The Stepfamily Association has an 8-step program for building a healthy
stepfamily. The eight steps are:
- Nurturing your couple relationship: It is essential
that the relationship between the two adults in a stepfamily continues
to grow. That growth will increase the likelihood that the
household will stay together. It will also help develop your
leadership as a couple. If it is strong, your couple
relationship will serve as a model to the children of
parents who care about each other and about solving
family problems. This step is divided into three parts:
- Go out on a "date" (without the children) once a week,
every week.
- Spend 20 minutes of relaxed time alone with each other
(without the children) every day.
- Discuss the running of your household for at least
a half hour every week.
- Finding personal space and time: All people need space
and time for themselves. This need can be more difficult to
fulfill in a stepfamily because there are generally more people
in a stepfamily than in other types of families. There are two aspects
to this step:
- Make a special "private" place in the home for each family
member, even those who do not live there full time.
- Each adult should spend two hours each week participating
in some activity that he or she enjoys (by him- or herself).
- Nourishing family relationships: A person of any
age is more likely to see the world in a positive light
if they feel good about themselves. Being appreciated by
others can contribute to good feelings about oneself.
However, there is a tendency in families to give feedback
only when you have something negative to say. To counter this
tendency, this step involves having family members share with
each other (on a daily basis) what they have appreciated about
each other. This should be done when the whole family is
together, so that everyone can hear all the positive feedback.
It can be done at dinner time, or at any other suitable time.
- Maintaining close parent/child relationships: The children
need to know that they continue to be loved by their parent. This step is
one way to let children know that they continue to have a very special
place in their parent's affection. A parent and child should do something
fun together for at least 15 or 20 minutes, once or twice a week.
- Building family trust: Relationships are built on trust and trust comes
from sharing meaningful memories. At the beginning of a stepfamily,
the family members have not been together long enough to have shared memories.
To build family trust, schedule a family event once a month and begin special traditions for your family unit.
- Strengthening stepfamily ties: Steparents and stepchildren come together knowing
little about each other. Therefore, it is important to schedule time for the stepparent
and stepchild to do something for fun together for 15-20 minutes once or twice a week.
- Working with children's other household: Reducing tension between adults
in the two households can help children feel more comfortable and happy. As hard as it may be,
give the adults in the children's household positive feedback once a month. Having children that
feel more comfortable and happy is an advantage to having a good business relationship between the adults who are involved in
raising the children.
You can learn more about the 8-step program by purchasing the book "Stepfamilies Stepping Ahead" or by attending one of our support
group meetings.
The author of the Stepping Ahead Program is the late Emily Visher, Ph.D.
The steps shown above were taken from Stepfamilies Stepping Ahead, Mala
Burt, ed., Lincoln, NE: Stepfamilies Press, 1989, and are used by permission
of the Stepfamily Association of America.
