My stepdaughter turned eighteen a couple of months ago. Legally speaking I suppose she’s an adult. Practically speaking, she’s just like every other eighteen-year-old, straddling the line between childhood and adulthood. She’s out of high school, just started cosmetology school, and is working on figuring out the rest of her life.Today is National Stepfamily Day. I didn’t know such a day existed until someone on Facebook mentioned it. Technically speaking, my daughter is my stepfamily. I’ve never thought of her that way though.I’ll refer to her as my stepdaughter here, but just for clarity. I’ve never told anyone I have a stepdaughter. I have a daughter.I met my stepdaughter when she was two-and-a-half years old. Her mother and I started dating, and her biological father chose to exclude himself from her life. We got off to a rocky start; she ripped the earing out of her mother’s ear on our first date because she didn’t want to get into the car with me. She soon warmed up though, and we grew to love each other.Over the past fifteen years I’ve watched her mature from that little toddler, into a little girl, a pre-teen, a teenager, and now creep up on the verge of adulthood. And while her biological father has made a few brief cameo appearances over the years, I’ve been here the whole time.When she had lice in first grade, I sat on the front step and picked it out of her hair. When she got in trouble at a friend’s house in third grade, I went to that friend’s house in the middle of the night and picked her up. When she had field trips at school, and her mother couldn’t go, I went with her.
When she struggled with math I spent hundreds of hours helping her study. When she argued with her mother, I told her to calm down. When she got a little too crazy about boys, I told her to back off. When she needs to be picked up or dropped off, I’m there.We’ve had difficult times, too. We’ve just ended a period of five or six years during which I’m quite sure she didn’t even like me. She barely tolerated me, and I didn’t do much better in how I acted toward her. We continue to have misunderstandings during which she takes things too personally, and I’m not sensitive enough.But more than anything what I want her to realize is that the difficulties between us aren’t stepfather/stepdaughter difficulties. They’re father/daughter difficulties. She and I have battles similar to those she has with her mother. They’re the problems that arise when a teenager tries to assert her independence, and when a parent continues to try to provide guidance, sometimes in a way that comes off as condescending, impatient, or just plain dickish.She doesn’t remember a time in her life before I was around. I’m the biological father of her two little brothers and her little sister, and although she calls me Brett (a remnant from when she was little and we first met), and the little kids call me dad, that’s about the only difference in our relationships.I’m proud of the young woman she has become, and of the steps she’s taking to figure out who she is and what she wants to do. I frequently shake my head in disbelief that her biological father could ever have deserted her.Unfortunately, men desert their children and their families all too often, which helps create step-families in the first place. We'd all be better off if more people tried to fix their families instead of deserting them.Two of the proudest things in my life have been that I’ve been able to step in and be my “step” daughter’s father, and that my children will never have to live without me in their lives for even one day, no matter what happens.Although the legal connection between my stepdaughter and me is by marriage, there are more important things in this world than legal connections.She’s my daughter, and she always will be.PREVIOUS POST: 1% is Very SmallIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: My Daughter Graduated High School?+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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