Posts Tagged ‘blended family’

Step Families need to find balance in the summer time

Your spouse is angry, the kids are fighting, crying- or both, and you haven’t gone to the gym in two weeks! You are out of balance in your stepfamily!

Creating balance in a blended or stepfamily is difficult – your family is a bit more complicated than a nuclear family- with one mom, one dad and kids who all live in the same house.

Sometimes your home may feel like a hotel, with a revolving door- as the kids come and go between their custodial and noncustodial parent’s houses. You may have a color-coded calendar, with each child assigned a different color. As you navigate these confused waters, you realize that everyone is important in your blended family- so how can you create balance? Is it really possible?

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Keeping Closer Family Ties

The pace in which we live our lives in this current world at times seems faster than the speed of sound and many times our families suffer. When it comes to keeping our families close, we know deep inside our hearts what works, but too often the hustle and bustle of life gets in the way.

It does not take much to take a close-knit family and turn them into a disconnected blur of people each going in a different direction and not making significant contact with each other.

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Making Changes in Your Step Family

Making changes in your step family

Our blended and step families are always evolving. We aren’t perfect. Becoming part of a blended family doesn’t come with a manual or set of instructions. Our kids find this new step family scary and unfamiliar. Our kids don’t truly understand what is happening, and how it’s going to affect them and their relationship with their mom and dad. New stepparents usually aren’t completely aware of just how hard it’s going to be to blend this new family. Months after a step family merges, parents are frustrated, at times, that the family still hasn’t blended together as one unit. Sometimes years later, a family is still experiencing issues.

So what’s a blended family to do? Do you need to make changes in your stepfamily? There are times, in your blended family when it’s easier to make changes. Examples of good times to make changes: right before the merge (otherwise known as the wedding,) at the beginning of a school year, the beginning of a new year, an anniversary of some type- such as the blended family wedding anniversary, or moving into a new home.

» Read more: Making Changes in Your Step Family