Here’s something I wish I would’ve learned much earlier in my stepparenting adventures: not liking your stepkids is totally, completely normal. You’re not an inherently bad stepparent if you’re not crazy about your stepkids. The stepparent-stepkid relationship is a complex one, and love between a stepparent and a stepkid isn’t instant or automatic. Not liking our stepkids is a loaded topic. We should like our stepkids, shouldn’t we?! Surely we’re monsters if we don’t love our stepkids! We must be the only stepparents who ever felt this way. Because we’re positive we’re the only steppar ..read more

  As a single parent myself, I figured I knew what I was getting into when I started dating someone else with a kid. Man was I wrong. ??‍♀️ Turns out that becoming a stepparent was a hell of a lot more complicated than just adding another kid to the mix. And becoming a blended family required a lot more proactive attention, communication, and patience than I ever would’ve guessed. I wish I’d known more about the specifics of stepfamily dynamics earlier, because I can now see all the ways I inadvertently made stepparenting harder than it needed to be — harder on myself, harder on my husba ..read more

  So many stepparents tell me horror stories that end with "... but shouldn't I get a say in this? Aren't I allowed to have an opinion?? It’s my house too!" Hell yes you're allowed! Absolutely. You have every right to call your stepkids out on their shitty behavior or throw down with your partner over their lack of parenting. If you're looking for permission, I hereby grant you that permission. That's not quite the problem though, right? The problem is that disciplining our stepkids ends up making us the #1 Most Hated person in the house or launching WWIII with the high-conflict ex or ge ..read more

  A question I get a lot about disengaging is whether it's possible to disengage from only one of your stepkids. Or, similarly, whether you can disengage from your stepkid when you have other kids at home as well, like your own kid(s) or ours baby. Short answer: yeah, it's totally possible, especially since disengaging is more about shifting your own perspective than it is about changing your actions. Although changing your actions is certainly part of disengaging too. Long answer... well, I guess let's just move along with this blog post.   WANT SUPPORT & SOLIDARITY? get weekly ..read more

  Most of our first year of marriage was spent in a custody battle with Dan's high-conflict ex — and that wasn't the first or last time he spent months in court with her. I can't imagine a more relationship-testing way to start what was supposed to be a new life together. I felt like any potential future we had as a blended family was going to be determined by the outcome of Dan’s family court hearings. How did I, the stepparent on the sidelines of my husband's court battle, handle the pressure? Not well, I can tell you! Here's a whole giant list of stuff I wish I'd known back then. &nbs ..read more

  After my kid's dad moved out and I became a single parent, I believed — as many single parents do — that my daughter was now my number one priority and nothing else could get in the way of that ever. She'd already been through enough. So it was my job as a responsible parent and a responsible adult to put her needs first as much as possible, no matter what. What I didn't realize back then was that that sweeping sentiment, well-intentioned as it was, left no room for a new partner to enter. Because in order for a stepfamily to function, your partnership has to come first, not your kids ..read more

  A lot of the resources I create around high conflict co-parenting have to do with the primary parent in a blended family rather than the stepparent. Which makes sense, right? Our partners are technically the ones co-parenting with their high conflict ex, therefore they're the first line of defense in protecting us from that conflict. In theory. The thing is, though, a lot of our partners aren't great at that, for various reasons. Maybe they've got shitty boundaries with their ex, or they drank the Kool-Aid about how "good" co-parenting means just going along with what the other parent ..read more

  After identifying the signs of parental alienation, the next question we all ask ourselves is how (and whether) we can stop parental alienation syndrome from happening. Every resource you’ll ever read on PAS will tell you that documentation is critical. There are plenty of documentation tools out there, though — which is the best way to prove parental alienation and help you get your family back?   WANT SUPPORT & SOLIDARITY? get weekly emails! >>   1. Good ol' fashioned pen & paper custody journal A custody journal a simple notebook or planner where you can keep ..read more

  What's the last straw that determines when you should walk away from the stepfamily you're trying to blend? When should you call it quits? What happens when you're all out of stepparenting tricks, you've done everything you can think of to blend your family, and still nothing's gotten better? What if you're caught between a high-conflict ex on one side and a stepkid who hates you on the other, and none of that's likely to change? Do you keep trying? What if there is not one cell left in your body that's capable of trying anymore? Not just "done" but "DONE."— in all caps, bold ..read more

  I admit it: we're one of those families that watches Love Actually every year over Christmas. And every year during our umpteenth rewatch, I think about all the different types of love. Deep love. Dutiful love. Platonic love. Passionate love. Ego-driven love. Oblivious love. Unrequited love. Love that transcends all barriers. Love that defies all explanation. Love is a loaded topic for stepparents. We're expected to love our stepkids unconditionally — then feel guilty if we don't, not realizing that this isn't a deficiency on our part; that expectation was never realistic in the first ..read more