What does it mean be a step-parent? That's a great question now. A step-parent is someone who's choosing to step up and take on a responsibility that, legally and biologically, they really don't have to, but they're willing to. And once you step up, all the responsibilities come along as though they worry about logical time. There's a lot of emotions on what it means to be a step-parent, you know. The best thing is very exciting. It truly is. Especially being first-time step-parent, you know, first-time into that situation. There's a lot of things, but it is exciting. That's my best emotion for it. Step-parent is an additional parent, so you're not replacing the biological parents, which you are to be an asset. Your first job, you know, as a step-dad, you want to get to know the dad. And you guys have a mutual respect for each other, and that you're on the same page and raising, say, a child. You don't trump step, you don't trump the biological father, unless you're not a picture, but you do want to be the work and a team and not to create different frameworks for each other and maybe confuse them and go to house-to-house. I'd say it's top three, it's tough because I, I guess I, I expected a roller coaster of things to be coming my way. How fast I had to grow as a person is number one. A lot more responsibility. And a lot more happiness for me. For me, for what I didn't do that for sure. One, probably just knowing the role of discipline. The reality is, as a step-parent, you have now, you have all the legal responsibilities for that child, so discipline should be equal. But there's the sense that the step-parent can't discipline like the biological parent can, or they feel like they don't want to be the bad guy or the bad girl so they don't. So learning how to properly discipline my child was probably one of the first things that come me off guard. Second is probably just knowing how much affection I had to see to show to my child. I'm a stepfather of a young girl. She was seven at the time, so do I hug her? Do I kiss her? There was no questions asked with my biological daughter, but my stepdaughter is like, do I treat her the same? So just knowing what level of affection is probably something that come me off guard because you don't want to just be, you walk right into one and it wasn't the case. And I think third would be just balancing the health of a sadden. In a marriage, sometimes the spouse takes the side of the child over you because that is their biological child and they've been with since birth and you are the person that came into the picture. So learning how to balance out that dynamic would be the third day. The respect that I get from the biological father asked for, wanted to give him a problem being IE's as a situation that we're doing it. Sometimes part of that would be an issue. It wasn't. The love of my stepson didn't know what to expect, didn't know who to accept me as his father stepfather, didn't know who to listen to me or didn't know who to be able to take my guidance and use it. Furby, the dynamic between me and my wife and his dad, his other stepmother became a unique situation. You have four parents trying to raise one child. So you have four added two's, four different thoughts and four different opinions. But us four work together and actually be able to easily try this and I expect the three. Yeah, so if I was going to expand on what does it mean to be a step parent? Really it means you are choosing to fill a role of somebody who's either not there or somebody that's not in that role the full time. Often times they are step parents when there is an action parent, my life is a parent sometimes there is it. But as a step parent you are agreeing to be that father, be that mother, be that disciplinarian, provide physically, provide emotionally. Do all the things that come along with being a parent, you just happen to be a role that's defined by law as a step parent. Being a step parent is a critical role in a child life because you tend to have more time with a child in the biological parents because you end up taking a lot of responsibility because you want the responsibility so you immerse yourself with that child life because you want to get to know them because you already come in at a slight disadvantage not knowing from the early age. When I came in my step son's life he was already five. So I was dealing with that trying to get to know him. Me being a black man, him being a Latino child, he had that barrier so we kind of had to make our own living children. And further it becomes an issue and discipline too is what I've done in the road. You have this thing in step child. What's the limit? What's the range? Can you do this? Can you do that? So you have to have that conversation with biological parents. This is my, how I see it. I'm not here to overstep but I do want to be involved in the disperial action. So I too have the respect of the biological parents and y'all are checking me and we all are trying to riddish child into the way it needs to go. You know, his real dad is in his life and you know, he's a friend much respect to him. You know, because his dad is real dad in Movedad of Town. He's in another, he's in Southern California and he's always made an effort to be a part of baby's life. You know, but he sees him once a month. And so I took on the role of being his everyday role model and I don't try to separate. I do try to separate myself as far as I'm pops. That's a way he calls me. He does still have his dad and I have never tried to influence him to change that. I was wanting to make sure that, hey, you know what, your dad is your dad and I respect him before that because he does make an effort to be in his life. And my perception on everything was the fact that he's not about my way or the highway or anything like that. I felt like it was best for me to come in and be another factor to loving and to give him the best examples in life and be the best role model that I can. He can come to me. And I try to have that relationship where, look, yeah, I have your stepfather on pops, but also a male role model in your life that I hope that you can come to be for anything.