Tags
Adjustment, Anxiety, Blended Families, Change, Communication, Compassion, Conflict, Differences, Divorce, Fairness, Family routines and traditions, Insecurity, Introducing the new partner, Jealousy, Laying down solid foundations, Needs that children have, Parenting together, Patience, Relationship with the ex, Remarriage, Resentment, Respect, Sadness, Safe boundaries
Here’s the scenario. You have met someone. You’re recently divorced and so are they. You both have children from your previous marriages. You want to start a life together because your relationship is getting serious. This will involve becoming a blended family. So what can you do to ensure that this new family will be successful and that all people involved will be able to handle the change? This article will give tips on how to introduce this new person to your children, how your children might feel once you become a blended family, what all children need from their family, and how to make your blended family a successful one.
So What Is A Blended Family?
A blended family is when one or both partners were married or in a relationship before and have children from that prior relationship. Both of these people fall in love and decide to marry each other and in turn, form a new blended family that includes children from those prior relationships.
The Realities:
We’re not going to sugar coat this. Blended families are tough on the new couple and tough on the kids. To develop good family relationships it takes work and blended families have a lot of adjustments to make. Some of the realities are:
- The old family is mourned to make room for the new family.
- Each person experiences the new blended family differently. A child may start out in their first family as an only child, but now in the blended family has many siblings. A partner may not have been a parent in the first family and are now thrown into a parenting role for the very first time.
- Your partner or children may feel uncertain about how these changes will affect their relationships with their spouse or with their parent.
- Kids may not like their step siblings, like living with them, or get along with them.
- The kids may not accept the new partner.
- The kids may constantly compare the new partner to their parent.
- The new partner may not like the children.
- Custody arrangements can be complicated and affect family events, birthday parties, and vacations.
- The ex may be resentful toward the new partner and affect the children negatively.
- Family traditions may change.
- It may take a long time for a blended family to begin to feel comfortable and function well together.
Merging two families means merging two different parenting styles, discipline methods, lifestyles, and other things. To give yourself the best chance of success, it’s important to consider this and start planning on how your blended family is going to function before the marriage even takes place. Even though it is tempting to marry after finding another person to love again, if you wait and lay solid foundations and give everyone a chance to get used to each other and the idea of marriage, it will definitely pay off in the long run.
Before Blending Happens – Tips For Introducing The New Partner:
The relationship is getting serious and now you want to introduce your children to the love of your life. Tips on how to do this:
- Do not introduce the new partner right after the separation or divorce. Children need time to adjust to their parents being separated first. They are also less likely to feel worried that they are being replaced by someone else. Blended families have the highest success rate if the couple waits two years or more after a divorce to remarry, instead of piling one drastic family change onto another, which can unsettle children.
- Introduce your children slowly to the new partner.
- Be sensitive to your child’s reactions. Just because you think your new partner is great doesn’t mean that your children will agree.
- Tell your ex about your plans before introducing your partner to your children. Offer reassurances to your ex about your partner’s involvement with the children and how important they are to you.
- If your child doesn’t live with you, they will still need alone time with you without the new partner being present every visit.
- Make it clear to your children that the new partner is not a substitute parent and that you and your ex will continue to love them and be there for them throughout their lives.
- Support your children in adapting to the reality of life moving on. If it’s your ex who has the new relationship, be neutral about their partner. Avoid asking the children questions about the relationship and respect your child’s wishes if they do not want to talk about the new partner.
- Encourage your ex to speak positively about your partner to your children so that they don’t feel like they have to take sides between the two of you.
- Find ways to experience real life together. Try to get the kids used to your partner in daily life situations.
- Establish with your partner how you will parent the children together and make the necessary adjustments BEFORE you remarry. Make sure that you are consistent with things such as rules, chores, discipline, and allowance. This will help reduce any feelings of frustration and unfairness in children. It will also help your kids not to become angry and blame your partner for the new changes.
