My birth children have grown and flown. I am left at home with my beloved and charming Prince Charming and his part-time son. Try as I might, I cannot keep the wicked stepmother from surfacing. Much of the time, I think she’s right.
He’s a teenager. He has moods; his room’s a tip; he wants independence but can’t organise himself; he needs to be chivvied about schoolwork, clean clothes, the dishwasher, hanging towels, going to bed, getting up… In other words, he’s pretty normal. 
Not My DNA
However, this is not MY child. If he were mine, then I would share some of the responsibility for his faults. Whether you’re a nature or a nurture believer, a boy’s mum is responsible for half his DNA and a good percentage of his behaviour patterns. I can criticise my own boys with impunity. This is different.
When I hint that Stepson is not completely perfect, I am criticising his DNA – both halves – and the parenting styles of his two conflicting parents. In his eyes, I am already a strange new arrival. I have taken away such of his dad’s attention. Worse, I have made sure that where his dad looks, he sees more astutely. I have filled the house with stuff from my old world and imposed strict laws about screen time and homework and using deodorant. All of these things make his life less comfortable. They also implicitly criticise his mum AND his dad.
Just Ignore It
The alternative is to live with the imperfections,and this is what I have been trying to do.
Turns out I can’t. I bite my tongue, look the other way, go out for a walk, phone a friend, weed the garden and then I snap. And it looks so petty. But the thing is, if a mum says you are grubby, you are eating the wrong diet, you need to rinse the plates before you put them in the dishwasher, it’s normal. If a stepmum does it, it’s wicked, petty, unnecessary and altogether wrong.
There must be other stepmums out there experiencing these things.
How do you cope? What should I do? Can I change the stereotype or do I just need to polish the shiny red apple?