Skulk around Facebook Stepmother groups for long enough and you’ll likely encounter a very simple hashtag, usually in response to a very complex stepfamily scenario.
#nacho
It’s not about the soothing balm of corn chips awash in salsa and mozzarella in the face of a life challenge. Much as this concoction might have served you well as the perfect couch-snack in the face of heartache, buoyed by its natural life-partner Tequila, Stepmotherly nacho has nothing to do with a convenient Tex-Mex treat.
Simply put, the philosophy is ‘Nacho Kids. Nacho Problem’.
Underlying principles include:
Reminding everyone involved that this is not actually your child
This allows you to extract yourself from some of the more onerous responsibilities including:
- Finding AWOL sports uniform components in the last 10 minutes before commencement of said sport
- Taking responsibility for the craft project the night before the craft project is due when you are in fact the least crafty person you know
- Trying to patrol gaming hours and screen time
- Adjusting your entire household’s dietary patterns when the child decides to be a pescetarian
This also means you can treat the stepchild as if they were the child of a friend, or of a sibling. This allows you to dabble at will in their lives, taking them to movies you are keen on, on spinny rides at an amusement park or filling them with simple sugars then relinquishing all subsequent responsibilities.
Refraining from expressing criticism about the stepchild
Stepping back in this fashion involves being less invested in expressing your suggestions about how this child might behave in order to best position themselves as a valued contributor to society. This is useful in two ways:
- Your suggestions are very unlikely to ever be acknowledged. In a world already full of frustrations like ineffective public transport, talentless social media influencers who earn four times what you do and those people who block your access to the deli number dispenser by taking their ticket and not moving, you hardly need to expend energy on an opinion that will be ignored by a child.
- If you, as I do, often lack an appropriate level of filtering when it comes to expressing your opinion to a loved one about their first-born child, it will be useful to retrain yourself to say nothing. I’ve learned that comments such as ‘I feel like you are just facilitating his path to mediocrity’ or ‘don’t let him end up being the person I’d put on a Performance Improvement Plan’ in retrospect would have been better left as ‘inside thoughts’ rather than those that came out aloud.
Understand your triggers, and don’t engage
As the ultimate nerd-child who was driven to academic pursuits, my head wants to actually explode at the concept that a child would not complete their homework and hand it in.
As the daughter of a nurse who only accepted projectile vomiting and / or febrile seizures as a reason to stay home from school, I’m sorely triggered by someone who expects to stay home from school due to a sore stomach (which seems suspiciously proximate to eating 500g of Cheetos)
The Nacho method involves understanding that this is not about you and your triggers.
Step back from the chaos
Unless there has been an unseemly tiny period between your partner disconnecting with their ex and your coupling, they’ve been perfectly able to manage all the twin-household carnage without you. Patterns have been established. Boundaries, regardless of how porous, exist. Feeding, housing, educating and most of Maslow’s priorities were maintained before you rocked up.
Even if you have, as almost every rookie does, inserted yourself enthusiastically in the everyday of this fractured household in an earnest attempt to make everyone feel whole, if you now take a stiletto-step back, no one is going to keel over.
If you are writhing in angst over unfair distribution of household tasks, if the hashtag of your life has become #ididntsignupforthis, it’s not too late to politely retreat a little.
Have no involvement with your partner’s ex
Enough said.
Whether its a 1am snack to soak up a tummy full of sauv blanc or a legit strategy for stepfamily sanity, its always OK to embrace the nacho.