To My Step Kids School: Step Parents are Parents Too

Whelp, it’s that time of year again.

Summer has come to an end and it’s time for the kids to head back to school.

That means we stepmoms are gearing up for a whole new year of awkward back-to-school nights, dreaded field trips, Muffins with Mom events, and filling out the poorly designed student paperwork.

You are going to quickly have to decide where exactly you fit in your step children’s education.

I knew from day one I was never going to be the stepmom that took a back seat.

I want to be involved in everything. I want to see his face when he gets to meet his new teacher, and see him as he gets on the bus his first day. I want to attend all the Muffins with Moms events, and the Mother/Son Dances. I want to be at every single field trip and show up randomly to surprise him for lunch. I want to be able to walk up to his teacher and confidently introduce myself as one of his parents.

But ya know what? I can’t do those things.

I may be the one raising these kids almost 100% of the time, but I still have to make sure their mom doesn’t want to go on the field trip before I attend.

I have to make sure she is sent the Muffins with Mom flyer so she can go be honored on Mother’s Day with him.

I have to pray the Mother/Son dance will fall on our weekend so he and I can attend together.

I have to wait in the back at back-to-school night while she introduces herself to his teacher and helps him load his desk full of the school supplies we bought him.

And even worse, my name is on NONE of the school paperwork.

I am the parent who drives my stepkids to school every single day. I wake them up, get them fed, dressed, lunches packed, teeth brushed, in the car, and on the way to school EVERY DAY.

I am in the pickup line EVERY DAY to pick them up from school as soon as they are done.

I can’t even sign their permission slips, or school letters because stepmoms aren’t considered “legal guardians”.

There’s no spot on the school paperwork for ‘stepmom’, or ‘stepdad’.

In our current situation, birthmom can’t even contact the boys’ and still her name is listed on all of their paperwork.

I was once told I wasn’t allowed to come pick my oldest stepson up from school and Alex was going to have to leave work early to come get him because he needed to be released to a “parent”.

I really am so tired of our kids’ schools not acknowledging step parents as parents unless we have some legal document that says we have rights to these kids.

Do you know how impossible that is to get? I would need the boys’ mother to completely relinquish her rights to her kids in order for that to happen. Newsflash, that’s not gonna happen, and I don’t want it to.

I want schools to start recognizing that step parents are parents too. Some of us step parents do more for our step children than any biological parent on that paperwork.

I’m not asking to replace the birth mother. Just add this one extra line on that form to help solve so many of our problems:

Stepmom: _________________________________________________________________