Another option for supporting conflicted ex
mates is
to...
Invite (vs.
a withdrawn or hostile co-parent
into post-divorce therapy – for your descendents' sakes. Research your community for veteran
clinicians who
are specially qualified to do this difficult, high-reward work.
Do your best to keep visiting biokids from being
spies, weapons, or agents in a post-divorce war. Similarly,
do everything in your
power to avoid using litigation
to resolve intense conflicts with ex
mates over child-related issues like custody, financial support and visitation schedules. Legal
force aggravates the underlying conflicts and
wounds.
Scan the Internet for resources to help you,
including "chat groups" and "news groups" of others in similar situations.
Seek groups focused on practical problem solving, vs.
whining, blaming, and playing "Ain’t it awful."
There
are other common kinds of stepfamily situations meriting special supports –
like recovery from
and
and adapting
to disabilities like Attention Deficit Disorder
"Seasonal Affective
Disorder" (SAD), and chronic or clinical
In my clinical experience
since 1981, these seem unusually common in divorcing families and stepfamilies.
We’ve covered a lot here. To regain the "big picture,"
lets…
Recap – Project 11: Build and Use a Co-parent Support
Network
Most co-parents, kids, and relatives need empathic, knowledgeable support while
(a) adjusting to family divorce, and (b) building a high-nurturance,
over four or more years.
The term "support" spans at least
21 different
factors
that kids and adults can provide
for themselves and each other. Co-parents naming what specific supports
they each
need situationally, and teaching their kids and relatives to do the same, will raise
their
odds of getting needed help.
My experience with hundreds of typical troubled co-parents since 1981 is that
few
seek or find appropriate help for themselves, their dependent and grown kids, and/or
key relatives. One result is that they struggle alone for years with a stream of
confusions, anxieties, and complex inner and relationship conflicts - and
often divorce psychologically or legally.
Co-parents who try to
find effective stepfamily support often don’t know clearly what they (or their kids
or relatives) need, how to evaluate potential support, or where to find it. Even if they
look, most find that there’s none available locally. I propose
this is one of
of widespread stepfamily
distress.
While co-parents work to build an effective co-parenting team
they
can also take three steps
toward building an effective support network:
Co-parents and other family
adults accept your
group identity as a normal multi-home stepfamily
and learn what that
(
Then teach your minor and grown kids and key
supporters. Then…
All your adult members accept that typical stepfamilies like yours are more
complex and conflictual than most intact biofamilies, and that your co-parent couples
really are at significant risk of eventual psychological or legal re/divorce. Therefore,
informed
(stepfamily aware) support for you all is not "nice" to have – it’s
vital.
So accept that all your co-parents need to …
Intentionally
build an effective support network for yourselves, your kids, and your key
relatives, over time – and use it together.
"Fast-track" co-parents will begin this before re/wedding. The majority
of (troubled) stepfamily co-parents I’ve met never do.
For this third step, there are at least four bountiful sources of support that
typical co-parents like you can develop: (a) yourselves, (b) some other members of your
stepfamily, (c) selected non-family lay-people and professionals, and (d) the media and
some organizations.
The print and electronic media increasingly offers
supportive information about effective stepfamily co-parenting.
However, co-parents need to learn how to
evaluate whether advice is qualified and
useful, or. inaccurate, impractical, or toxic. Practical help is available, but typical co-parents
must persevere to find
it. An exception: I’ve rarely seen
community supports for stepkids and/or step-relatives - at least around Chicago.
This eleventh long-term safeguard project is like co-parents finding experienced
consultants to help hand-build a three-story home from scratch. A similar
metaphor is the vanishing rural tradition of relatives and neighboring farm-families
working together to erect the massive timber framework of a new barn.
The challenge for you
related co-parents here is to acknowledge without
guilt or shame that you will need
stepfamily-aware
help to succeed
at your complex multi-year, multi-family
That invites learning
what
help your adults and kids need, and where to find it.
The best time to start this
project is before re/wedding or soon afterward. Check your support-network
status and progress regularly together using a worksheet like
this. Your success in evolving an effective
support system will reflect your accumulated progress with all prior
safeguard projects –
specially building an effective co-parenting team (Project 10).
In
the real world, you'll build your support network while working at up to
stepfamily-building projects, over time. The complexity of this
long-term, multi-level effort justifies a final project for you partners:
where you each put your personal, re/marital, and co-parental energies every day,
for the four or more years it will take you all to "raise your barn."
