When a marriage or partnership breaks up, many families consist of a recombination of two different families with two sets of children living with parents.
While these families can be happy and thriving, some parents find the situation difficult to navigate with different family cultures, clashing tension between the children and parents, children acting out their grief and anger, and the couple feeling overwhelmed by the stress of children coming and going.
Parenting coach and education consultant Joseph Driessen tells Kathryn Ryan there are strategies parents can employ to help them work towards integration.
Photo: Public domain
Driessen says there are two major forces at play in second marriages or relationships with children.
On the one hand, parents will have moved on in their life and are happy, which creates a healthy environment to love and nurture children, but on the other hand, children initially will be stressed, he says.
“They've got unresolved grief and sadness and depression and anger about the loss of their family and then they're thrown into a new situation, which is very demanding for them socially and cognitively, when in fact their brains are sort of only operating at half speed and so they can find this whole situation very stressful.
“So, the key to create a blended family is for the couple to realise … they are the engine of happiness, but their children find it’s quite a difficult journey.”
Driessen proposes the following strategies for couples to try to be able to eventually integrate as a unit with their children and partner.
- First, the parent needs to preserve their relationship with the children and continue doing with them their normal activities.
- Secondly, understand the children are hurt and their behaviour is just the tip of the iceberg for all the distress they are experiencing. See it as a journey of healing rather than a fight to get compliance.
- Thirdly, parents should try to see themselves as a management team, because the word ‘parent’ will have a lot of associations that can impede on developing a joint parenting style.
Children can feel uncomfortable and like guests when they’re at the stepparent’s or partner’s place at first, Driessen says.
“The key is to give them space, to just take it easy. Let's not go into blended families at all. Let's just welcome them and say, well, you're very safe here and we want to care for you and give them space, if they want to sit on the couch and blob out with their phones, let them.
“If the four-year-old just wants to play in a corner by themselves with their dolls, let them. If the teenager just wants to hang in their room and does not want to engage full stop, let them.”
What you're aiming to do is make the children feel at home, without many demands and rules, he says, with each parent spending time alone with their own child or children and hanging out with them like they used to.
“In the transition phase, what you're trying to do is that both families are two separate families at peace with one another, coexisting peacefully, doing their own thing as much as possible.
“If you achieve that, then what happens is that the turmoil the children are in, the mixed feelings they have, the pressure they're under, they actually find it a healing space, they say, well, it's just like a nice hotel.”
Once the children are relaxed and enjoying themselves, then you can start thinking about having a joint family in addition to two separate families, Driessen says.
“The way to do that is actually to have a few very happy careful meetings and to speak positive language … and say, hey, listen, you know, it's really nice that we’re all together and it seems to be going really well and what we expect is everybody to be kind, everybody to be polite and civil to one another and everybody to be caring.
“Children love that language because they say, yeah, that's how I want to be treated.
“That sets up the attachment bond, ‘these people care for us’. That's all that children want to know.”
Eventually, you can start to come to an agreement together on chores and limits, weave in joint routines but still encourage your partner to cherish their children, he says.
“What will happen is that then the stepparent will be respected by the stepchildren, they feel you really want Dad to do his bit … and as they feel more trusting and loving, then gradually they will grant you the authority to become their parents.
“In fact, many stepparents become wonderful parents of the children. But it is sort of the end of the integration phase.”
Even stepparents without any children of their own should not intervene in their partner’s role, he says.
“They just let the other parent do the parenting and then eventually they learn from those parenting styles what the other parent does.
“Also talk with them [the partner with children], ‘what can I do to help?’ And talk with the child and say ‘is there anything I can do to be of assistance to you?’ So, they're actually an outsider who is caring, where they don't have any parenting expectations whatsoever.”