Tips If You’re The New Partner:
- Meeting and being involved with your partner’s children can be daunting. You will want to support your partner in their relationship with their children and hopefully get along with them too. Set aside some special time for you and the child to interact alone. Allow the relationship between the two of you to develop slowly. Limit your expectations. Don’t expect the child to love you or even like you initially. Aim for a relationship where you respect each other and treat each other fairly. Love and affection take time to develop. Each child is different and they will show you how slow or fast to go as you get to know them. Given enough time, patience, and interest, most children will eventually give you a chance.
- Stop thinking of the child as “his kid” or “her kid”. You are now a pivotal person in this child’s life.
- Be prepared to take a back seat when the children are around. Accept that your partner’s first responsibility is to their children. Your partner can give you their undivided attention when their children are not with you.
- Don’t criticize, complain, or joke about the other parent in front of the children.
- Explain to the children that you are not a replacement, just another person who loves them and supports them.
- Remember that part of being a good parent is having a co-parenting relationship with the other parent. Accept that there will be communication between your partner and their ex about the children.
- Don’t make your spouse choose between you and their child. Your relationship with your spouse will not suffer if they have a close relationship with their child. We all have multiple “accounts” from which we draw our love. There’s a child account that has love in it and there’s an account that has love in it for you as well. By your spouse loving and nurturing their child, it in no way decreases the balance of love that is in your account. Both are separate deals. With that in mind, ask your partner how you can help them nurture their relationship with their child, becoming their number one support system in building and maintaining it.
- If there are arguments and disagreements between your partner and their ex, remember that there are two sides of a story.
Tips If Your Ex Is The One With A New Partner:
If you are happy for your ex (even relieved) and your children feel the same way, please skip this section!
If you are upset, this is normal. It can be a big shock to hear that your ex is seeing someone. You may need to reach out to friends and family for support as you adjust to this new development. You will probably wonder how the new relationship will affect your children. Many times a good relationship is established between two parents until a new partner enters the picture. That is when some conflicts can arise such as:
- The ex might want the children to spend time with their new partner and the other parent doesn’t.
- The children might not like the new partner and want to spend more time with the other parent.
Blending Has Happened:
So you have married and your new blended family is now in place and not everyone is on board. Here is a little insight as to how the kids might be feeling:
Jealous – They are used to having their parent all to themselves.
Sadness – They secretly hoped that mom and dad would get back together and now that’s gone.
Insecure – They worry about competing for their parent’s attention.
Frightened – They fear losing their parent to the new partner.
Resentment – This is just another change they have to get used to.
Anxiety about the other parent – Will the other parent feel more alone? Will the other parent mind them liking the new partner?
Age Makes A Difference
The age of the child determines how they will adjust to a blended family:
For kids under age 10: They are more accepting of adults, they feel competition for parental affection and attention, they may adjust more easily due to the desire for cohesive family relationships, and have more daily needs.
For kids ages 10-14: They may have the most difficulty adjusting, they need additional time to bond before accepting a step parent as a disciplinarian, they do not demonstrate openly their feelings, and they may need more love, support, and attention than younger children.
For teenagers: They may have less involvement in family life, prefer to separate from family while forming their own identity, and still want to feel loved, secure, and important, although they may not express it openly.
All kids need loving and trusting relationships. In order to establish this type of relationship, you will need to consider their age, gender, and level of development.
Things To Expect By Gender:
- Girls are often uncomfortable with physical displays of affection from a stepfather.
- Boys accept a stepfather more easily than girls.
- Both boys and girls prefer verbal affection (compliments) rather than physical affection (hugs).
All Children Need To Feel In A Family:
Safe and secure. They want to be able to count on parents and step parents. Children of divorce have already experienced people letting them down. They may not be eager to give second chances to a new step parent.
Loved. Kids need to see and feel your affection.
Seen and valued. Kids often feel invisible or unimportant when it comes to decision making in the blended family. Recognize their role in the family when you make decisions.
Heard and emotionally connected. By creating an honest and open environment free of judgment, this will help your kids feel heard and emotionally connected to the new step parent. Show them that you can view the situation from their perspective.
Appreciated and encouraged. Children of all ages like to feel appreciated for their contributions and respond well to praise and encouragement.
And all children need to have…..
Limits and boundaries. Children may not think that they need limits, but a lack of boundaries sends a signal to the child that they are unworthy of the parents’ time, care, and attention. As a new step parent, you shouldn’t step in as the enforcer at first, but work with your spouse to set limits.
