Pamela Fagan Hutchins - How to Screw Up Your Kids: Blended Families, Blendered Style

To Liz, for making the middle look so easy, when I know it wasnt.

Cover design by Alex Dumitrescu and Heidi Dorey.

Photography by Pamela Fagan Hutchins and Eric Hutchins.

Winner, 2012 Houston Writers Guild Narrative Nonfiction Manuscript Contest

Practical, witty, and engaging. Excellent examples and professional experience brought to bear on a personal level. Houston Writers Guild

fun, witty, truthful and above all very informative Joana James, Author and Reviewer with Book Wormz

Its not that we didnt try to screw this parenting thing up. By all rights, we should have. We did everything that we possibly could that we werent supposed to do. We gave them refined sugar when they were babies, didnt enforce nap times, spoiled them with expensive and unnecessary gifts. We said yes when we should have said no. We said no when we should have said yes. Our swear jar was always full.

Oh, yeah. And we were one of those blended familiesyou know the kind, the ones with broken homes, divorces, stepparents and complex custody arrangements. Those people. The ones other parents are leery of, like divorce is a communicable disease or something. Who knows? Maybe it is. My own parents even told me once that I had made my children a statistic by choosing to divorce their father. That I had created an at-risk home environment for them.

Me? Perpetual overachiever, business owner, attorney, former cheerleader and high school beauty queen? The one whos never even smoked a cigarette, much less done drugs? My husband? Well, hes the more likely candidate for an at-risk homemaker. Surfer, bass player, triathlon enthusiast. Oh yeah, and chemical engineer and former officer of a ten-billion-dollar companybut you know how those rock-n-rollers are. We probably teeter somewhere between the Bundys and the Cleavers.

But there we were, watching yet another of our kids cross yet another stage for yet another diploma, with honors, with accolades, with activitieswith college scholarships, no less. Yeah, I know, yadda yadda yap. There we were, cheering as the announcer called Lizs name. Three of her four siblings rose to clap, too. The fourth one, Thomas, couldnt make it because he was doing time in the state penitentiary in Florida. (Just kidding. He had to work. At a job. That paid him and provided benefits.)

We tried our best to screw it up. We had the perfect formula. But we didntnot even close. Somehow two losers at their respective Round Ones in love and family unity got it close to perfect on Round Two. By our standards, anyway. Because we didnt give a good goldarnit about anyone elses.

Whats more? We got it right on purpose. We made a plan, and we executed the plan. And it worked. After all that effort to screw things up, after the people in our lives who loved us most wrung their hands and whispered behind our backs (and those who didnt love us chortled in anticipation of our certain failure), we went out and done good.

Now, Im no expert on child rearing (although Ive had lots of practice), but I am an expert in helping grownups play nice and behave at work. How annoying is that? I know. Im a scary hybrid of employment attorney and human resources professional, blended together to create a problem-solving HR consultant. And from where I sat, our blended householdor blendered family, as we call itlooked a lot like a dysfunctional workplace in our early days.

Or a little warren of guinea pigs on which I could conduct my own version of animal testing.

The HR principles I applied at work were, in theory, principles for humans, humans anywhere. Blendering occurs in workplaces when a leadership team gets a couple of new members, and it happens in a home with kids from different families of origins. HR principles = people principles = blendering principles. Right? That was my theory, anyway.

Statistics tell me that you, dear reader, are or will be in similar straits: divorced, starting over, trying to make it work. If youve already been there and done that, I hope youve disappointed all your naysayers, too. Youll enjoy this book all the more as you relate to the pains and the joys of blended families. But if youre on the cusp of what feels like an express train descending into hell and wondering how to buy a ticket back, I can help you.

Really.

Okay, probably.

If not probably, then quite possibly.

At the very least, maybe I can say I warned you, or made you laugh. Its a crazy and unpredictable ride, but the destination is worth it.