Holidays can bring a difficult time for step and blended families. Children who are getting ready to leave for the holidays often get “wound up” for a few days before their exit.  The emotions can run from nervousness about the change, to excitement of seeing their other family, to sorrow for leaving their local friends during a holiday. Add candy, schedule changes and the stress of a holiday, Christmas and other holidays can simply become a mess.
Our children are teenaged now, they spend Christmas with their family out of state.  For our son that is a  “whoo hooo” more hunting time kind of excitement, but our daughter enters the season with more mixed emotions. She loves her dad and stepmom, but she wants to participate in all the events she has worked hard for here as well….and the calendar doesn’t allow for both.
Each family has so much to give to our children we want them to be a part of both of us. While allowing my children to be away each Christmas is not a legal requirement, it became clear to me early on ten years ago, that I have my children almost every.day.of.the.year and their father has time off at Christmas and summers. Their family has a huge gathering, while my extended family doesn’t gather at Christmas. It became clear that it made more sense for them to be there at Christmas.  We spend time as a family doing Christmas things together before the 18th when they leave.
Over the years we have made our own Christmas traditions:
Going to see the Christmas lights with Hot Chocolate and thermos in tow
Making Gingerbread houses with all of us…

A movie day together

A trip to a friend’s farm
Christmas tree shopping together
 
We work on activities to “be together” “doing together” and spending time talking and having an activity to talk about, most of them inexpensive, but requiring time together…..and then as the 18th approaches, we wind down….allow our children to have slower, calmer days so they will be well rested and ready for the busy week at their natural dad’s.
Both the two days before and the two days after a holiday transfer we plan for the “toxic” days of mixed emotions, change, and exhaustion. The children need this patience and love from us, and we need them to have the opportunity to make the transition between homes calmly and have the time to process the change of households and the grieving that goes on both ways of not having all of us all the time.
Have a Merry Christmas ….may your step and blended family days be peaceful and full of joy.
Sweetie

P.S.  Date nights are as important during the holiday time as any other, find time for a quiet night out, a stroll together to see the lights, we’ve even simply bundled up and taken hot chocolate round our neighborhood to remind ourselves that our relationship is as important as all the other relationships that crowd the holidays…take time to nurture yours…..even if that means time on your own…single parents matter too!

  So many times as a divorced mom,  I was simply not in the ball park financially or otherwise of what my children’s other parents could do.  Though I had a position as a teacher, I also had their father’s debts, no child support, and responsibility for our household….

What my children, now 13 and 16 remember?  Mom baking cookies when we came home from teaching day.

Making our costumes for plays and dress up

Watching movies from the library together at home with a favorite quilt

Going to many many free city activities for parades, hot dogs, readings, and concerts as grand adventures

Mom singing silly songs in the car with their names in the verses

Being proud of birthday t shirts I made each year with their favorite things…

So many times we forget that the most our children want from us is to BE with us…not the things they talk about…but time WITH us…

hugs!

Sweetie

When you are a blended family date night as a couple takes on a whole new level of priority. As the family first comes together, there are the days of figuring out how two households do this as one….and your couple hood matters….its like a freshly planted sappling…if its not watered carefully and tenderly cared for, it can be uprooted before it grows.
Les and I have understood from the beginning that date night for our marriage was important. We often had financial issues in the beginning as he moved from a higher paying job to my state with additional children and responsibilities, but even then, we chose our relationship to be as important as any thing else we focused on. I believe that choice was a wise one.
When we first married, the children were often jealous of the new spouse. The truth was that as happyas they were we were marrying, and they were….they didn’t want anyone or anything to remove the attention from their parent they had had. For both of our oldest children, this was almost as traumatic as anything else they went through, when you are a single parent, you and your oldest child usually become very close….a new spouse may change how that closeness works….in our case for both of our oldest children it very much did.
Seven years down the road it is almost funny what we have had to do to make date nights happen. From quick trips to Sonic for a 15 minute time out and couple time to literally parking the car and walking at the park….and oh the rules we enacted along the way….”no talking about the children” “no talking about the exs” “no family talk at all regarding extended family” which some nights left us very much in one of two modes….silence or searching for conversations that didn’t involve the others!
As we enter year eight one of the best decisions we have made is choosing date night. We selected Friday nights when its not football season and Tuesday nights when it is. We often do not leave until close to bedtime and often the dates do not last but an hour or two, but that time is something to look forward to, something to dress up for, something to plan for and that has made such a difference in our marriage.
God is so good, marriage is important and in a blended family, its essential to spend time with both!

This morning is the morning we load up the two youngest children and meet their dad and new stepmom 3.5 hours on the road from here and the children go for the next 4 weeks. Its an exciting time for them as well as a nervous time.
Toxic times if you ask me….you see, they are in the neverlands….excited to be with dad, sorry to be missing their friends here, thrilled for the possibilities summer has in the country at their grandparents, frustrated that they are missing church and youth trips here. For the last four days before they go we see their fallout despite their excitement to be going. Toxic turnovers are part of the step and blended family visitation times. My children get nervous about the changes and it affects each of them differently. One of my older children used to get plain silly for a week before he saw his mom. You could count on him forgetting simple things and walking around like he was in a daze. Son2 is more angry. He gets angry about any detail regarding meeting on the road…he just wants peace….and to not have any schedule…and of course moving families is like a tactical movement in the army….there are logistics to work out…who, where, when, how, what do they take, when do they come back, who does the drop offs and gets the targets home? lol
There is usually a move for power on the other end at our toxic transition. Times are changed and locations at the very last minute change, mainly to make sure I am not in charge…which is fine with me…it just adds one more apple to the overturned applecart of trying to get them ready and out the door.
Families do toxic transitions every which way. We personally prefer the meet 1/2 way mode. We usually share a meal or snack together then part. The meal may be the shortest on record, but we try to have a common front for that time period. We purchased each child their own phones when they reached 10 because that way they can call us without it being a long distance issue. It also means there is less likelihood of anyone leading them NOT to call….you’d be amazed how busy they got one summer, we never were able to get them on a phone but 3 times for six weeks….usually they talk here three times a day with their other parents there each day…can you say working on custody changes? (Later the court did not affirm any changes to move there)
Today the letter writing campaign begins. My youngest at 12 still likes to know she can get mail, so I write there while she’s gone. The first had to be mailed last Thursday to be there Monday, but it matters.
The truth is my children need their father, his wife, and their grandparents. The truth is also that for our family, it is a time to focus on our college boy who is home for the summer as well as each other while the house is just us. It will be a busy time in our work life, so we will work harder to the down time. Who knows maybe Mt Washmore will be caught up!

