A StepMom's Truth

It doesn't matter that you weren't first. What matters is that you're forever.

-- Stepmom Magazine 

Happy New Year

May the New Year bring you much joy, hope, bonding, loving,

and dreams and wishes come true.

Gloria Lintermans

THE RIGHT TO BE REALLY HEARD

             Not getting your reasonable needs met by others in your life be they family, friends, and even casual acquaintances? Consider that the problem may be a lack of communication skills on your part. Here's the fix that can serve you forever, strengthen your relationships, get your needs met, and who knows - maybe even promote world peace.

            Like pieces of a garment pattern, each communication ability makes more sense when seen as part of the whole concept. 

           

              1. “Process awareness” is the foundation skill of effective verbal communication. It is being aware, without judgment, moment by moment, of your and your partner’s key attitudes, physical and emotional feelings (including hunches and intuitions), thoughts (inner voices), real communication skills, and other needs and objective awareness, and, finally, how you are talking together. Use “process awareness” in all key situations, including when you are alone. With practice, it becomes a habit.

            2. “Metatalk” is honest, clear, and cooperative discussion with a partner about how you are communicating together. It is based on mutual respect and process awareness, and uses a special vocabulary. You build this language over time to your own personal values and style of communicating.

            3. “Empathic listening” is a conscious decision to: suspend your opinions and other needs for the moment; briefly feedback your sense of your partner’s main thoughts, feelings, and needs and vigilantly and objectively note their reactions. This is used when your partner’s emotions are intense and he or she cannot listen to you. Listening empathically does not, however, mean you agree with your partner. Mastering these first three skills is essential for effective “assertion” and “problem solving.”

            4. “Assertion” (the skill or art of) is: clearly knowing what you really need, right now; asking for it plainly and without guilt; calmly expecting a defensive response; respectfully listening to it; and then, firmly repeating these steps until you either get (1.) agreement, (2.) an acceptable compromise, or (3.) switch to the last skill, “problem solving.”

            There are three effective assertion essentials: (1.) Valuing yourself and your partner’s need to communicate equally; (2.) firmly believing that your present needs are legitimate; and (3.) knowing that if you are making a request, compromise and “No” are okay; or, if you are making a demand, they are not okay.

            5. “Problem solving” is used to meet enough of everyone’s real needs when people disagree. This skill involves cooperatively uncovering what each person really needs now, and creatively brainstorming all options to evolve a win-win solution. Effective “problem solving” uses all of the other four skills and requires self-respect and mutual respect, optimism, imagination, patience, and good will. Well used, the power of this skill is enormous.

            We rarely study the skills we rely on the most to get many of our daily and business needs met. Effective verbal communication happens when each person gets his or her major needs met enough and feels good enough about the way he or she did and each person involved.

            A powerful key to success that most people are unaware of is the non-verbal relationship messages that we get from each other all the time. Only when we each decode these face, body, and voice-dynamic signals as, “You see me as a respected equal here,” can effective communication work. If any partner reads, “You seem to feel ‘one-up’ or ‘one-down’ to me,” communication withers. A deadly variation, “I see me as ‘one-down’ also steadily wrecks the outcome of any communication.

             The three most basic verbal communication tools to build are: a healthily love and respect for yourself and your own needs; an equal respect for every partner’s worth, dignity, and needs; and, a knowledge and proactive use of all five of these skills.

Reading about these skills will change little. Trying them patiently and with cautious optimism will cause positive communication and relationship changes, over time. The more you use communication basics and skills to do win-win problem solving, the more automatic and effective it becomes—a priceless life-long road to success.

Gloria Lintermans (Author, THE SECRETS TO STEFPAMILY SUCCESS, http://amzn.to/stepfamily)

THE STEP-GRANDPARENT ROLE

Relationships in blended/stepfamilies are new, untested, and not a given as they are in traditional families. Even when everyone is in tune, what is missing is the comfort of knowing that there is a bond taken for granted, a biological bond of caring and love. Now, outward signals and signs are continuously needed to show that caring and loving, or respect, really exist. Children in blended/stepfamilies also have at least one extra set of grandparents and extended family which can leave everyone on both sides confused about what to do.

These children become siblings, residential stepsiblings, nonresidential stepsiblings, residential half-siblings, and nonresidential half-siblings. There are even two subtypes of half-sibling roles: those of children related by blood to only one of the adults, and the half-sibling role of the mutual child. Children also have step-grandparents and ex-step-grandparents.

