Is Your Blended Family Experiencing Problems Due To Differing Parenting Styles?
- Are you a couple struggling with discipline, balance, and communication as you blend your families together?
- Has assuming the role of a stepparent caused you to question yourself and your relationship with your significant other?
- Is there a clash between your and your partner’s parenting styles, resulting in tension and conflict at home?
Blending a family can be a complicated and painful task, resulting in communication issues and relationship dynamics that are hard to navigate.
If you or your partner got a divorce recently, you’re likely processing how to co-parent with an ex while managing a new relationship. Still figuring out the post-divorce dynamic with your kids—whether they’re stepchildren or yours from a previous relationship—it can be hard to establish boundaries and maintain a sense of unity.
Regardless Of Your Parenting Role, A Lack Of Harmony Impacts The Entire Family Dynamic
Because separation and divorce can create such strong feelings of guilt—especially when it comes to your children—you may have noticed changes in your ability to discipline. You may be parenting your children without firm rules or consistency. Or maybe you’ve found that it’s hard to introduce a stepparent into the flow of your dynamic with your kids and your ex.
On the other hand, if you’re the one coming into a step-parenting role, you may be surprised by some of the expectations being created at home. Behaviors that you see as overindulgent or disrespectful may occur between your partner and their child, causing you to worry about the standards being established in your blended family.
Not to mention, you may feel like an outsider upon witnessing the many moving parts of the family you’re marrying into. Unsure of your role as a stepparent, you may be worried that you’ll never fully establish the bonds and boundaries needed to help your family thrive.
Whether you’re a couple navigating the dynamics of your newly blended family or an individual looking to make sense of your place in the family unit, therapy can help you learn how to communicate and solve problems together.
Blended Families Are Part Of Our Social Fabric
When we consider the prevalence of divorce in our society—with over half of marriages ending in divorce—it makes sense that blended families are becoming an increasingly prominent population. In fact, according to the Census, 1,300 new stepfamilies form every day.
Each of these families maintains its own unique dynamics, past wounds, and interpersonal relationships. And though blended families are incredibly common, integrating a new partnership into the family unit are nevertheless new and oftentimes stressful experiences.
Blended Families Lack Healthy Relationship Models
Many of us grew up lacking healthy models for interpersonal behaviors, especially if we were raised in an environment where there was persistent conflict. This, of course, affects our ability to forge healthy connections with our partners, which becomes increasingly complicated when children from past relationships, exes, and other caretakers are introduced into the family dynamic.
As a result, we tend to lack effective models for blended families. It can be difficult to determine our roles within a new family system, regardless of whether our kids are stepchildren or ours from a past marriage. Yet parenting issues remain deeply sensitive, and it’s often hard to broach these subjects in a new marriage.
Counseling offers you new ways to communicate with your partner and set boundaries within your blended family. With our trained and empathetic clinicians at The Relationship Suite, you can create the blueprint for your blended family’s foundation based on shared goals and values.
Your Blended Family Will Benefit From The Skills You Gain In Counseling
Because issues of discipline and parenting can be so sensitive, it’s common for couples in blended families to encounter conflict in the process of establishing new parenting standards at home. However, by working with an objective therapist, you can learn to listen with empathy, understand one another’s perspectives, and navigate challenges as a team.
The therapeutic process begins with a brief, complimentary consultation during which you will collaborate with your Relationship Suite clinician to determine if you’d benefit from either individual counseling or couples therapy. Once it’s decided which format of blended family counseling will be most beneficial to you, you will be matched with a therapist at the Relationship Suite.
As your therapist better understands the presenting problems within your blended family, they will learn more about your history to get an idea of where your standards originated and what relationship models you’ve had throughout your life. If you’re working with your partner in couples counseling for blended families, this will be an essential opportunity to learn what one another’s values are and how to integrate those values into the relationship.
In fostering more empathy and collaboration alongside your partner, you will be able to determine appropriate boundaries and how to implement them with your children and with each other. From this perspective, you’ll be able to get closer and see more clearly the value of what you’re building as a family unit.
Our Approach To Blended Family Therapy At The Relationship Suite
Our clinicians in New York City and New Jersey use a wide range of validated individual and couples therapies designed to bolster your emotional awareness and communication skills. Though we often draw from elements of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), psychodynamic approaches, and emotionally focused techniques, counseling at The Relationship Suite is customized for each of our unique blended family clients.
You may be feeling overwhelmed and unsure of yourself as you forge the path ahead with new family dynamics, but harmony is possible. By learning to develop empathy for your partner’s position while asserting your own expectations, you can parent together as a cohesive team.
We are confident that if you commit to yourself—and each other—in counseling at The Relationship Suite, your blended family will flourish as you foster new, healthy, and meaningful connections.
You May Be Interested In Therapy For Blended Families, But Still Unsure…
I’m worried that bringing up sensitive parenting issues with my partner in therapy will just make me angrier.
We understand that certain parenting issues can be particularly sensitive, but the fact of the matter is that it’s important to share how you’re feeling. Therapy helps you to see that effectively navigating challenges with one another is all about how you deliver information. Our clinicians will teach you how to collaborate on identifying values, communicating effectively, and establishing firm boundaries.
We can help you connect to your partner on the deepest level while simultaneously allowing you to feel true to yourself. This will ultimately help you feel more satisfied both as an individual and in your relationship.
I don’t feel like I’m in the place as a stepparent to comment on my partner’s parenting style.
If you’re bothered by an aspect of your partner’s parenting, it’s essential to remain true to your feelings. Blended family counseling gives you a chance to work with a trained, objective therapist who will help you and your partner understand one another’s point of view.
As you gain insights into yourself and your relationship, you can learn where to borrow parenting styles from your significant other and where to establish an individual approach. When those boundaries are effectively communicated and implemented, you’ll see that even the hardest conversations can be productive.
Everyone knows that relationships between stepparents and stepchildren can often be less than ideal—why bother with blended family counseling?
Persistent conflict and a lack of effective boundary-setting can create long-term damage to your relationships with your partner and children. Counseling can help you and your partner grow and learn to communicate as you establish a strong foundation for your blended family.
You and your partner deserve a happy life and a healthy relationship, so why not commit to therapy for the sake of the whole family?
Learn How To Collaborate With Your Partner While Remaining True To Yourself
If you and your partner struggle with problems related to integrating your blended family, counseling at The Relationship Suite in New York and New Jersey can help you get on the same page to create a parenting style that works for both of you.
To schedule a free, 20-minute consultation, please call (917) 273 – 8836 or contact us via our site.
