more about yourself
•Assessing your potential strengths and weaknesses as a step-parent.
Here we will encourage you to awaken your senses as you sample our Personal Inventory, Sentence Completion Assignment.
We created this tool to help you gain insight as you become acquainted with your true self.
Strategy #2: Examine Your Expectations deals with various issues ranging from dating to marriage. These include:
•Assessing realistic and unrealistic expectations
•What to do when children say they “hate” the new partner
•How to deal with feelings of disloyalty toward biologic children
•Incorporating honesty as a foundation within the family
•Juggling your roles of intimate partner and new stepparent.
Questions addressed in this chapter include:
•When to tell your child about a new partner
•What to expect when you meet your partner’s children for the first time
•How to separate prior biologic parenting skills from your new role as step-parent
•How to gain confidence when you don’t have prior parenting skills
•How to identify and separate positive feelings for children from negative assessment of their behavior.
Strategy #3: Use the Hierarchy Ladder: A Short Course in Family Dynamics shows you how to cope with step-parenting challenges while keeping your marriage fresh and your household under control. These action steps include:
•Understanding the family hierarchy
•Appreciating the timing in family dynamics
•Drafting and using a Behavior-Consequence Chart
•Prioritizing which issues should always be enforced
•Establishing protection for each member of your family.
Strategy #4: “Make Nice” With the Former Spouse deals with difficult issues that may arise between you and the former spouse. We know it is challenging to deal with insecurities arising from jealousy or intimidation; and we know it is vital to establish a relationship of open and honest communication with the former spouse, in order to help step-children bridge the gap.
This chapter offers pro-active advice and answers questions like: When should I call attention to the different parenting philosophies in each home?
Strategy #5: Create a Parenting Partnership will emphasize that your parent-partner’s job cannot be minimized. This chapter offers advice to encourage and applaud parent-partner support, and will help you identify those behaviors (in yourself and your partner) that need modification as you transition into your roles. It addresses such questions as:
•What gender differences relate to parenting expectations?
•Why do men and women communicate differently?
•How do my preconceived expectations sabotage my new partner’s role?
Strategy #6: Respect the Past as You Create the Future. With this chapter you will be well on your way to tossing out old insecurities and embracing both old and new memories. We will also consider:
•The importance of blending traditions, and incorporating religious differences
•Finding room for old and new family photographs
•Wedding day plans that respect all parties
•Housing arrangements for all types of blended families, including residential and non-residential children
•Honoring extended family members.
Strategy #7: Never Underestimate Your Importance! is about appreciating your importance in the family. This chapter is our favorite section of the book. It contains one woman’s true story as she learns the meaning of the love of a step-parent. In it, she attempts to complete unfinished business, writing a eulogy to her beloved step-father on the first anniversary of his untimely death.
Read this story any time, and many times, particularly when you need encouragement in this challenging task of step-parenting.
Strategy #8: Get the Help You Need deals with difficult issues that may arise for even the most well-intentioned step-parents—issues that you can’t or shouldn’t deal with alone. What if you are unable to bond with your step-children? What if you decide to terminate your marriage? What if your children are seriously suffering?
This chapter also contains a Resource Guide that you can refer to all along the way. Here you will find helpful books, websites, and numbers to call for counseling help.
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As therapists, we have worked with families just like yours for more than twenty-seven years. Aside from 8 Strategies to Successful Step-Parenting, we have also written In The Best Interest of the Child,A Manual for Divorcing Parents and You Don’t Know Anything, A Manual for Parenting Your Teenager. Our intimate involvement with our clients have offered us a hands-on approach to the process of well-balanced step-parenting dynamics, not only from the perspective of blending strangers into bonded relationships, but in recognizing the importance of the former partners and their impact either positively or negatively on the blended family. We are confident that we are able to assist you to gain confidence and control just as we have helped other step-parents and families to do the same.
We want you to succeed, and with very little effort, you will. Regardless of your own unique situation, each of you brings valuable experiences to the table. You have been raised with philosophies that may resemble others’ on the surface, but underneath you have a treasure-trove of experiences, talents, memories, and wisdom that have been handed down for generations within your family. As a new or prospective step-parent, each of you, regardless of your talents and experiences, feels apprehension, anxiety, and concern that you are undertaking a new role for which you are not fully prepared. This is square one! Regardless of wealth, education, family background or wishful thinking, we all begin with little more than a firm intention. Whether we are employed by a five-star company or are temporarily unemployed makes no essential difference to our step-children; what does matter is our genuine desire to be a loving, contributing member of this family. Step-parenting is as fundamentally different and equally as rewarding as anything you have ever done, or will ever do again.
On a more personal note, we (Nadir and Laurie) also share a blended family; ours is comprised of a single man without children married to a mother of four children. We have experienced first hand the triumphs and the disappointments that come with venturing into the uncharted territory of this unique parenting situation. This allows us to offer you not only professional but also personal advice that has worked both with our clients and in our own blended family. These strategies will work for you too.
STRATEGY #1
Know Who You Are:
Take