Even though blended/stepfamilies are a large segment of the American families today, our language has not yet caught up with the proliferation of new family roles. As family members separate and join new families, the new kin do not so much replace as add to kin from the first marriage. What are the new relatives to be called? There may be stepparents, step-grandparents, and stepsiblings, but what, for instance does a child call the new wife that her or his non-custodial father has married? Or, if a child alternates between the two households in a joint-custody arrangement, where does he or she call “home,” and where is his or her “family”? It takes the entire family working together to make the adjustment easier for everyone.

Stepfamilies look pretty much like biological families. They have many common characteristics. And, they also differ in about 60 important ways. There are commonsense things that work in an average biological family that will not work, or will even backfire, in a normal multi-home stepfamily. For example, an earnest stepfamily adult (or co-grandparent) believing they must quickly love their young step-kin just like their own blood will usually stress everyone out, starting with themselves. The reality? Shoot for initial mutual respect.
This stepfamily identity-formation involves members gradually clarifying and melding ideas on who has what “jobs” in their multi-home family, including non-custodial biological parents, their new spouses, step-grandparents, ex in-laws, and half-siblings. The reality is that grandparents can see a new child as altering their estate bequests, or as an exciting blessing and joy.

Therapists, clergy, doctors, and teachers can often cause unintended confusion by using labels that do not emotionally fit for a given stepfamily. As authority figures, their choice of title can carry more weight (especially with kids) than a non-professional’s. Most stepfamilies find it best not to force names or titles on members, but to experiment over time and consider the comfort levels of all key people involved, including both biological parents and all grandparents. Each family will evolve its own titles—there is no absolute right way to label here.

Gloria Lintermans is the author of THE SECRETS TO STEPFAMILY SUCCESS: Revolutionary Tools to Create a Blended Family of Support and Respect, http://amzn.to/stepfamily

EFFECTIVE STEPFAMILY DISCIPLINE

    The roles of stepmother and stepfather are not easy, a confusing mix of similarities and differences to that of biological mother and father roles. Equally baffling are the alien roles of stepson, stepdaughter, stepsibling, and half sibling.

              Teenagers, even in the best of biologically intact families, are capable of making your hair stand on end. Multiply that a few times over and you have an idea of the havoc they’re capable of within the stepfamily mix – a situation where constructive discipline often goes begging. Traditional biological – family discipline often backfires, creating even less harmony, security and order, leaving everyone wondering not only what should be done but by whom.

THE DRAMA

            Do you and your mate disagree on what “effective” discipline is? Do you and your spouse discipline through pain, guilt and frustration instead of using discipline to guide, teach and protect by respectfully asserting yourself? Do you usually enjoy being a stepparent, or do you endure it? As a stepparent do you:

1. Feel uncomfortable with, or unsure of, your authority?
2. Feel significantly criticized about how you discipline your stepchild by someone whose opinion matters?
3. Feel too little disciplinary support from your partner, i.e., you often feel “It’s me against them?”
4. Feel significantly disliked and disrespected by your stepchild and feel hurt, resentful, torn, and guilty?

Perhaps you honestly don’t like your stepchild – which shapes how you co-parent him or her. Your partner may want you to discipline his child differently (more strict/less strict/more friendship), and you don’t really want to or don’t know how.

THE SOLUTION

            The first step is to adopt a long-term problem-solving outlook. The short-term rifle shot of “I want Jenny to start cleaning up her room now” isn’t going to work. Adopt a co-parent, partnership attitude: “This is our problem,” instead of “It’s me against you here.” Accept that it’s not a matter of simple “obedience” or “the mess in her room.” Effective discipline is about a group of deeper unmet needs that you and your partner need to uncover together, focus on one at a time, and resolve over time.

            Work with your partner to develop the skill and confidence needed to spot and dismantle toxic relationship triangles. Discipline conflicts promote them, which makes lasting solutions all the more evasive.

SORTING IT OUT

            When your stepchild disobeys and efforts to gain his or her consistent cooperation aren’t working, you need to look at the real problems underneath the defiance. When your stepchildren haven’t grieved their losses enough, you and your partner (including ex-mates) need to do this together and with compassion. Without exception, all stepfamilies are based on major sets of broken bonds, i.e., losses, for adults and kids alike; the loss from a gradual or sudden breakup of their biological family through separation and divorce, death, or desertion. Surprisingly, another set of broken bonds comes from remarriage and/or people from different families moving in together.

