Tips To Live Better And More Happily With Your Stepfamily

• It is difficult to have a new person in the family, and it is difficult to be the new person in a family. Cut down on feelings involved with "territory." It helps if families can start out in a new house or apartment.

• Forming new relationships within the stepfamily can be important, especially if you are young. Do things together with your new family. For example, stepfather and children can plant a garden together. Stepmother and daughter can go shopping together. Activities help relationships grow and develop.

• It is helpful to preserve original relationships, for a parent and natural kids to have time together.

• Caring and good relationships take time. Not everything is instant in life. Try to develop things at your own comfortable pace.

• Accept that a stepfamily is a new type of family. It too can be enjoyable and have opportunities for growth.

• Teenagers will always have a definite pull toward their biological parents. Rejection of a stepparent may have nothing to do with him or her personally.

• A courteous relationship between ex-spouses is important. Although difficult to maintain, if at all possible it should be worked out. In that way the kids are not caught up between the parents and have no need to take sides. Direct contact between the adults is best since it does not place the children in the position of being carriers.

• Children as well as adults have a family history. Much can be gained by coming together to work out new family patterns. Many solutions can be found with time and patience.

• Being a stepparent is an unclear task and at times difficult. Each family member should have a role to play.

• Discipline is not usually accepted by stepchildren until a friendly relationship has been established, which is often a matter of a year and a half to two years. Both adults need to support each other is authority in the household. Usually the natural parent is the main person to discipline, but if the natural parent is not around, the stepparent should have the authority. The parents must work together.

• Integrating a stepfamily with teenagers is almost impossible, difficult at best. Teenagers are trying to move away from their families in any type of family. In single-parent families teenagers have often been young adults, and with the remarriage of a parent they may find it hard to return to being treated as a child again. Teenagers have more  of a family history than younger children and sometimes withdraw from the new family.

• Visiting children usually feel strange and like outsiders in the new neighborhood. It is helpful if they have some place in the house that they can call their own private space. Should they be included in family chores? Yes.

• Parents who don’t have full custody of the children find it hard to instill their family values when they have so little time with them. But kids learn from watching the other family members and how they interact with each other. It may take time before they decide to join in the activities.

• You may become more aware of sexuality in a step- family because you are living with people whom you did not grow up with. It is vital that the kids receive affection from both parents. Parents need to explain any sexual attraction the teens may feel for one another or for the adults.

• All families experience stress at one time or another. Teens and adults need to show day-to-day appreciation of each of other. Stepfamilies are families of loss, and feelings can be especially intense-feelings such as jealousy, rejection, guilt, anger. Try to be realistic about your expectations, and that will reduce your disappointments.

• Try to keep good contact between adults and teens. Communication skills are vital to closer understanding.

Marriage is not going out of style. Eighty percent of divorced persons remarry. Sixty percent of them have children. And those children have children and raise them according to their own upbringing.

What can you do as a stepfamily wanting to grow, wanting to have a positive family atmosphere? Any family having problems should consider counseling and therapy.

Therapeutic approaches that are used with stepfamilies include individual therapy, couples, groups, and family counseling. Workshops and lectures on stepfamilies are given. Books and articles about stepparents are published, which help stepparents see that they are not alone with their problems.

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