Communication with parenting
Communication becomes even more crucial when dealing with children, and still more important with stepchildren. It is essential that you and your spouse have communicated with each other, and then explicitly share important information with the kids. This information includes rules, expectations, and boundaries. In a traditional family, the children have grown up with each parent and this type of information sometimes is implied over time. With a blended family, especially one having older children who can express themselves and understand explicit rules and expectations, it is necessary.
If your children split time between your house and their other parent’s house, it is doubtful that your children will have the same rules in both homes. If you do have an ex-spouse who will work with you on this, that is fantastic and I encourage you to work to have the same boundaries and rules. For many, this isn’t the case. When this happens, it is even more important for your rules and boundaries to be clear to your kids, and to be consistent. They need to know the rules and need to know they won’t change randomly.
We greatly encourage you to sit down and discuss the rules and boundaries you want within your home including the behaviors that are acceptable and those that are not. For example, what kind of language is acceptable for your children to use. Some parents are lax on the use of curse words or teasing, where others are not. What do you want in your home? Another example is physical fighting and wrestling (especially if you have boys). Are you alright with them doing that, or is it something that is off-limits? Another thing is screen time and device usage. Set some clear expectations of how that will be at your house.
Some rules might be silly, for example, we have a rule that you cannot shoot a foam dart (ie. Nerf) gun at someone who is unarmed. Some rules might be more about safety, like no jumping on the furniture (safety of our house) and needing permission before playing outside (safety of the kids). Other rules may be about how you want your children to interact with others, like enforcing the use of manners. In a blended family, we found it was important to set some guidelines on space. Our children are only allowed in their own bedroom, they cannot go into someone else’s bedroom without a parent present. This gives each child a space they can go so they can get away as needed. Even though some of our children share a room, it still gives a way to have at least a semi-private space. This rule might not be one that many of you consider, for us, there were some initial challenges we faced with our children pushing each other’s personal boundaries and this was our solution that we have kept so far.
You do not need to come up with every single rule right away, and you certainly do not need to read those rules out to the kids like a dictator, but your spouse and you do need to be on the same page with each other. Sometimes a situation arises that you have not discussed and you don’t know your spouse’s stance. In that case, tell the child that you need to discuss it together and get back to the child. Then do that. Do not use it as an excuse and then forget to follow through.
Make sure that your rules are consistent for all of your kids. Rules should be reasonable based upon their ages and maturity, and not upon whether they are your biological child or stepchild. Something we have found particularly useful is consistent chores that are based upon the child’s abilities, not whose child they are. If your children are forgetful like many are, then having a visual copy of those expectations posted can be helpful.
Building Relationships and Trust in a Blended Family
As you move forward with consistency, the children will begin knowing what to expect and it will build trust. Early in our marriage, our younger kids (my step kids) had a lot of hesitation around me, their stepdad. They did not know what the boundaries were yet, they did not know how I would react to situations. For the first several months, when I corrected them for crossing boundaries or breaking rules there was a reaction of fear and retreating from me. They did not know whether I would lash out physically or verbally in anger, or what I would do when they crossed a line. As they tested those boundaries they learned to trust me, to trust that I would not hurt them, but that I did expect them to stay within the boundaries we had set. They learned that there are consequences, whether natural or parent enforced.
During those initial months, my wife and I leaned heavily upon each other to enforce the boundaries on our own biological kids while the trust was built. As those bonds and relationships have grown we have been able to enforce boundaries with our stepkids at higher and higher levels closer to that of a biological parent. Our experience is that it is much faster and easier to reach that point with younger kids than it is with older ones. The relationship with a teenage stepchild is much slower to build trust and respect than that of a toddler or grade school child. I encourage you to be patient and to keep working on consistency and building that trust with boundaries and rules and consistent consequences when not following them. If your step-children are teenage or older as you begin the relationship, understand the bond and relationship between you and your step-children may be slower to build. It can be hard to allow it to progress naturally; the best thing you can do is provide the space and opportunity to share experiences and activities that can build the relationship.
Help your kids with building relationships by making family traditions in your new step-family. Some of ours include holiday traditions like making Christmas cookies. Our children now know to look forward to that every year, and it is something we do together – even if Christmas day is spent at the other parent’s house. We also do movie nights as a family at home, where we pile in the dark basement with blankets, pillows, stuffed animals, and of course homemade popcorn. We always eat dinner together at the table, every night. We have even incorporated conversation starter cards (101 Conversation Starters for Families) to help us build relationships and learn about each other. You can buy conversation starter cards or even print some after a quick google search.
In our personal relationship, we have experienced the same thing that traditional families experience, in that our children will go to one parent and claim (often a lie, or misrepresentation) the other said something was acceptable. These types of tactics of a child attempting to use one parent against another are in our experience even more common, and complicated, in a blended family. Sometimes, you also have the added challenge of dealing with a challenging and non-cooperative co-parenting relationship, and the other parent may truly allow activities that you are opposed to. This requires you and your current spouse to be on the same page at all times, and the only way to do that is with open and clear lines of communication. In our experience, the best outcome stems from sharing with each other the conversations you have with your ex-spouse…what each of you are dealing with between you and your ex-spouse, and how you are trying to work through that with your kids. As you share, be supportive of each other and listen to each other with an open heart and mind. You are both going to struggle at times and feel stressed and judged by your decisions. Don’t separate from each other, but instead be the support system you both need.
We act as accountability partners in parenting. We have to decide together what we allow our kids to do and have access to as they grow and mature, how we will interact with our ex-spouses, what our rules and expectations are for our household, etc. Sometimes one parent makes a quick decision that may not be what you would have done. The best course of action is not to question the parent in front of the children, but have a conversation one on one to address it so that you and your spouse can remain a united front for the kids. If needed, go back later and rectify the decision; but unless it is a safety issue, don’t question your spouse’s decision in front of the children.
Remember: communicate, often and consistently, with love and grace.
