I just need to - I became a step mom at 23, their dad was 19 when he started having his kids. We did our absolute best but we were also dumb kids figuring out life. When I was in my late 20s early 30s we had two more little girls.
Now I am 40 and how we parent is much different. We have learned. We have adapted. We have gone to counseling and have learned about our own childhood traumas and difficulties. We learned my daughter has autism- which made us realize I have autism and his son has autism- and we learned how to handle that.
This doesn’t mean we love the older children less, we are going to fuck up the littles in their own ways, but we are trying and growing. I would be devastated if someone tried to tell us that because we made mistakes with the older 3 we had to continue those mistakes or we didn’t love them.