Kevin Leman - Step-Parenting 101

Copyright 2006 by Dr. Kevin Leman

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

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Scripture quotations are from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Compiled from previously published Living in a Stepfamily Without Getting Stepped On.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Leman, Kevin.
Stepparenting 101 / Kevin Leman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7852-8845-9 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-7852-8845-7 (hardcover)
1. Stepfamilies. 2. Birth orderPsychological aspects. 3. Parenting. I. Title. II. Title: Stepparenting one hundred one. III. Title: Stepparenting one hundred and one.
HQ759.92.L46 2006
646.78dc22

2006036056

Printed in the United States of America

06 07 08 09 WOR 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

INTRODUCTION:
What It Means to Be Blended

INTRODUCTION
What It Means
to Be Blended

Under the best of conditions, blending a family is no snap. Chances are, you already know this is true because you are in a stepfamily situation. With a few years (or even a few months) in a stepfamily under your belt, its very likely that the assumptions and expectations you had before your remarriage have been tempered by stark reality. A woman who remarried and wound up with five children instead of her original two told me, We went through months of premarital counseling, but it didnt prepare us for being a blended family. Until you live with someone everyday, you and your children with him and his children, all together under the same roof, you dont know what youre going to cope with.

This womans honest admission can be summed up in the following equation that my colleague, Dr. Jay Passavant, and I have often quoted:

E R = D
(Expectations minus reality equals disillusionment)

Yet, despite the odds against them, despite the bruising and shattering experience of divorce (sometimes more than one), people remain intrepid eternal optimists who try marriage again. In America, the blended family has become the most common form of family in the twenty-first century. Most of the men and women who decide to remarry naively expect that this time their marriage and family life will work because they wont make the same mistakes. This time they have found Mr. Right or Mrs. Wonderful, and they will live harmoniously blended ever after.

Unfortunately, experience usually proves them wrong. As I try to help blended families make it, I can think of another equation that applies:

N x R = C
(Naivete times reality equals chaos)

The key to both equations is reality. One of the major reasons that expectations get dashed on the rocks of reality is the kids. As one woman who married a father of two said, The situation is just impossible. People go into these marriages with no idea of what is involved, and its like falling off a cliff. Theres never enough money to go around...

And she could have easily added that there is never enough time, energy, or patience to go around either. The plight of many stepfamilies reminds me of an old joke:

Question: Whats green and goes 100 m.p.h.?
Answer: A frog in a blender.

A growing army of moms, dads, and children might wryly agree that another punch line could be A blended family. And they ought to know. Stepfamily members often feel as if theyre in a blender, turning green from getting whirled violently around and aroundwhile theyre being chopped to pieces in the process.

These days, with the divorce rate hovering above 50 percent, the odds are against any family. Put a divorced mom and her kids in the same house with a divorced dad and his kids, and those odds get even higher.

For more than twenty years, I have been working with families in my office, in seminars and other classroom settings, and on radio and television. Many of these families have involved remarriagesstepmothers, stepfathers, and stepchildren. From what I have seen, I have to admit that I often ask clients who are contemplating remarriage, Are you absolutely sure? When you live in a stepfamily, I tell them, you can get stepped on.

After all, blended families must face major issues including discipline (who will do it and how), anger, grief, and feelings of uprootedness, separation, and loss. A basic feeling Ive often heard expressed by children is: Why cant Mommy and Daddy, who are so big and powerful, solve their problems? Why cant we live together like we did before?

Stepfamilies must also deal with the guilt everyone brings to the blended family often due to unfinished business that was left behind in a broken home. Moms and dads feel guilty because the first marriage failed, and children often believe, If only I had behaved betterMommy and Daddy wouldnt have gotten divorced.

But I havent listed all the issues. Complicating blended family life are the loyalties held by children who may feel betrayed because Dad married this new woman, but what was the matter with the wife he had before? Add to that the mixed histories that family members bringdifferent traditions, different valuesthat must be combined into one. And lets not forget the ex-spouses, who sometimes cause the biggest problems of all!

In later chapters, I will discuss some of these important issues, but this book will be especially unique because of its focus on birth order. Starting a blended family involves a lot more than having a Mom and a Dad and all the kids move in together. Youre bringing together two sets of birth orders, and birth order has a lot to do with why family members look at things so differently from one another. Call it different personalities, if you please, but if there is anything a blended family needs to understand, its who is who and why each personis the way he or she is.

This issue could be one of the most important issues of all: when children from two different families are brought together by the marriage of their parents, all of them are plunged into the birth order blender. After years of working with families involved in remarriages, I am convinced that the couple who understands how to blend the birth orders of their children (not to mention their own birth orders) has a much better chance of survival and (with lots of prayer and hard work) success. When you become aware of the significance of each persons birth order, you will be able to avoid, or at least cope with more ably, the pitfalls of remarriage with children.

BLENDING IS A PROCESS

As a counselor, I sometimes say, Giving people hope is my business. From what Ive seen of blended families, there are few who cant use a little more of that valuable commodity. As Ive worked and talked with hundreds of stepparents, Ive discovered that there is hope. There is light at the end of the tunnel. I can promise that you can burrow through the tunnel if you are patient and accept this fact: blending is a process, not something that happensovernight.

One of the great enemies of the blended family is the fact that we live in the age of instant everything. It is natural for Mom and Dad to assume that they will have instant success with their new marriage and the new family it creates. Sometimes they naively assume that because they love each other so much and because they have found the right mate this time, marriage is going to be so much more wonderful the second time around, and the kids will gladly come along for the ride.