Family Forum / Parenting / Step Parents / June 2005

I see you're coming to alt.support.step-parents through
talkaboutparenting.  This isn't a bad thing, but you have to be aware
that this is not a private board where everyone is registered and known.
This is a Usenet newsgroup that is open to anyone with a computer,
an internet connection and a newsreader, and it is being archived at
groups.google.com which anyone can look up anytime they want.  Your email
address is hidden on talkabout, but it's not on Usenet!  We can all
see it, and so can the spam harvester robots.  The talkabout people are
just providing a web interface and forcing you to look at advertising.
If you want to make sure that google doesn't archive your posts you
have to put, as the **very first line of every post**

X-no-archive: yes

People who quote you, however, may be archived, and your words will
live forever.

If this is not a concern for you, you'll find this a pretty good
tough-love group.  We generally don't waste a lot of time patting
people's shoulders and murmuring "There there, Dear".  The response is
more likely to be "That's really rough, how are you making it worse,
and what are your choices for making it better?"  If what you're
looking for is practical advice from a lot of people (mostly women)
who've been there and done that, this is the place to be.  We are
stepmoms and biomoms, custodial and non-custodial.   Sometimes we
are the step-parents, sometimes it's our husbands who are steps to
our biokids.  Sometimes its our exes who have repartnered, and it's
our kids who are trying to adjust to a step in their lives.

Also, a number of our regular participants have problems reading
unbroken blocks of text.  Others are just real sticklers for grammar,
spelling and punctuation.  In general, your posts will be better
received if you use standard English conventions in your writing.  No
one will try to *make* you do so, but if you don't, lots of folks will
just pass over your posts without reading them.

Please note the date of the post that you are replying to.  Since most
of us are not coming through talkabout, the post you are replying to
may have expired from our systems, and we'll have no idea what led to
your response.  If a post is more than a couple of weeks old, it's
probably too old to reply to, although there is no "law" against it.

Tell us more about your situation.

Vicki