Find out the best way to cope when your part­ner has a child from a pre­vi­ous re­la­tion­ship and dis­cov­er tips on how to ease in­to a healthy re­la­tion­ship with your stepchild.

A blend­ed fam­i­ly is cre­at­ed when you and your part­ner make a life to­geth­er in­clu­sive of chil­dren from one or both of your pre­vi­ous re­la­tion­ships. Re­gard­less if the rea­son for this is the death of a spouse, di­vorce or sim­ply be­cause it didn’t work out with your ex, blend­ed re­la­tion­ships are all around us and are not a neg­a­tive thing. A step­fam­i­ly can give chil­dren a more lov­ing, sta­ble and well bal­anced fam­i­ly struc­ture, in some cas­es, than your tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly set­ting.

Get­ting re­mar­ried is a scary step all on its own but get­ting re­mar­ried with chil­dren (in­volved) from past re­la­tion­ships is a whole dif­fer­ent lev­el of con­fu­sion and fright. How­ev­er, no mat­ter how dif­fi­cult things seem at the be­gin­ning, with pa­tience, re­spect, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and love, things will fall in­to place in its own time. De­vel­op­ing a bond is nev­er a quick fix sort of thing. Gen­uine ef­fort is the key to the equa­tion.

What most in­di­vid­u­als don’t un­der­stand is, it is hard not on­ly on the chil­dren but on the step­par­ent and bi­o­log­i­cal par­ent. There­fore, it is tough on every­one in the sit­u­a­tion, so do not ex­pect peo­ple to just ad­just at the drop of a hat. Yes, sur­viv­ing a bad mar­riage or hurt­ful sep­a­ra­tion can scar peo­ple and when they even­tu­al­ly dis­cov­er some­one new and lov­ing, it can some­times tempt them to set­tle down full speed ahead want­i­ng to give them­selves and their chil­dren a bet­ter life but al­ways re­mem­ber, slow and steady wins the race. Date for at least one to two years be­fore you re­mar­ry so the fam­i­ly can grace­ful­ly move on from one sit­u­a­tion to an­oth­er.

With­in that time frame, de­cide on par­ent­ing styles and in­clude your new part­ner in your every­day life. This can avoid many ar­gu­ments and sig­nal deal break­ers whilst al­low­ing chil­dren to in­cor­po­rate their new parental fig­ure in their lives with­out feel­ing bom­bard­ed. Par­ents should not force their chil­dren to spend 24 hours/sev­en days per week with their step­par­ent. Set aside qual­i­ty time with your chil­dren to com­mu­ni­cate and un­der­stand how they are ad­just­ing and any is­sues they might have. Trust me, this lev­el of re­spect will pay off in the long run. Chil­dren, just like adults, like to feel spe­cial and heard. Re­spect their bound­aries and al­low them to set the pace as the re­la­tion­ship flour­ish­es.

The step­par­ent should un­der­stand that chil­dren some­times feel that lik­ing them too much is dis­loy­al to their oth­er bi­o­log­i­cal par­ent. For ex­am­ple, if a woman gets re­mar­ried and her child likes a birth­day gift from their step­dad more than the gift re­ceived from their non-cus­to­di­al fa­ther, they may feel guilty deep down in­side. It is both the fa­ther and step­fa­ther’s job to let the child know that it is okay and ac­cept­able. Nev­er crit­i­cise an­oth­er par­ent and do NOT try to re­place a de­ceased or bi­o­log­i­cal par­ent. Form­ing a new, one-of-a-kind re­la­tion­ship is a bet­ter choice.

An­oth­er pro­gres­sive way of bond­ing with your stepchild is to sim­ply be in­ter­est­ed in the child’s per­son­al­i­ty, likes and dis­likes. Break the ice by shar­ing your in­ter­ests and if any­thing catch­es his/her at­ten­tion make a gen­uine ef­fort to teach the child and to­geth­er you will have a shared in­ter­est to at least talk about. Al­ways try to pray to­geth­er as a fam­i­ly and if you ac­cept a role in a child’s life, do your best to have pure and pos­i­tive in­ten­tions. Your pres­ence will im­pact them in many ways. In­flu­ence is a pow­er­ful thing and once you es­tab­lish trust, you are on the right path to suc­cess­ful bond­ing. Move for­ward with love and pa­tience, all things are pos­si­ble.