Can you disengage from only one stepkid?
A question I get a lot about disengaging is whether it's possible to disengage from only one of your stepkids. Or, similarly, whether you can disengage from your stepkid when you have other kids at home as well, like your own kid(s) or ours baby.
Short answer: yeah, it's totally possible, especially since disengaging is more about shifting your own perspective than it is about changing your actions. Although changing your actions is certainly part of disengaging too.
Long answer... well, I guess let's just move along with this blog post.
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When you don't like one stepkid
If you have multiple stepkids — or multiple kids at home period, step or otherwise — then you have multiple relationships with those kids.
You connect differently with each kid, because each kid is a different individual with a different personality. And not every kid's personality is one that's easy to get along with — or even to like.
Same goes for us too, though. Not all stepparents have personality traits that make it easy for our stepkids to like us. For example, I have a wee bit of a tendency to call people out on their bullshit. This did not go over so hot with my stepdaughter, who was used to running the show. I also wanted more predictability and structure in our home than my stepdaughter was used to having at her dad's house.
The reasons my stepdaughter rejected me are many and complicated, and the reasons I struggled to like her are just as numerous. And they're all valid!
Personality clashes are a common reason why you can’t parent all kids exactly the same within your stepfamily. What’s easy with one kid could mean a massive argument with another — and vice versa.
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Why it's okay to treat a stepkid differently
Different kids having different personalities means that each kid might respond to household rules differently. This can lead to the perceived double standard that stepparents treat their stepkids differently than their own kids. Even though you, like me, probably try your damnedest to treat all kids in your home exactly the same. I’ve got a whole blog post on this: ➡️ STEPKIDS & DOUBLE STANDARD PARENTING 👀
Treating kids differently isn't "unfair" if the situation requires it. For example, a teacher doesn't treat a disruptive kid the same way as every other student in the classroom. And an overachieving kid might earn different privileges because they can be trusted more.
We see these patterns everywhere throughout our lifetimes; they're not exclusive to stepfamilies. It's just within a blended family, we get really paranoid that everything has to be perfectly equal or else we'll traumatize these kids for life. 😱
Here's the truth: what's equal isn't always what's fair. As much as I wanted (and tried... BOY did I try!) to parent my daughter and my stepdaughter exactly the same way, doing so only caused a ton of problems. For all of us.
Ultimately it was much easier to disengage from my stepdaughter and continue parenting my own kid as usual. Basically like parallel parenting but within our own home.
How to disengage from one stepkid and not the others
Disengaging from your stepkid isn't about being mean to them or ignoring them. It's not refusing to hand one stepkid a treat while doling treats out generously to all the other kids in the house.
Instead, disengaging is about accepting that you can't treat every kid identically — and that attempting to do so isn't really serving you. Or them!
The whole purpose of disengaging is to find a way to interact with your stepkid in a way that doesn't increase friction or distance between the two of you. And this looks different for everyone.
Maybe you say to your resistant stepkid (as you're helping the other kids with whatever thing), "Hey Kiddo, let me know if you'd like help with this too. It's totally fine if you'd rather do it yourself, though!" Let them know that the door is always open, but it's okay if they choose not to use that door.
Or maybe disengaging means reminding all the kids to bring their dishes over to the sink after dinner, but not getting on the case of the one kid who refuses. And then redirecting that behavior over to your partner to handle: "Hey Partner — Kiddo didn't bring their dishes to the sink. Could you please take care of that?"
The concept of disengaging is way more complex than I can cover effectively in a single blog — which is why I wrote an entire guide on how to disengage for anyone who wants to take a deeper dive.
But essentially, the goal is to find a way to stepparent that doesn't leave you burned out, frustrated, and/or resentful. And sometimes that means... well, not parenting your stepkid. 🤷🏻♀️