Summary

The narrative recounts the journey of a stepfather who earns the respect and love of his stepdaughter through patience, trust, and encouragement, ultimately learning valuable lessons about parenthood.

Abstract

The author shares his experience of becoming a stepfather to Jill, who was in her early teens when he entered her life. Initially met with resistance, he persevered through challenges and missteps, eventually forming a strong bond with her. A pivotal moment occurred at a horse arena where he encouraged Jill to attempt a higher jump than she was accustomed to, symbolizing a leap of faith that solidified their mutual respect. Through the years, he learned that earning a teenager's love and respect requires heartache, joy, and most importantly, pride in their growth. The author imparts wisdom to Jill about the complexities of finding true love in the modern world, emphasizing the importance of patience and self-discovery. He acknowledges that his stepchildren taught him as much about parenting as he taught them, highlighting the importance of mutual growth and understanding.

Opinions

The author believes that earning a teenager's love and respect is a challenging but rewarding process.
He expresses that trust and belief in a child's abilities are crucial for their personal development and for forming a strong parent-child relationship.
The author suggests that finding the right partner in life is a complex endeavor, akin to solving a mathematical problem with many variables.
He emphasizes that true love is not found in fairy tales or romantic fantasies but in the real world, through genuine connections with others.
The author takes pride in his stepdaughter's growth into a special individual and credits her with shaping him into a better parental figure.
He advocates for an open and learning-oriented approach for new step-parents, stressing the importance of allowing children the space to develop and mature.

Being a Stepfather

Or what I learned after being buried in the Mohave desert!

Having fallen in love with Jenny, I came into Jill’s life when she was in her early teens. For any young person, accepting a new authoritative figure in their life cannot be easy, and most times not welcome. When sixteen, my step-daughter was not about to leave me in any doubt where I should take my next vacation: up to my neck in sand somewhere in the Mojave Desert.

Earning a teenager’s love and respect isn’t easy. I kept count; ruining her life twenty-seven times in the first year.

I think it was a year or two later that we were at the horse arena together. Jill had become a very talented horsewoman, having excellent posture and control, but seemed content jumping over cross poles a foot or two off the ground. I knew the horse was capable of more, but more than that, knew that if my daughter could find the courage to push herself, she had all the skills to meet the demands of senior competition fences.

I stepped into the arena and without seeking permission raised a jump closer to five feet.

“Okay,” I said, “lets do some real jumping.”

Jill had to put her trust in two things that day, my belief in her ability to find that courage, and Chloe’s willingness to carry her safely over the fence. Jill cantered Chloe around the arena, giving the horse a long hard look at the fence.

When they came around the top of the arena that fence must have looked enormous, but anyone who knows Jill, knows, too, she doesn’t back away from shit!

I swear, I thought they were never going to come down. Chloe and Jill cleared the fence and when they landed something had changed. Jill and I had earned each other’s respect.

Over time, I didn’t teach Jill or her brother, Ken, anything they couldn’t learn elsewhere, but in the end, they taught me everything on what it would really take to earn their love. I learned with a little heartache, plenty of joy, but mostly I learned with pride; pride because they have become great Americans and incredibly special individuals.

As a young beautiful woman there came that moment when she said:

“Pops, I don’t know if the man I could love completely is out there.”

It was a serious statement, one that should be handled with diplomacy.

“You know, Jill,” I said, “it’s not easy for a man or a woman to choose the right partner, more especially in this digital age. Mostly men are fun, but putting all your trust and honesty forward in the belief that you may find the right man to fill a need in your life, which is to completely love that someone, is never going to be easy.

Let’s think about it mathematically. At the last count, there are four billion men world-wide, of them two billion are happily married, one billion are not crazy about American women, fifty million prefer one night stands, seven million couldn’t pass a fifth grade spelling bee, and two million are Manchester United supporters, and not worth looking at.

So, you see how easy it is to get the dating sums wrong…many do. It’s no-one’s fault, just an error in mathematics. Seems to me that between the math or the algebra you haven’t yet found the man hiding behind the decimal point.

When you find that man, trust me, you’ll know like you know nothing else,” I reassured her. “But I’ll guarantee you, he won’t have been created by Disney, and won’t one day leap off the page of a romance novel. Instead, he’ll be living in the world, quite unassuming, working hard, and, to put it quite simply, living a life being the best man he can be.”

So, many of you reading here might be wondering about this smug smile on my face. It’s because I was right, after her many tangles with life, false romances, and wrong mathematics, she finally nailed it after her twenty-year-long search for a special guy.

I take no credit for bringing into adulthood such a special woman and daughter. I give her the credit of molding me into being the kind of parental figure she needed.

What little I learned about being a parent, I learned by observing my children and letting them teach me. It’s possible to start out in the wrong way, but if, as a new step-parent, we ourselves are open to learning, allowing a fresh spirit their initial resentments, understand their need to blossom with new ideas, freedoms, and ultimately trust in their more mature qualities, they will leave behind their adolescence and make you proud.