God is good, and may the Toxic Transfer begin!

Are your children going to their other parents for six weeks this summer? Will the children attend church at their other parents? Do you know the situation there? Are you able to let the youth/children/bible school people there know your child is coming? Our church has begun an initiative to help welcome the “summer children” into the youth and children’s programming. We know how hard it is to be a teen and/or child who is only at a parent’s home for 42 days in the summer and sporadic times during the year. How much easier for your children if a welcome letter, phone call, and alert is waiting for them when they get to their other parent’s home.
What about at your home church while the children are gone? Are you still working with their friends, helping chaperone and hanging out with their friends? We make sure to encourage emails and updates to our out of state during the summer children while they are with their dad. So many summers they simply felt entirely “out of the loop” while they were away on visitation.
What can we do to promote an easier path for our families? What can we do to promote an easier path for our children? Not all parents can co parent. Not all situations are healthy for our children with their other parents. What can we do to bridge the gaps and help heal the hurts that divorce brought to our children? Simply by being honest with our children about how hard it is for some of the situations they face is a great first step in making it better. My own children needed to hear me and their natural dad say it was “okay” for them to love their step dad seven years ago. They needed their natural dad’s permission so they didn’t feel disloyal to him. I am thankful he willingly encouraged them to love their step dad…even though it was very hard for him to do!
God asks us to put the past behind us. To start each day facing forward and looking to Him to answer our needs and to lead our paths. Broken marriages cause pain that is truly hard to heal, but God is in the business of healing. God is in the business of restoration. Let’s let Him be the God of our step and blended situations too.

Hello, if you are here today, you may have seen my call on Twitter to find Step moms and those working with step moms who are blogging! I’d love to create a blog roll here of moms and step moms who are living our walk. You do not have to blog only as the step mom or mom, but your blog should from time to time acknowledge and share that part of your life.

Please leave a comment below with your blog address and we’ll add that section in the next few days. This is a free site, with the intention of becoming a site for resources for all step families!
While we are Christian, we do not expect that anyone else is required to be one to participate here! We are developing this site and it will be changing weekly as we prepare to be launched as a national resource in July from several national organizations. Please bear with us as we learn, grow, and share!

Sincerely,

Les & Sweetie Berry

This week Les and I are asking for you to start rounding up the moms and step moms you know and share with them that we’re creating a resource for reading, entertainment, resources and information about being a step or blended family. We’re entering into a period of gathering the needs…yesterday we did a #hashtag on Twitter asking in six words or less the issues people were facing that day….it was interesting to see what came in (see comment with some of the responses on the previous post pasted into one comment)

What’s going on at the Berry home? The latest issues have been more about teenage stuff than step or blended family issues. We have basically three teenagers, all fiercely independent, yet still dependent upon parents to help them make decisions and definately the ones called when life goes sour. One is facing the task of learning to juggle freedom with finances while maintaining the necessary insurance payments and balancing the need to have food money. Our next son is convinced at 15 that he is fully capable of maintaining his own decisions on his life, unfortunately his belief that he is invincible hasn’t lived up to his reality when the count is down …so every now and then mom and step dad have to step in and call the boundary. Miss Priss is less than 60 days away from 13 and we can tell. Suddenly our princess of peace is more like an edgy volcano….spouting a few misfires every now and then as she learnes to juggle hormones and the pressures of being a teenager.

What are the old issues: Children who really don’t want the “step” part of the parents to ever initiate a direct “order” to do something. It really isn’t that its a step issue at all, the child will grunt, sound frustrated, or sigh that sigh that goes to the next county if the natural parent does it either. Children in a step family really like to pull out all the stops on what mileage they can use against the parental units. It’s not even about liking them in our case, the children all love their parent and step parent, its simply a “I am not submitting to authority” thing…played out in any language or focused on any person or reason they can think to blame it on.

In our family, we’ve been married for six years. We took Ron Deal’s advice and worked on letting the biological parent be the “heavy” on directives when we married each other the children were around 5,8,12, and 16, however in the real world of our family, all parents are the “every day” parent….we have custody of all of our children for most of the year, so the concept of a step dad or step mom not being able to expect to tell a child what to do, wasn’t going to fly. There are just too many times when the other parent had to be the one at home. However, we did in general and still do, let the biological parent address the issues or at least be the forward person as we both discuss something that has gone down. We work really hard on being together to discuss family issues, but there are times when the bio parent and the child or the step parent and the child simply need 1:1 time to work out their irritations peacefully.

Now if you have a solution for how you handle the teenager who doesn’t seem to connect taking off clothes/socks and the floor versus a laundry basket…let me know!

God is good!
Sweetie & Les Berry