I've seen
that co-parents who help each other
adapt and work steadily on all these sequential projects are most likely to keep
their personal and re/marital balances. That
promotes (often) enjoying the whole bumpy, challenging, rewarding
stepfamily-building process as it unfolds. Can you imagine that?
Options
Take a
reality check: on a
scale of one (I'm not interested in building a support network now) to
ten (I'm committed to building a support network for our stepfamily
now), I'm a __. Bonus question: who just answered this - your
or "someone else"?
Try out this stepfamily-support
inventory; or...
Study how to shop for an
effective stepfamily
and/or evaluate stepfamily
advice; or...
Explore the set of
Project 11 pages on
starting and running an effective co-parent
support group;
and/or...
Learn about keeping your personal, re/marital,
and stepfamily balances while you
co-parents work at all these concurrent safeguard projects; or...
Take a well deserved breather!
Recap – Project 11: Build and Use a Co-parent Support
Network
Most co-parents, kids, and relatives need empathic, knowledgeable support while
building a high-nurturance,
over four or more years.
The term "support" spans at least
21 different
factors
that kids and adults can provide
for themselves and each other. Co-parents naming what specific supports
they each
need situationally, and teaching their kids and relatives to do the same, will raise
their
odds of getting needed help.
My experience with hundreds of typical troubled co-parents since 1981 is that
few
seek or find appropriate help for themselves, their dependent and grown kids, and/or
key relatives. One result is that they struggle alone for years with a stream of
confusions, anxieties, and complex inner and relationship conflicts - and
often divorce psychologically or legally.
Co-parents who try to
find effective stepfamily support often don’t know clearly what they (or their kids
or relatives) need, how to evaluate potential support, or where to find it. Even if they
look, most find that there’s none available locally. I propose
this is one of
of widespread stepfamily
distress.
While co-parents work to build an effective co-parenting team
they
can also take three steps
toward building an effective support network:
Co-parents and other family
adults accept your
group identity as a normal multi-home stepfamily
and learn what that
(
Then teach your minor and grown kids and key
supporters. Then…
All your adult members accept that typical stepfamilies like yours are more
complex and conflictual than most intact biofamilies, and that your co-parent couples
really are at significant risk of eventual psychological or legal re/divorce. Therefore,
informed
(stepfamily aware) support for you all is not "nice" to have – it’s
vital.
So accept that all your co-parents need to …
Intentionally
build an effective support network for yourselves, your kids, and your key
relatives, over time – and
use it together.
"Fast-track" co-parents will begin this before re/wedding. The majority
of (troubled) stepfamily co-parents I’ve met never do.
For this third step, there are at least four bountiful sources of support that
typical co-parents like you can develop: (a) yourselves, (b) some other members of your
stepfamily, (c) selected non-family lay-people and professionals, and (d) the media and
some organizations.
The print and electronic media increasingly offers
supportive information about effective stepfamily co-parenting.
However, co-parents need to learn how to
evaluate whether advice is qualified and
useful, or. inaccurate, impractical, or toxic. Practical help is available, but typical co-parents
must persevere to find
it. An exception: I’ve rarely seen
community supports for stepkids and/or step-relatives - at least around Chicago.
This eleventh long-term safeguard project is like co-parents finding experienced
consultants to help hand-build a three-story home from scratch. A similar
metaphor is the vanishing rural tradition of relatives and neighboring farm-families
working together to erect the massive timber framework of a new barn.
The challenge for you
related co-parents here is to acknowledge without
guilt or shame that you will need
stepfamily-aware help to succeed
at your complex multi-year, multi-family
That invites learning
what
help your adults and kids need, and where to find it.
The best time to start this
project is before re/wedding or soon afterward. Check your support-network
status and progress regularly together using a worksheet like
this. Your success in evolving an effective
support system will reflect your accumulated progress with all prior
safeguard projects –
specially building an effective co-parenting team (Project 10).
In
the real world, you'll build your support network while working at up to
stepfamily-building projects, over time. The complexity of this
long-term, multi-level effort justifies a final project for you partners:
where you each put your personal, re/marital, and co-parental energies every day,
for the four or more years it will take you all to "raise your barn."
I've seen
that co-parents who help each other
adapt and work steadily on all these sequential projects are most likely to keep
their personal and re/marital balances. That
promotes (often) enjoying the whole bumpy, challenging, rewarding
stepfamily-building process as it unfolds. Can you imagine that?
The Web address of this
four-page article is
http://sfhelp.org/11/support.htm