Readers frequently write in to request help and tips for stepfamilies, and so I am honored to bring you a guest blog this week from author and speaker Debbie Alsdorf. Author of Beyond the Brady Bunch, Debbie carefully and honestly leads us into this topic — and I hope the lessons she learned will benefit you (or help you see friends or family in a fresh light).
As little kids, I don’t suppose any of us dreamed about growing up one day to be a … stepparent. My own entrance into the world of stepparenting came after a painful and unwanted divorce.
After a season of grief and single-parenting, I met my new husband, and we were ridiculously in love. All I wanted was to love him and all that were his, including his two young daughters. With my two young sons, we resembled the Brady Bunch — a television show where two families merged and lived happily ever after.
I quickly learned that The Bradys were only on television. Reality proved that blending two lives, histories, and families was not easy. It was hard, heartbreaking, and filled with missteps. Now married thirty-four years, my husband and I have watched our blended family of six grow to twenty-one, complete with eleven grandchildren. We are not a perfect family and we still navigate problems after all these years.
In the hope of helping others through uncharted stepfamily waters, I am sharing the top things I would have done differently. If you see yourself in any of these scenarios, I won’t sugarcoat it: Stepparenting can be hard. In the early days, sometimes the disappointment was so intense that I wanted to quit! But hard things can lead us into holy places if we let them.
Here are my top ten mistakes—with ideas on how you might avoid them:
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In