You and your significant other love each other very much. You are planning on building a life together and want the kids to be on board. As a potential new stepparent, you want the kids to like you therefor engage with them more as a friend instead of a parent.
But how do you transition from being a friend and having fun to a parent in a disciplinarian role?
This is hard for many stepparents, especially if you plan on being the one staying at home.
Here are a few tips to help you:
- Come together as a team. Establish what your household will look like/
- Decide early one who will do what in the home.
- What will be your role in the home? What’s expected of you? Are you to be an active participant or someone who supports your partner?
- Examine what your idea or perspective on parenting is and does it match your partner’s?
If you are the new person coming into the relationship, it’s best to start by observing what’s going on in the family first before passing judgement and telling the other what they are doing wrong.
To find out what else I shared about disciplining as a stepparent, listen to the rest of this video.
Want more support for your stepfamily? I’d love to help you.
The best way is for you and I to set up a time on the phone (or Skype) where I can really help you uncover what’s the issue and how I can help you. There is no obligation on your part except to show up.
If this sounds like something you’d like to spend time with me doing,then click this link Claudette’s schedule. This will bring you to my calendar where you’ll be able to set up a time to talk with me that fits both our schedule.
Remember, change happens in small increments but you also need to know where to start and what to work on that will make a difference in your relationships.
To learn more about what I do and ways I can help you improve your relationships in your stepfamily, go to https://www.stepmomcoach.com
While legal dependency usually ends at eighteen, the economic resources available to a stepchild through remarriage could continue to be an important factor past childhood. College education and young adulthood are especially demanding economic events. The life-course studies undertaken by some researchers substantiate the interpersonal trends seen in stepfamilies before the stepchildren leave home. White reports that viewed from either the parent’s or the child’s perspective, relationships over the life-course between stepchildren and stepparents are substantially weaker than those between biological parents and children. These relationships are not monolithic, however; the best occur when the stepparent is a male, there are no step siblings, the stepparent has no children of his own, and the marriage between the biological parent and the stepparent is intact.2 On the other end, support relationships are nearly always cut off if the stepparent relationship is terminated because of divorce or the death of the natural parent.
When a stepparent is the only one available to perform child discipline—especially in a new step-home—it helps if the biological parent(s) verbally “authorize” the stepparent in front of the step-kid(s) to act in their place.
I love this thanks for posting. I like what you said about observing the family dynamics first before you jump in and try to change things.