My Ears Bleed and My Heart Breaks

Struggling.

I said the next post would be a couponing 101 post.  I’m afraid that’s going to wait, because I need to write something else tonight, but I promise that couponing 101 is in the works!  

I’m struggling.  So far Bonus Mom Chef has been mostly glitter and sparkles, puppy dogs, ice cream and rainbows... … … but lets face it, we all know that blended families have a darker side.  Heck parenting in general has a darker side.  It’s a lot of hard work, a whole lot of challenges, and we as parents have to hold on to all of the little bright shiny moments, as small as they may be, to get us through the louder, tougher moments.  That’s not to say there aren’t fantastic moments also-- just that during certain points in our children’s lives, they occur much less often.  In our household, we are in one of those “challenging” and “much less often” periods.  Everyone.Is.Feeling.It.  It breaks your heart as a parent- or at least it does for the Hubinator and I.  We want our children to be healthy and happy.  We also know we have responsibilities to raise responsibly and healthy, respectful kids who become well functioning adults and citizens.  The nature of that process means that you’re going to get kids who are unhappy.  

I could go on for a while, but let me get to the point.  Specifically I’m struggling tonight over something that has been building in me, and in our household.  Part of me wonders if this might not be part of the problem.  I continually address it to the best of my ability each time that it comes up, but it generally gets blown off by whichever kiddo is the “offender” (usually our youngest).  

Our son, who will be twelve in a few months, has a not-so-great habit of jokingly referring to situations and/or people as “suicidal”, or “attempts to kill one’s self/ his-self/ her-self”.  I have zero tolerance for this.  I find it absolutely repulsive.  If it were up to me It would be treated the same as if he had dropped the N-word or some other totally offensive four letter word, or the R-word in our home.  Unfortunately, I am not getting the same reaction from the Hubinator as he doesn’t have as strong of feelings regarding this issue.  And that is ok-- parents do not always have to agree.  I want to stress that in here.  The Hubinator and I often do not always see totally eye to eye and yet we have a magical way of working things out.  I love that about the way we parent together.  This situation however, is making me really uncomfortable.  Nauseated even, when it happens.  

We all know the rate of suicide amongst youth.  We all know the rate of depression amongst youth.  The chances that my bonus son knows, or will soon know, someone in his middle school who has some sort of suicidal feelings are pretty high.  It is terribly sad and my eyes fill with tears as I write this as my heart breaks thinking about this other child-- but it’s a fact.  My heart breaks even more so with the thought that it is our son whose thoughtless, careless and ignorant behavior and words could be heard by this individual and be so damaging.  Is my son only eleven?  Yes.  But there are other children his age, in his school, dealing with these issues.  In addition, it is now in his regular vocabulary to throw around these terms and phrases.  So then is it not my responsibility as a parent to educate him as to how inappropriate those words are, and how serious the issues that he is making light are, and why it’s completely and totally unacceptable in our home and family to do such?  Isn’t it my job to set a moral and ethical bar for our children to live up to?  Not my job alone- I’m bonus mom, I get that.  

Is this one of those times that I’m overstepping my role?  If so-- then how does a bonus mom/ step- parent deal with that sort of feeling and fact and internal conflict?  

This is not one of those blog posts that ends in a neatly tied up bow and conclusion.  This unfortunately does not have an answer... yet.  Hopefully one day I’ll post that we figured out how to handle this in our home.  If we do, I’ll certainly update!  

In the meantime, if any of you have suggestions, comments, feelings, ideas, opinions, etc., please feel free to leave them in the comments. :)