Challenge or Opportunity?

Handling challenges of stepfamily life can be daunting.  Defining our roles as step-parents, the expectations we have of our stepchildren, competing for our spouses attention and loyalty conflicts are just a few of the challenges that we face being a part of a blended family.   All of the preceding issues can be looked at as a challenge, but what I like to teach my clients is that issues such as these, once completely understood, can be viewed as opportunities as well.

In the United States alone, between 75 and 85% of all divorced couples remarry and a third of all children in the  United States alone will spend part of their lives in a stepfamily.   With these stunning statistics at our fingertips, as members of the blended family, it is important to be aware that by fostering challenges and problems instead of fostering positive relationship building, having open discussions with our children and stepchildren and reinforcing realistic expectations, we are promoting instead of preventing the disconnect that often occurs within the stepfamily.  Most of the time, this disconnect occurs out of pure unrealistic expectations and non-understanding of the dynamics that accompanies the stepfamily environment.

Finding good, practical answers is not always easy because even stepfamilies that have been together for years, who are pretty much equipped with experience and knowledge under their belts, at times wrestle with issues.  However, as I have said in the past, it is how we mutually decide to handle these challenges by not allowing them to define our happiness within our units nor our success as a stepfamily.  Issues are going to arise.  Embrace them and fix it if you can.  If it is something that just can’t be agreed upon — well, agree to disagree, respect one another’s opinion, and move past it.  This small effort is allowing opportunity to rise above challenge.

Another very important tip in this process is always putting your marriage or remarriage first on your list of priorities.  Absolutely no marriage survives if the life partners in that marriage are in discord with one another.  For example, if you and your partner constantly disagree and struggle over the issue of discipline, or one or the other is insecure in your relationship because the kids are tearing you apart, and finally, a whopper of a discord is when one partner or the other lets guilt about a previous marital breakdown affect his or her parenting.  Your marriage has to be the center of your beings as a couple.  You cannot be insecure about your relationship and expect your stepchildren or children to be secure.  By taking this particular challenge by the horns and making sure you put your marriage first, you are exercising the opportunity to teach your children what a sound, stable and secure marriage is and should be.  They will know, in an instant, when two parents back each other unequivocally, through thick and thin, that there is no room for division on their part.  In essence, they will seek this type of marriage out in their own personal lives as well.

Choosing to transform our challenges into opportunities not only usually resolves, or helps to resolve, the conflict at hand, but it alleviates unnecessary struggles and it engages our behaviors toward the positive in other aspects of our lives as well.  Our children become more confident because evaluating conflict and the resolutions thereto, teaches them to look toward resolve instead of teaching them to stew upon negative emotions and things that they cannot change.  For example, if your husband’s ex hates your guts and you know you are being bad-mouthed in front of your stepchildren, don’t turn around and instigate the same behaviors in your home.  Simply use grace and confidence to handle that situation.  For example, if your stepchild says..”My mommy hates you!”  Simply, state something like…”I am so sorry that your mom feels that way about me because I don’t feel that way about her and maybe one day her perspective will change.”  Instead of,… “So frickin what your crazy mother hates me!  I hate her too.”  Do you see how just that simple response has the ability to change your stepchild’s response and/or idea of how that situation is viewed?  Not only does it teach them how to handle conflict, it teaches them humility.

Listen, I know better than anyone that the challenges the stepfamily life can bring is never just “black and white.”  Shades of grey are all over and in between, and most parents and stepparents are unprepared for the confusing and painful emotions that arise from time-to-time. However, by putting your relationship first and developing ways to make opportunities for bonding, teaching and loving instead of absorbing conflict, struggle and strife is one step in the right direction.  It is vitally important that our children have positive role models in their lives and it starts at home.  Whether they have two homes or one, in order for our children to be happy, we have to define our roles as parents and stepparents and allow them to learn and expect realistic expectations even when it comes down to a bit of conflict.

Let’s carve through the conflict to allow opportunity to evolve.

Peace & Blessings,
Di