At his stepdaughter's birthday party, the wife told the boy to get out of a family picture because she wanted one with 'just her kids.'
“There is no ‘instant love’ between stepchildren and stepparents and in situations where a stepparent, particularly a stepmother is taking on primary responsibility for stepchildren, you can expect trouble,” parenting expert Dr. Gayle Peterson, MSSW, LCSWsuch as taking group pictures is okay. When two people with children from previous marriages become a family, they commit to be parents to all the children involved.
The woman in this story hasn’t been the 10-year-old’s stepmother for that long, so there is no affectionate foundation. Still, she needs to make a conscious effort to have a good relationship with her husband’s son., but she should try to find some common ground. “It is also key to having a life in a blended family,” he explains.
“See if you can find something, anything, that you might have in common. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy: a TV show, a musical artist, a certain kind of food, an author—just some toehold of similarity and compatibility to build a relationship from.”Many parents and stepparents have overly high expectations about what their blended family should look like. “Over half of remarriages fail, in part because of highly idealized visions of becoming one big happy family,” Gayle Peterson explains.
In the end, it’s the parents who decided to blend the family and are responsible for each child’s well-being. “It is your responsibility to create an environment that works for everyone,” Dr. Peterson writes. “You owe it to your children and to your marital commitment to one another.”By entering your email and clicking Subscribe, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners.
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