Lauren Reitsema - In Their Shoes: Helping Parents Better Understand and Connect with Children of Divorce

I have advocated for the publication of this book since Lauren and I first met. Let me tell you why.

While headed to a speaking engagement, I began talking with a young woman sitting beside me on the airplane. Or perhaps I should say, she started talking to me. After glancing at my laptop and noticing that I was preparing a presentation on blended families, she started asking questions.

Whats your presentation about?

Who is your conference for?

How did you get into this?

Once she learned that I was an author and family therapist who specialized in working with stepfamilies, she asked one more question that took me aback.

What kind of psychological issues come with being from a stepfamily?

Ive learned that most direct questions, like this one, arise out of someones life experience. I wasnt sure exactly where she was coming from, so I started asking her questions to figure out what she really wanted to know. During the course of our hour-long conversation, I learned that, ultimately, she was trying to make sense of her life. Her parents had divorced when she was young. She and her brother clung together through the difficult years that followed and tried to cope with new stepparents and stepsiblings on both sides. Her father threw himself into what she called his new family. Her mother was devastated by the divorce and constantly complained about her father. That put her in the middle and made her the emotional caretaker of her mom, and her brother the referee of their parents ongoing conflict. Meanwhile, she never knew what to do with her two stepparents and found the relationships taxing at best. Neither parent, nor stepparent, was safe or available to her.

Her question about psychological issues and being from a blended family was really about her; she was trying to figure out how to cope with the residue of her complex family. While the wording of her question surprised me, her fundamental journey did not; I meet a lot of young adults with the same pressing question.

It was obvious to me that her parents and stepparents had very little insight into how their behavior and choices affected her well-being. I find that, despite their good intentions, this is often true of parents and stepparents. My stepfamily counseling and coaching experience of more than twenty-five years confirms that most dont really understand what it is to be a child of divorce living in a stepfamily, nor how this affects how children respond to parenting. Stepparents, in particular, who lack a child-informed perspective on their role find themselves struggling to connect and lead. On the other hand, stepparents who do empathize well parent more wisely, compassionately, and effectively, and find that their blended family is more likely to thrive.

Thats why I personally pursued the publication of this book. You can either come alongside your children and help them heal and find love and emotional safetyand in the process, also strengthen your homeor you can inadvertently add to their psychological issues. Lauren helps capture the journey of stepparenting firsthand, from a stepchilds perspective. In Their Shoes helps you find empathy for the child(ren) in your life and empowers you to do the former rather than the latter.