Blending Families Part 1
Nov 17th, 2009 by Dr. Paul
Two of our listeners have asked recently about how to manage certain aspects of blended families. Divorce or the death of a spouse is something nobody plans on or wants, but has become a common condition among many of our families. As parents put the pieces back together and form new relationships, the challenges of blending families becomes very real.
Everyone has their own world. When you picture a child’s world prior to divorce, you can use a big circle to symbolize it. After a divorce, that world is better symbolized by two intersecting circles representing dad’s world and mom’s world. When either parent remarries (either after divorce or after a death in the family), additional circles are brought into the diagram with each new person or family system that blends in with the original. Some parts are shared and some are not.
Remember what you control and what you don’t. Resolve to address the problems in your own world. A common frustration of those in blended families or multi-household families is the stuff that is going on in the “other” world. Create as stable and loving an environment as possible in the space that you control.
For single-household families, both parents and children have to work things out when there are problems. Short of running away or having someone institutionalized you’re kind of stuck with each other. Multi-household families have some built-in alternatives, or at least the perception is there that there may be an “escape hatch”. Rather than working things out, especially if it is hard, the child could retreat to (or be sent to) the other home. For parents in these families, the acknowledgement that there is an “escape hatch” can make discipline more difficult (next episode).
Blended families are created when new “worlds” are created through death or divorce. This changes the context of parenting, primarily through the perception of an “escape hatch” which can be used by either the parents or the children. In part 2 of this podcast, we will explore some discipline ideas for a multi-household family environment.
