Stepmonster Blues.

Sometimes this parenting of children who aren't yours is an emotional business. Even when you only have them part time, they are still very much with you all week. You think about their welfare, hoping they are safe, not watching too much TV, that they won't be overloaded with sugar when they arrive later and hoping they are happy. You miss them. Funnily enough their dad knows them a little better than I do, and I can't imagine how he feels when we drop them off for another week. I know it tears him apart, and I am so proud of him for his positive attitude.

I've gone from a childless woman in her 30s, to someone influential to the wee hearts and (deranged) minds of two small boys. When I talk about them I see the eyes of my club-loving, beer-swilling, sub-twenty-five years of age friends and colleagues fill with pity. I'm jealous sometimes of their free weekends which unlike mine provide a respite from the working week, and stretch out magically free, full of trips to the pub, walks over the moors, and lazy mornings in bed (we were woken at 6 last saturday morning by BM standing over us "WONDERING if it was time to GET UP!" I bet they didn't get to bounce around the garden on a space-hopper, brandishing a fake sword like ChaosMan did though.

Although I have a fairly active role in the upbringing of the two mads, there are things I am, as a step-person, automatically excluded from. Although this hurts sometimes, it's right that both the boys natural parents be involved over me. Parents Evening this week highlighted this. Although I spend a lot of time encouraging the children to learn, educating them, monitoring their progress and finding out about their school lives, I'm excluded from going to the school, meeting and talking to their teachers and sharing parents evening pride that they're doing well. Maybe one day there will be room for three chairs opposite their teachers but I doubt it.

Their are certain advantages to being a step-person though. The boys tend to come and talk to me about stuff that is bothering them, BM especially. He asks me a lot of questions about his parents divorce, about what my family is to him, about friendship and about school. I answer him honestly and openly, like his Dad would, and I feel privileged that he feels he can come to me. He also shares his knowledge of grossness and bad jokes as he knows I find them as funny as he does. After putting SM to bed, Mr C comes downstairs sometimes to find us rolling about on the sofa in fits of giggles after BM has shared some disgusting but random snippet of information.

When your partner has children there is no guarantee that you'll like them, they'll like you, or that you'll get on at all. Luckily in our case we all seem to quite like each other but it's an odd feeling. Parents have blood bonds with children, and in most cases, automatically love them. Not so with the step-person. That bond might happen instantly, take time, or never happen at all.In any case it takes understanding, patience, and sometimes a very thick skin. I read something which struck home the other day though, which I must remember to tell BM next time he asks me about his newly reconstructed family. "Blood is thicker than water, but love is thicker than blood."