Step Family Tips

Marrying into a Step family – Ten Steps for Creating Step family Harmony

When you are marrying into a step family, you begin your life not only with a spouse but with a ready-made family as well. You will often experience the wish that you could just have married your new partner and will yearn not to have the kids interfere with your new married life together.

As a well-intentioned person you may experience surprise at the deep ambivalence of the children toward you. You may have wanted nothing more than to be a warm, loving parent to this child. Yet you may find yourself being treated as an interloper who has no right to be there.

You may even discover that you find yourself amazingly jealous of the time your new partner spends with the child or children. Like a child feeling upset by the attention given a new baby, you may react strongly as if you have been deprived of time with your beloved. Don’t “guilt” yourself too much for this, just see it and understand it.

An understanding of the dynamics found in most step families can lessen the surprise you feel at your own feelings. You are experiencing the loss that a couple feels when they are surprised by an early pregnancy. You may feel deprived that you have not had that bonding time together to learn to get along with just each other. The advent of an early child in the relationship can steal that precious time needed to develop skills of communication and ideas of what works with each other. As a new stepparent, you will feel a similar loss in having time to build your new relationship because kids are already present in the family.

A supervisor of mine once said, “Jim, marriage is a great institution. Yet I do not ever want to go through that first year of marriage again. There’s so much learning to do.” Learning to live with each other is hard enough for couples . The challenge of learning to live with each other as a married couple and the kids can be overwhelming.

But don’t give up just because it’s hard. Here are some basic principles that will save you much grief:

1. Expect your partner to feel conflicting loyalties. As much as he or she may want to spend every spare minute with you, being a parent requires “hands on time.” You may feel you are playing second or third fiddle to the needs of the children.

2. Allow your relationship with your new stepchild to develop slowly. You probably yearn to be accepted fully right away. Remember that this child may feel that in relating to you, she is acting in a disloyal way to the parent who is no longer with your partner. Open hostility at first certainly presents itself often in early stages of a step family’s development.

3. You are likely to find stuff that you really do not like about your stepchild. Developing a relationship from conception with a child creates a strong bond that overrides temperamental differences. Building that kind of love and trust with an older child, whose patterns have already been shaped makes it harder. When you feel the behavior comes from the parenting of a former spouse of your partner you may find yourself really frustrated.

4. Leave the disciplining of your stepchild to your partner. Taking a back row seat in this area prevents significant conflict. You can occasionally serve your partner as a sounding board about what needs to be done in this area. Even then your partner may bristle at your ideas. He may not feel totally comfortable with what he is doing, but may not open himself to your clarity right away. Later when you have demonstrated your love for the stepchild, she may find it helpful to compare notes about the most effective way to shape the child’s behavior.

5. Spend alone time in enjoyable or helpful activities with the child. As you earn the trust of the child, your presence will be perceived in a new light. Using your own intuition as to what the child is ready for can be crucial. Do not be surprised if your stepchild rejects your overtures even though they were received yesterday. When children get stressed, they resort to isolation. You may feel like the child is shunning you. Again, give the relationship time.

6. Brainstorm often with your partner about what is needed. Like most conversations, this one can slip easily into a “who is right and who is wrong” gear. Remember that this helps no one. Develop with your partner a solution oriented gear that recognizes that all parenting includes trying different ideas to see what works.

7. Do not interfere too strongly with previous family rituals. What you expect from your childhood may differ from what these kids have celebrated in the past. At first they may not cotton to your new wonderful ideas. They need you to participate in things that they are familiar with at first. Something different may feel alien to what they are looking forward to.

8. Hold regular family conferences. Giving each member of the new family time to voice concerns will strengthen the sense of mutual participation in the decision making. Develop the fine art of searching for mutual win-win solutions. Children come to trust that their concerns and points of view will be taken seriously.

9. Continue to plan time for the two of you to have fun together. Spending one night a week together apart from the kids may save your relationship. You need to remember what experiences together nourished you both and led to the decision to get married. Do those activities often. Do not let the pressures of work and parenting take over your life together.

10. Strive to be open and delighted by the good moments. Your stepchild really needs you. As you become an important part of her life, she will need to feel your appreciating her for what she is and does. Trust that your reactions matter even if your adolescent stepchild keeps you at arm’s length. That is what all adolescents do at this age.