What Makes A Successful Blended Family
Solid marriage. Without the marriage there is no family. It’s harder to take care of the marriage in a blended family because you don’t have couple time like most first marriages do. You’ll have to grow and mature in the marriage while parenting. Focus on building a strong marital bond. This will benefit everyone. If children see love, respect, and open communication between you and your spouse, they will feel more secure and learn to model these qualities. Set aside time as a couple by making regular dates.
Open communication. With open and frequent communication, there are fewer misunderstandings and greater possibilities for connections within the family.
Good relationship with the ex. Kids will adjust to the blended family more readily if their parents have a good relationship and both are involved in their life. It’s good to remember that you and your former spouse have not ended your relationship. Instead you have changed it from an intimate, emotional affiliation to a relationship that’s held together by common goals for your children. Joining with your ex, unselfishly, putting hurt feelings aside and leaving behind the pain of betrayal or a dysfunctional history, are tremendous gifts to your children. To be cold, sabotaging, hurtful, or exclusionary with your former spouse is, in some sense, to do the same for your children.
Family routines and traditions. Creating family routines and rituals helps unite family members. Decide on meaningful family rituals and incorporate at least one into your blended family.
Safe boundaries are established. Discipline can be something that can make or break trust in building a blended family. A couple should have in place what the role of the step parent is and the children are clear about it. The step parent may need to take the role of a friend to start, with the biological parent being the disciplinarian until the children have completely bonded with the step parent. Communicate rules clearly to the children so that everyone is on the same page.
All relationships are respectful. You can’t insist people will like each other, but you can insist that they treat one another with respect. Parents must show respect to the kids too! If a family member is ignoring others, trying to be hurtful to others, or withdrawing into themselves, talk to them about how they are feeling and explain that although their feelings are valid, respect is still to be followed in the family.
Arguing is not done in front of the children. If you and your spouse start to argue, decide to sit down at a later time when you are both calmer. Do not fight in front of the children. Most likely the kids have already experienced a great deal of parental conflict during the divorce that has shaken them to the core. When you argue in front of the children you make it worse and you change who they are. For you the fight is over when it is over. For your child it doesn’t end. They don’t see you make up. They don’t participate in the healing. They go to bed at night thinking that their parents are fighting because of them.
No favoritism is shown. Be fair by showing no favoritism.
Children get alone time from their parent. Spend one quiet time period with your child daily. Children still need to enjoy “alone” time with each parent.
Ultimatums are not tolerated. Your kids and your partner may want you to choose between them. You don’t have to. Remind them that there’s room for both of them.
Compassion is given for every person’s development. Members of the family may be at various life stages and have different needs. They may also be at different stages in accepting this new family. Family members need to understand this and honor these differences.
The first family is not duplicated. Trying to make a blended family a replica of the first family can often set up family members for confusion, frustration, and disappointment. Instead, embrace the differences.
Children living outside of the home feel like family members. If kids are not living in the home with the new couple and they come to visit, have a special place for them to put their belongings so that they don’t feel like a guest, but feel like a family member instead.
There is room allowed for growth. After a few years of being blended and with the kids given the right support, everyone in the family should start to feel closer to each other.
Becoming a blended family has its challenges, but it also has its rewards. If you’re thinking about starting a blended family or you are in the midst of one and need some additional support, we are here to help! Give us a call today at (810) 299-1472.
References:
www.huffingtonpost.com. 9 Strategies For Making A Blended Family Blend. Retrieved 2016, from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/28/step-family-blended-family_n_6058890.html
Helpguide.org. Step-Parenting and Blended Families – How to Bond with Stepchildren and Deal with Stepfamily Issues. Retrieved 2016, from: http://www.helpguide.org/articles/family-divorce/step-parenting-blended-families.htm
theparentconnection.org. New Partners – Different Perspectives. Retrieved 2016, from: http://theparentconnection.org.uk/articles/new-partners-different-perspectives
www.bandbacktogether.com. Blended Families Resources. Retrieved 2016, from: http://www.bandbacktogether.com/blended-families-resources/