falls district to go to Joe Foss. Jessica is refusing to go to Lincoln. I think she would enjoy seeing Brian in jail. She could have the house to herself and all her friends over. Volunteers of America has a program for GEDs that is free for kids from out of town schools. That is the only thing she is agreeing to do. We don't know yet, if Brandon will accept her back. If so, they may not agree to the GED thing. Schools get money for students enrolled in their district. She may not have a choice.

With her record, having been in DOC custody, if she is placed in JDC, she will likely go back into DOC custody. This would be good for Brian. He is tired of her crap. She said she wants to go into the service, but according to a phone call Brian made this morning, they do not accept GEDs. The only way they will accept this is if she goes into their GED program.

Last night I brought up Jessica World. This is the world where she can get a job easily, go somewhere where she doesn't have to work to get her GED and can do whatever she wants. I was trying to get her to nail down what she wants to do. She will be 18 in July and should be thinking about this. She got mad and asked why I was asking all these questions. She has always had people covering for her. Brian and I have always worked harder than she has to get her through school. Brandon allowed her to pass to the next grade without failing her from the time she was small. There would have been some social consequences if that happened, but it seemed necessary. Yet, it never happened. She is working right now at about a 5th grade level if that.

This is where it is.

Stepfamily stuff II

Parenting dysfunction the stepfamily way:

Parenting differences in intact families can impede upon the process itself. In intact families, you have two different parenting styles. This can cause conflict when one parent may be more lenient or uses different consequences. It is often difficult to agree on how to handle children.

Stepfamilies often differ in more emotionally charged ways for a number of reasons. One is my child vs. your child. It is only human to protect and provide for our own children. When another person's child comes into the picture on a permanent basis, there is a difference in how we treat another's child. We may expect more from our own children. We have rules that have existed before the blending that work for our family. This other child and parent may not feel these rules should apply to them. It is new. It is different. Perhaps Dad only sees his child every other weekend. He doesn't think that his child should have to be involved in the Saturday morning cleaning routine. He doesn't want his child to hate coming, so perhaps this child is excluded from the chores aspect of family life. He says his child didn't contribute to the mess, so shouldn't have to clean it up. This child is spending Saturday mornings watching cartoons while Mom's children are doing the cleaning and resenting Dad's child for living the good life. Friction between the children = friction between the parents.

Bedtime:

When Jessica came into our family, she had no set bedtime. Whenever she fell asleep in front of the t.v. was her bedtime. My children who were older had set bedtimes. During the week it was 9 pm and on the weekends, it was 10. This posed a problem. Do we change my children's bedtimes or hers? Since she was younger, to me it made sense to change hers. Brian, on the other hand felt I was too strict. It was difficult for my children to be in bed knowing that this younger child was up late. Although we discussed this issue between us, it took quite some time to resolve it. I think Brian began to recognize the benefits of having time without the children before we went to bed and began to require her to have a set bedtime as well. Prior to that, I had to ask him to require her to leave the boys alone when it was their bedtime.

The sense of belonging:

If rules are different for one child than the others, it impedes upon a child's sense of belonging. Although kids will not naturally ask to have chores like everyone else, it does give them the sense that they are part of the organism of family at that residence.

There is no denying the guilt of the parent who has visitation. Brian went from being the primary caregiver of his daughter to being the part-time father. This was devastating. To top it off, Jessica's mother was telling her that her dad had a new family and didn't care about her anymore. The courts are slow in recognizing the impact of emotional and psychological abuse. They are also slow in recognizing that not all mothers are maternal or primary caregivers.

Stepfamily stuff...

So, it sounds like therapists and agencies are hungry for the latest information on therapy with stepfamilies. Having realized the problem of few helpful resources for stepfamilies, I thought it would be a good specialty to go into. I have been surprised, however at the lack of information available for someone who intends to pursue the sport of addressing stepfamily issues.

I know a small piece of what my stepfamily is. I understand the dynamics and the need to be accepted by the rest of the world. There are my children, his child, their interactions, my interactions with my children, with his child, our relationship, my parents, my siblings, his parents, my ex-husband, his ex-wife, their parents... That is merely the family corner if you look from a systems approach.

The systems approach sees people from the perspective of all their interactions in their environment. There is the family system, the school system, employment, community, close friends, etc. All of these interact and have an effect on each other. A good way to describe this is with a mobile. If you move one piece of a mobile, the other pieces all move as well.

Our society looks at family from the nuclear family perspective. A mother, a father and the children. Although there is no handbook on how to raise your family, there are traditional roles played by the members. The parents are the authority figures, bring home the bacon and split the resources accordingly. The children say, "that's not fair!" when resources are not distributed to their liking and tend to argue and play with each other.

A stepfamily is different. Mom's new friend comes over occasionally at first and then after awhile, may move in or marry her. The children develop a relationship of friendship with this person until the unspeakable happens: He moves in. The resources including finances, food, space and time are all askew. If he has children, the situation escalates to that of a haphazard blended concoction. Everyone wants it all to work out, but looking from the systems approach, the adjustments ripple through every aspect of their lives. In the most well-meaning of families, this is difficult. Throw in a couple of cups of antagonism from former spouses and the result is a vile explosive mixture.

More later!