Mothering & Stepmothering

Creating Good-Enough Holidays With Step-teens

by Peter Gerlach, MSW

Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays are fast approaching, and everyone in your family will be struggling with festivity plans. To ease the common stress and awkwardness of stepfamily holiday gatherings, and to help develop new holiday traditions, consider these ideas: Help everyone in your merged families acknowledge that your family now consists of a three-generational-step, bio, and ex-in-law--multihome stepfamily--not "just a family." To make this real, try drawing (on a large sheet of paper) a three-generational "map" that shows how everyone is now linked together in your family tree.

To help "meet" each other, game-players can consider trying noncompetitive board games when your stepfamily is together. The Ungame and Life Stories Board Game are excellent games and use nonconfrontational questions that promote sharing personal information in a "safe" conversational style, often with a lot of humor.

Emphasize building respect between all members of your stepfamily, rather than expecting stepkin to love each other. As you build your new family relationships and history and work toward mutual acceptance and friendship, allow the effects of the holiday season to spread from this core to the rest of your relationships.

Acknowledge the holiday confusion and conflicts you may encounter. It probably will take five to eight or more years for your stepfamily to stabilize and settle on comfortable-enough new holiday rituals. Talk about each other's uncertainties, without guilt, laugh about these if you can, and let your stepfamily know that it's OK to feel conflict and confusion at times.

Set a limit. If the stress of holiday commitments becomes extreme, let the family know that you realize there will be loyalty conflicts from time to time. When compromises aren't forthcoming, put your marriage first. The real joy of the holidays will come from a more stable family in the long term.

Embrace your new holiday traditions, and allow your family to mourn their loss of some old traditions without blame. If your new family includes members of another religion, take the time to celebrate both traditions without shame, guilt or competition. Experiment with compromising, keeping long-range bonding as your goal.

When opinions or ideas become a conflict, listen and repeat what you hear. Although this sounds simple, it isn't. If your teen is being resentful, sarcastic and rejecting of your holiday plans, hear their pain between the lines. Repeat, without judgment, what you hear your teen say--without adding your response. This approach shows you are being respectful of their anger without starting an argument and this method of win-win problem solving is always the best solution.

Offer to include your teens' key friend at some stepfamily gatherings to buffer the strangeness and sadness teens often feel during these times.

Be patient! As your holiday experiences accumulate over the years, the awkwardness of having a stepfamily will begin to fade. Make creating "good-enough" holidays your goal together instead of trying to re-create that "perfect' holiday you once shared with your former biofamily (or wished you did).

Good luck and happy-enough holidays as you build new memories and traditions!

Peter Gerlach, MSW, has been a stepgrandson, stepson, stepbrother and stepfather of two. He has researched stepfamilies since 1979 as a family-life educator, author, speaker and therapist. An ex-board member of the Stepfamily Association of America, Peter co-founded the nonprofit Stepfamily Association of Illinois in 1981.

This article is republished with permission.