A mom and a stepmom share stories, ideas, friendship and family
Posted in Holidays on Dec 14th, 2007
Holidays can be pretty challenging in stepfamilies. (Did I just win the understatement of the year award?) Here’s the deal though: if they’re hard for you, chances are they’re hard for other people in your immediate or extended stepfamily, too. Anyone could be feeling frustrated, awkward or sad: the kids, the kids’ other parent, your [...]
Posted in Holidays, Movies, TV & music on Dec 14th, 2007
Try watching a movie this holiday season that will remind you that living in an eclectic, eccentric, sometimes emotionally messy, all-over-the-place family can be pretty darn funny and beautiful.
My favorite wacky family feel-good movie is Little Miss Sunshine. I own it (in fact, Kathy and the kids gave it to me for my birthday) so [...]
Posted in Quotes on Dec 14th, 2007
“Hardly ever do you hear about or see a beautiful divorce where the ex-husband and ex-wife and all the husbands-in-law and wifes-in-law get along nicely and live happily ever after. . . .
“Look in any bookstore or library. There you will find hundreds of books telling you how to be happily married, but not one [...]
Posted in Books on Dec 13th, 2007
The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict by the Arbinger Institute
Every so often I pick up a book and it transforms my life. What was it Kafka said about books? “A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.” This book did that for me.
If I could only recommend [...]
Posted in Quotes on Dec 5th, 2007
When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, one of the questions she was asked was, “What can we do to promote world peace?” Her answer was, “Go home and love your family.”
I think the importance of moms and stepmoms working to get along can’t be overstated. If women who care for the [...]
Posted in Communication, Logistics, Tips on Dec 4th, 2007
In addition to our single email address, we’ve also set up a shared online calendar. We use Google Calendar, which lets us use as many color-coded sub-calendars as we like, with individual levels of privacy and editing rights. If seeing all of the calendars becomes too overwhelming, we can check a box to display or [...]
Posted in Links, Parenting, Quotes, Remarriage on Nov 27th, 2007
“From my own observations, the biggest variable to the success of blending a family is the behavior and agreeability of former-spouses. If you are divorced or divorcing (with children), there is probably nothing more important for you to do than to get on good terms with your ex. If you are falling in love with [...]
Kathy and the kids came to G’s and my place this year. (We usually refer to the houses by the numbers from our street addresses instead of saying “your house” and “my house”. It has a nicer ring to it somehow — kind of like talking to people with arms open instead of crossed across [...]
What kind of women are we? We are bad women. Why does this delight us so? We’re not sure, but it does.
More pictures here.
Posted in Books, Discipline, Parenting on Nov 20th, 2007
Parent Effectiveness Training by Thomas Gordon
(This post builds on Kathy’s original Discipline post from last weekend.)
I read stacks of books about stepfamily dynamics when my relationship with G looked like it was going to be serious, and pretty much every book I read said to take things slowly and to follow the biological parents’ lead [...]
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