Making It Easier on the Kids
Children usually don’t like change. The situation that preceded the stepfamily--divorce or the death of a parent--only makes children more vulnerable to upheaval.
“Let them know you know any kind of change is going to be hard,” said Emily Visher, co-founder of the Stepfamily Assn. of America. (215 Centennial Mall South, Suite 212, Lincoln, NE 68508-1834; [800] 735-0329). “If it’s a move, there are going to be some advantages. Think about what they are ahead of time so you can point them out.”
* Include your children in decisions involving the house. Let them choose the colors of their rooms and select curtains and bed furnishings. “The more control you have, no matter what age you are, the happier you’ll be,” Visher said.
* Children don’t like to be cut off from their pasts. Although a photo of your new spouse with his ex and their children might make you queasy, it may be important to the child. A good solution: Display photos of the nonresidential biological parent in the child’s room.
* If there is no room for a nonresidential child who visits occasionally, at least let him or her have a dresser drawer that nobody else can touch without permission.
* Be sensitive to how you express things around children. Visher recalls a boy who slept in his stepfamily’s guest room during his visits asking her: “Why do they always have to say it’s the guest room? Why can’t they say it’s my room, which guests can use when I’m not here?”
* Give children who live part-time at two houses some transition time to adjust to the new environment. “Our two households were very different in the way we approached life and values,” said Bonnie Juroe, a stepmother and family therapist. “My stepchildren needed some time to themselves, which required privacy. They also needed time to gather themselves as they assimilated into the next household.”
* Hold family meetings. “Stepparents have to find ways to listen to the kids and not get so caught up in their own stuff that they forget the kids have important issues in their lives,” said Marilyn Wyman, a family therapist.
Wyman and her husband, who had up to six children living in their Palos Verdes Estates home, held twice-weekly “PIB” (pain in the butt) meetings. A ceramic pumpkin jar became the PIB pot, and grievances were slipped into the pot between meetings. “We’d discuss each complaint and all try to think of ways to resolve it,” Wyman said. “Sometimes, the same PIBs popped up. But it took the pressure off all of us.”