BLENDED FAMILY...Building a Life Together

All families struggle at times to be happy, but blended families often have bigger obstacles to face than others. For instance, the quality of the relationship between the stepparent and the stepchildren has a big impact on the level of happiness in a blended family. Loyalty issues with the biological children and knowing how to discipline also add major complications. To meet these challenges well, a husband and wife must make their relationship to each other the top priority ( Genesis 2:24 ). All efforts toward a happy home are useless if you don't consider your spouse's feelings and make decisions together. A spouse whose feelings are ignored will begin to feel neglected, insecure, and unloved, which creates unhappiness. It's important for spouses to discuss everything and make decisions only after they have come to an agreement. It takes a lot of time to build loving relationships in a blended family. Emotional bonds don't happen overnight, and it's unrealistic...

Pain travels. Over the treacherous waters of the Caribbean Sea, across the majestic mountains and waves of grain of the United States, sorrow arrives at a small Longview house. That's where Amber Collins sits at the computer, feeling the agony of the street children and young slave boys and girls of Haiti, known in that country as "restaveks." The word is Creole for "stay with." Most of the time, these rural Haitian youngsters are sent by their families to stay with relatives --- godparents or aunts and uncles --- who live in the large cities. The children's parents hope they will find education and employment there, but instead the children end up working hard for no money or food and are often physically and sexually abused. The echoes of their anguish stick with Amber, especially when she looks into the eyes of the children born to her and her husband, former Haiti resident Abdias Calixte. Filled with love and laughter, the Longview children...

I’ll never forget it. Elizabeth Einstein, a well-respected stepfamily author and trainer, stunned a group of ministers when she told us to make remarriage difficult for couples in our churches (1). She wasn’t implying that remarriage is wrong, but was simply suggesting that remarriage—particularly when children are involved—is very challenging and that couples should count the cost and be highly educated about the process before getting married. Eyes Wide Open The following list represents key "costs" and "challenges" every single-parent (or those dating a single-parent) should know before deciding to remarry. Open wide both your eyes now and you—and your children—will be grateful later. 1. Wait 2-3 years following divorce or the death of your spouse be...

Weighing the protection of children against the rights of the parents. When does discipline cross the line to become abuse? It’s a tough challenge for the child welfare system to weigh the protection of children against the rights of parents. In the United States there are only 25,000 caseworkers charged with investigating nearly 2 million child abuse claims each year. With extraordinary access from the Indiana Supreme Court, MSNBC-TV took an unprecedented look inside the complex world of child abuse investigators. This is the story of one family torn apart when one of their children makes a claim that ultimately causes trauma for them all. You can decide who is telling the truth and ultimately whether the state’s actions were in the children’s best interest. It was a quiet spring night in Indianapolis in a blue-collar neighborhood on the city’s south side. A phone call earlier in the day had set off a chain of events. The call brought a child welfare investigator to the home o...

If you are in a blended family, you know that living in that environment can be a bumpy road in life! The process of blending two families into one is often extremely challenging. When two people marry, they always hope to live happily ever after. For first time marriages the success rate is near 50%. However, when people with children marry a 2nd or 3rd time, or when a person marries a spouse with children, the statistics change significantly. The high divorce rate in the world in the last several years has led to a high number of blended families, and the number grows each day. Why is the divorce rate higher in blended families? A marriage that creates a stepfamily has more dynamics to deal with than a first-time marriage. These dynamics include such things as children from one or both spouses, possible rejection of the step-parent by the children, interference from former spouses, two sets of rules, two types of discipline, many personalities, possible custody or child-support court...

Parenting holds a great many challenges. Little is more challenging than the role of Christian stepparent. In short, the stepparent joins the biological parent in raising his or her child, but does so initially without a clear bond with the child. Parental authority is based on the depth of relationship between adult and child. The stepparent-stepchild relationship is weak due to little emotional connection and only a brief shared history (developed while the adults were courting), making the stepparent's role very difficult and frustrating. Consider the email I received from a biological father looking for help: "Jean is the stepmother to my seven year old son. In the past ten weeks, a very intense relationship has developed between them. Once inseparable, Jean now wants nothing to do with him and has told him as much. This has strained our marriage, and she has talked about leaving. Our marriage is as perfect as one can get when my son is visiting his mother, but when he re...

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” chanted my newly acquired daughter as she held my hand and skipped with joy beside me shortly after her father and I had said, “I Do.” I was tickled that this little eight-year-old girl who had been raised by her father for over four years was so gleeful to have me as her new Mommy. Little did I know that the first chance my natural born children had to speak with her alone that day, they let her know that I was THEIR Mommy, not hers or her brother’s. My kids explained that just because their Dad had married their Mom, did not give them permission to call their mother “Mommy”. They assured these younger children that they had no intention of calling their father “Dad”. I didn’t hear about this encounter on my wedding day. The children told me eight years later. On our honeymoon weekend, I had no clue that the beginning of “Xtreme Sibling Rivalry” had begun at our dear friend’s house, where our children were staying. Because I was marrying a man who ...