Full time step-mumming continues.  And I think that three and a half months in it’s going better than expected.

In an attempt to make it work, I started to introduce ‘basic human-ing’ quite early on, one item at a time.  This Pog-made approach goes something like this:

Every so often I identify one thing that makes me want to scream and teach Stepson 2 how to do it in a ‘basic human’ way.  If this is adhered to over a sufficient (but crucially unspecified) time, a reward is provided in the form of a packet of chocolate fingers, a steak pie or the purchase of additional marshmallow to top the homework / football (depending on the day) hot chocolate.  If basic human-ing is not maintained, no reward is provided.

So far we have  created habits around:

1. Stripping his bed on Monday morning before school and putting the clean bedding back on after school.
2. Wiping down the worktops after making food (this is easy to check as it’s demonstrated by work surfaces that look like they have had water poured over them, but baby steps and all that).
3. Drying up after dinner without any sudden urgent ‘just need to go and do something’.
4. Addressing the significant numbers of wrappers, receipts, bus tickets and fingernails (?!) left in the bedroom through the purchase of a small bedroom bin.  If the bin it not used, bedroom cleaning will be handed over to Stepson Two (I battled with whether this should be his to do anyway, but I figured if I do it at least it’s properly clean and may smell less like dead badger.)
5. Picking the bathmat up after each shower so it can dry on the towel rail rather than fester on the floor.
6. Our next significant step when the kitchen is done and dusted (literally), is to learn one proper dinner recipe (meat and veggie versions) that I can request stepson makes on occasion.

And he’s done brilliantly. However, 5) is a new one to all of us, brought in because Stepson Two has two showers most days what with gym visits and football, and I can only assume stands and drip dries on the bathmat, leaving is as drenched as those worktops.  So we’re all trying to remember to do that, because all the rules have to be lead by example, obviously.  But the other evening, after my circuits class shower, Stepson Two gleefully called me to the bathroom door and pointed:

‘Pog:  You failed at basic human-ing!’

I had.

Dammit. 🙂