Blended, not stirred: making step families work

One family sharing a bathroom can be hard enough. What about a blended family with all its new step siblings, dramas and dynamics? Katy Gosset looks at how to get the right blend.

One family sharing a bathroom can be hard enough. What about a blended family with all its new step-siblings, dramas and dynamics?

Katy Gosset looks at how to get the right blend.

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It's a big step to start a family but you get a chance to shape it and decide how it's going to work.

But with blended families the parts all come fully formed and, like puzzle pieces, you somehow need to fit them together.

Clinical psychologist Catherine Gallagher advises going in with a realistic idea of just what those parts are.

"If your hope is that you can squeeze your blended family into a nuclear family model, then that's when the troubles start to arise... We need to be dealing with what we've actually got rather than what we wish it would look like."

She says while there were many different "makes and models" of the blended family, they were all grappling with a major life change.

And just because it was a common scenario, that didn't make it any less complicated.

"We don't want to underestimate the fact that, for each particular child, each particular family, they are traversing this thing which is a really big deal and so we don't want to rush the process"

Gallagher says step-siblings are often not in the house at the same time and the arrangement could feel "pretty messy".

This meant it was important to create smooth transitions for children each time they arrived home.

"That idea of taking extra time to ground children when they arrive, "OK, you're here now and this is what our week is going to look like."

While the adults in the new family group should keep their own relationship strong, Gallagher says children need one-on-one time with their biological parents so they aren't always sharing them with the new partner.

This is also a good way of acknowledging blood ties.

"It's not that suddenly we're a big happy family and we're all the same because we're not actually. We've all got different histories and different allegiances, different loyalties and expectations. .so we have to honour that."

Part of creating a successful blended family is managing those expectations.

"It's about going in with your eyes open. These kids may get along beautifully and it may be everything you possibly imagined but they might not and that's equally valid."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details