This is a term that is tossed around quite a bit in the stepparent community, it refers to when a stepparent decides to back away from his or her stepchild, letting the biological parent take care of all of the child’s needs, leaving the stepparent and child as people whom simply reside in the same home, and not much more.

This is often done after a family has been in crisis for some time. The stepparent begins to feel helpless and overwhelmed, feeling as though he or she is being stuck to deal with a child on his or her own, whom is not the biological child of the stepparent, which begins to lead to strong feelings of resentment. No one enjoys feeling as though they are facing a situation alone, but extra resentment tends to step in once a stepparent begins to focus on the fact that the child is not his or her blood, and the stepparent does not technically have to deal with the child. The stepparent then decides to let the biological parent(s) take complete charge of parenting the child, often with a ‘lets see how you like dealing with this alone’ attitude.

While this all may sound harsh to some, there are times in all of our lives when we wish that someone else could step in and take over, for many stepparents they simply see the fact that the child has biological parents whom can take care of the child, as reason and justification for stepping back when things are seemingly too much to handle. Disengaging provides almost immediate relief for the overwhelmed stepparent, but with this temporary relief also comes irreversible damage to both the child, as well as to the relationship between the child and the stepparent. The extent of the damage increases the longer that the stepparent continues to stay disengaged from the child. The more that the stepparent pulls away from the child no matter how good, or bad the child behaves, the more the child begins to feel as though he or she is simply unlovable no matter what is done, and causes the child to put up more emotional walls and boundaries out of protection and self preservation, but is usually viewed as the child not feeling remorse, or simply being cold hearted, or a bad seed, which tends to make the stepparent back off even more.

This causes a vicious cycle pushing the child and stepparent further and further apart from one and other, while each sees the other as heartless and cold. And while with great effort and trust on both sides, a relationship can be salvaged, the longer a disengaged parent is allowed, or allows him or herself to be actively withdrawn from the child, the less chance the relationship has of being saved, as well as what is salvaged tends to be more superficial the longer the disengaging ensued.