Blended Families

With a divorce rate around 50%, there are millions of people looking to form new relationships that have children of their own, or are dating someone with children from a previous relationship or marriage. The statistics show that 16% of children grow up in a blended family, which is has been pretty stable for the past 30 years. Prior to moving in and/or getting married there are some things to be mindful of that can help facilitate greater success down the road.

One thing that is crucial is to take the time for everyone to get acquainted and spend time together. There is no need to rush down the wedding isle, especially when blending families. It is upsetting for a child to feel like their new step parent is a complete stranger. Taking the time to build a relationship with kids can payoff greatly later on. During the stages of getting to know each other and even into marriage, the parenting approach is important. Most conventional wisdom suggests that the biological parent should be the one to perform any discipline that is needed, at least in the early stages. As the step parent your primary task to build a friendship and relationship with your partner’s children, and taking an authoritarian role often undermines these efforts, especially when it’s met with, “You’re not my mom/dad, you can�

The impact of divorce on children is well documented and discouraging, but there is hope and skillful ways to minimize the impact of divorce on children. On the concerning side, here are some startling facts. Adult children of divorced parents experience mental health problems significantly more often than do the adult children of intact families. The college attendance rate is about 60 percent lower among children of divorced parents compared with children of intact families. Divorce has been found to be associated with a higher incidence of depression, withdrawal from friends and family; aggressive, impulsive, or hyperactive behavior; and either withdrawing from participation in the classroom or becoming disruptive. Daughters of divorced parents tend to divorce more frequently than do the sons of divorced parents, with the risk as much as 87 percent higher during the earlier years of marriage.

The facts presented above are not intended to discourage the thousands of men and women, who through no fault of their own are divorced or planning to divorce. Instead, these facts are shared as a reminder to those who are married or are considering getting married that divorce carries with it many potentially harmful and life changing consequences for everyone involved. The impact on children is not to be take

There are hundreds of books on parenting and nearly as many philosophies and outlooks on how best to parent. Across many of these books are a couple of critical parenting characteristics to make sure to utilize: consistency and follow through. Let’s take a look at each of these.

Consistency is about doing things the same over time. Kids of all ages thrive on predictability. Life is less stressful for children and teens if they know what to expect and what is expected of them. One area where consistency is important is with rules and expectations. If curfew is 10pm on weekends, then keep it consistently at 10pm. If you allow an hour of TV or electronics before bed, then try to watch the clock and keep it to one hour. Being consistent reduces the arguing and limit testing that all kids do. It’s hard to try to justify, explain, and enforce rules when your kids say, “How come last week I got 2 hours, and now I only get one hour?” Even when kids inevitably challenge the rules with, “How come I only get one hour”; being consistent makes it easy to reply, “Because that the rule.”

Another important area to be consistent with is consequences. If you do a 10 minute time out on the stairs with your six year old, then it should remain 10 minutes