            Children (biological and step) often test for safety, not because they’re rejecting you. If this is the case, support their needs, learn specifically what it will take for them to feel safe, and assert your needs patiently while they test.

            Your stepchildren may be overwhelmed with their many developmental and adjustment tasks in this new household and may be paralyzed or angry about having to do them, through no fault of their own. Pay attention, often steady support, and praise their progress as they adjust, over time.

            As a stepparent, you may be trying to discipline too soon. You have to earn your stepchild’s respect and trust over many months, after the wedding. Whenever practical, let your mate set limits and enforce consequences. Concentrate on earning the child’s trust and respect, without being a doormat. Assume disciplinary authority gradually.

            Does your stepchild perceive (correctly?) that the limits you set are disrespectful demands instead of requests? If so, learn communication skills and change your attitude. Your message needs to become one of equal respect.

           Your partner, your stepchild’s other (biological) parent, or someone else may be sabotaging your disciplinary authority by either overtly or covertly encouraging your stepchild to disobey you. Confront this person respectfully and firmly about his or her actions (but not his or her character, which will cause the person to become defensive and sabotage your intent). Work to uncover the real needs underneath the sabotage and solve these problems, if possible. Free your stepchild from being caught in the middle.

            You might have unrealistic expectations of yourself, your partner, and/or your stepchild – e.g., I’m an adult, so my stepchild must willingly respect and obey me. Wrong. Adjust any unrealistic expectations and check the results over time.

            Your teenage stepchild might be experimenting appropriately with early independence – just as you’re trying to get your stepfamily to bond together. Become an expert on what teems need to be able to break away safely. Refocus from bonding, obedience and acceptance to helping the child leave your new nest, over time. Try to see the “rebellion” as normal testing, not personal rejection – and respectfully assert your boundaries while the teen learn.”

YOU WILL NEED PATIENCE

            Every one of these problems is “normal.” Improving your stepchild discipline problems will ground and empower you. Guard against wasting valuable time, energy, hope and patience on ineffective surface solutions. Earn the deep satisfaction and joy of raising relatively healthy, productive children.

            Take heart. Over time, your stepfamily can grow to be a reliable, healing refuge of warmth, contentment, safety, respect, fun, and support. To get and savor these rare plums, the earliest challenge for you and your partner – and then your kids, ex-mates, and key relatives – is to clearly accept that together you make up a difference kind of normal family: a stepfamily. If you do not accept your true stepfamily identity in your hearts, you are at great ongoing risk of striving endlessly to be what you are not – a biological family. For most co-parents and minor kids, this becomes increasingly stressful and frustrating. It’s like trying desperately to make your poodle into a pony. It can’t, and you won’t.

           

            Ultimately, the unexpected complexities, confusion, disillusionment, and lack of informed help combine to crack and ultimately destroy so many stepfamilies. In stunned disbelief, previously divorced biological parents and their minor (and grown) kids find themselves living the horrors, agony, financial, and conceal convulsions of family breakup and divorce – again.

Gloria Lintermans is the author of THE SECRETS TO STEPFAMILY SUCCESS: Revolutionary Tools to Create a Blended Family of Support and Respect (Llumina Press). For more information: http://amzn.to/stepfamily

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Is your family a modern-day BRADY BUNCH?

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The Stepmom Toolbox eBookstore

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An excerpt:

"I’ve been caught on the crazy-go-round of living my life trapped in negative thinking. I’ve experienced a painful divorce that ended my first marriage. I know first hand what it’s like to be on the short end of the adultery stick. I had very little time to regroup and pull myself together...five months after my divorce was final, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  This was my wake-up call. I knew I had to do life differently. In 2002, I started collecting inspiring quotes and reading positive and life affirming stories of others. I started peeling back the layers until I got to the root cause of my thoughts and beliefs. I kept that which was true for me and discarded the rest. I replaced misperceptions and untruths with the wholesome what is so for me. 

This book began as an idea to inspire women who’ve been caught in the downward spiral of incessant negative thinking and over analyzing. Our lives don’t have to be messy, complicated, or chaotic.  We can choose to participate in the drama or do something different. The choice is always ours."