Holidays and a Blended Family

Cheryl Gowin and Dennis Gowin.  Call us at our counseling practice with your feedback, comments, issues, or questions at 434-808-2637.

What did your family look like when you looked around the Thanksgiving table?  Have you seen the saying that seems to be everywhere on social media:

Family is Family.  Whether it’s the one that you start out with, the one that you end up with or the family you gain along the way.

Statistics say that about 75 % of the 1.2 million Americans who divorce each year will remarry.  Many of these marriages include children.  Pew Research Center reported 52% of people under 30 have a step relative.  Odds are that your family meets the definition of a blended family.  A blended family can create a very complex life.  In a blended family, you deal with complicated schedules, squabbling stepsiblings, issues with ex-partners, and developing the co-parenting rules of your new household.

As part of a blended family, your children deal with many adjustments.  These adjustments could include a new house, new family members, a new school, new house rules, a new church, and maybe a new last name.  It could also mean moving away from friends, grandparents and other relatives.  These changes can cause emotional challenges.  So what are you to do as a parent to help make the new blended family a loving environment for all?

Start with a game plan; merging two families successfully requires lots of planning.  Yes, once again communication is key.  Some topics you need to handle are: the role each parent will play in parenting each child, who will do what, what will be expected from the children, how to create time to be a couple without the children, and the role of grandparents and other extended family members.  Don’t assume that your prior discipline style will be appropriate for your blended family.  Talk with your spouse about the rules that existed in each family before the marriage.  It’s unfair to change the rules on a child overnight.

Acknowledge to your children that you know they are going through a transition that may not have been their choice.  Let your children share their memories from the past while creating new family traditions.  Build new family traditions without rejecting the traditions of previous family life.  Remember this is a blended family; so your challenge is to find a way to blend family traditions.

Shape a parenting coalition between you, your ex-spouse, and your current spouse.  Your children will mirror your actions.  Unified adults will mirror to your children not to be argumentative.  The rule about not arguing in front of your children applies in all situations.

One of your greatest challenges is forming a working pact with your former spouse.  You and your former spouse relationship changed to a relationship with the common goals being the well-being of your children.  Think of it this way, your children seeing you being cold, sabotaging, hurtful, or exclusionary with your former spouse, may view this as acceptable and that your actions may reflect your feelings toward them.

Support your spouse’s relationship with his/her child.  Don’t make your spouse choose between you and his/her child.  Talk with your spouse about how you can help him/her develop his/her parenting relationship.  Be his/her number one support system in building and maintaining their relationship.

Walk a mile in your children’s shoes.  Your children and/or stepchildren are passive passengers on this journey.  They may feel they didn’t get to choose whether they wanted a new family member, so take great care, and have deep patience when helping them adapt to the situation.  Whether you are the stepparent or it’s your spouse who is in the role of stepparent, talk frequently with the children about how it’s going.  Ask the children about their experiences, from their point of view.  If all of you have good intentions and a loving heart, you will work it out — but first you must communicate openly.

Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father.  Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.  Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need.  I Timothy 5:1-3 

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Call us with your feedback, comments, issues, or questions; our phone number is 434-808-2637.