Blended Families
Blended Families
- Over half the people who get divorced remarry within four and a half years. The new family is called a 'blended family' - the difficulty is getting it to blend!
- The advantage of a successfully blended family is that children get to see a loving and supportive couple, and have up to four adults who give them support and encouragement. There are more people to learn from, more interests to be involved with and more opportunities to learn to accept others as they are.
-
To make this happen requires:
- patience
- understanding
- communication
- time
- a sense of humour
- a private place and time for everyone
- an appreciation of the effort each person makes.
- But blending a family also has its difficulties. Being a step parent can sometimes be stressful as they must expect to take second place to both of the child's natural parents including the absent parent. Step children may also remind the step parent of life before their arrival and may try to exclude the step parent from the family. There is also the possibility of unexpected changes to access and custody arrangements.
-
Establishing the new family takes some effort. You
might:
- do things together so you have shared memories of fun things you have done as a new family
- spend some time with just your own children, individually and together
- allow each member of the family to tell others what they don't like - it won't make things better to pretend they don't exist
- allow each member of the family to fit in at their own pace.
courtesy Department for Community Devlp, Australia.
Children Helping
::
Brothers And Sisters ::
Family Divorce And Separation
Sole Parent Families ::
Blended Families ::
Go To Main Parenting Index Page