06.15.07
Posted in Kids Today at 12:48 pm by Dawn Miller
There was a great post yesterday by Jill Brooke on Huffington Post about Resisting the Urge To Diss Your Ex When Your Kids Visit on Father’s Day. Brooke discusses how tempting it is to trash the ex-husband in front of your child, how hard it can be to handle your personal pain after a divorce, and how damaging badmouthing the other parent can be to your child’s self-concept.
She shares a great poem (from Jeannette Lofas with the Stepfamily Foundation) that illustrates the point:
My Mom says my Dad’s no good.
My Dad says my Mom’s no good,
I guess I must be no good.
So watch what you say in front of your kids. Count to 10, 20, and even 30 if you have to.
Permalink
Posted in Dawn's Writing, Kids Today at 12:20 pm by Dawn Miller
I’ve got a new column out (as of last night) discussing the value of volunteering amid a world obsessed with pop-celebrity and triviality. Here’s my crack at it:
Service to the community can help draw your family together, help kids understand how their choices and actions impact others, and strengthen community linkages. But how do you pry today’s kids away from the TV screen or computer and develop an ethic of service?
I didn’t marry into a mob of revolutionary idealists. My three stepkids were hard-core suburbanites with a touch of sass. Their lives revolved around their friends, an over-the-top devotion to all things pop culture (think E, IM and Paris Hilton 24-7), and the social ups and downs of their daily lives. In other words – they were pretty typical.
I was a young and naïve stepmom who’d spent the last ten years as a volunteer and consultant to do-good-causes. So how do you jolt a bunch of teens out of the lethargic embrace of the living room sofa and into action?
Ask them to help and make it easy for them to do it. A few years ago, I needed to attach about 5,000 blue and white ribbons to pins and cards to distribute for Child Abuse Prevention Month. I explained the project to the kids over dinner and asked them to help.
When they came home from school for a week, the ribbons were conveniently parked in front of the TV. Ergo – watch TV, start pinning. A bunch of ladies at our church helped out too, and we had the whole thing finished lickity-split.
Save some money year-round for a project that you do together as a family. Each year at Christmas time our church collects shoeboxes loaded with gifts for needy children around the world and distributes them through the Samaritan’s Purse. We save loose change in a jar and use it to fund shoebox gifts for needy kids.
The jar isn’t in an obvious spot, but we refer to it from time to time and add to it all year. I think repeating the same project for a few years now, has also helped us get more out of it, rather than having a one-shot volunteer moment buried within a jam-packed schedule.
Don’t make service a chore. Let them make choices. Seek out kid-friendly volunteer opportunities with local charities, and do things that really make a difference for real people. Find things you can do together as a family like a trail clean-up or making decorations to take to a nursing home.
Try to give your child options and choices within a service project, especially if they are in their teens. When we pack the shoebox gifts, my stepdaughter picks out some of the items and goes with us to drop them off. Seeing our boxes go into a giant van with all of the others is pretty gratifying, and lets us see that what we are doing is part of something much bigger.
Count on the experience to make the impact. Don’t get preachy. One thing about our shoebox project that we like, is that our kids get to see that lots of kids in the world aren’t as well off as they are.
Doing the project together lets us talk about money and giving in front of the kids, and lets their oh-so-consumer-conscious wheels spin a little bit. I can’t say it’s made them less materialistic, but I do think it’s made them more aware of what they have.
Encourage kids to reflect on a service experience. Expressing your own feelings about service, and asking children to share their feelings about service (both good and bad), has an impact in the long run because it encourages reflection. During the holidays, we’ll insert into our family prayer at dinner time, a mention of the shoebox gifts and their recipients.
Even if you get a few eye-rolls, remember that service has a positive impact on kids. Kids involved in service to the community get better grades, have better attitudes toward school, and relate better to others. They’re also more likely to consider how they can change society, want to understand how government works, and see a connection between politics and morality. Service is an expression of who we are and who we hope to become. Consider how you can involve your family in giving back today.
Dawn Miller writes a column on life in blended families at www.thestepfamilylife.com. Sign up to get columns delivered to your email in-box every week, or modify your subscription.
Permalink
06.14.07
Posted in Kids Today, Research About Stepfamilies at 7:32 am by Dawn Miller
New research from Penn State University shows that stepfathers and non-resident Dads can have a powerful and positive effect on children.
According to researcher Valarie King, it boils down to the quality of the relationship. The amount of time spent with a child, was not nearly as important as the quality of the relationship with the child. Researchers found that the closer the father-child relationship, the better the child was doing.
King’s research looked at adolescence and how the father-child relationship affected health, behavior, grades and delinquency.
Although some previous research had found that the stepparent-stepchild relationship could be difficult and that stepfathers may not positively influence stepchild well-being – King’s research found that a close relationship between a stepfather and his stepchildren could be very positive for the children and their development. She also found that stepchildren could have positive relationships with stepmothers too.
Conflict between parents was also detrimental to a child’s positive growth and development, and King suggested that children might be better off with only one parent in their lives if the relationship between the two parents remains hostile and disruptive to the child.
Permalink
06.12.07
Posted in Kids Today, News at 9:15 am by Dawn Miller
Entertaining story in the Globe & Mail about a common blended family dilemma – can the ire and animosity of one fickle child capsize a fledgling romantic relationship for Mom?
You betcha. A therapist and stepfamily expert offer helpful advice to our aspiring blended family, but says there’s hope that everyone will learn to get along:
“There is a reason that second marriages have a high rate of failure,” she says, “and that certainly can be because of kids.” Indeed, the situation with Cindy has set this relationship close to the breaking point. Boyfriend says that “it was a tough call for a while” when the problem started, as he increasing felt “not welcome in the family.”
“Remembering that it takes between two and five years for a blended family to gel can help couples stay balanced,” says Ms. Stephens. She also recommends “lowering your expectations that you’ll have a happily ever after family with a yours, mine and ours chemical formula.”
Permalink
Posted in Research About Stepfamilies at 9:01 am by Dawn Miller
If you’re a stepmom and don’t have bio-children of your own, then you know that you face special issues. And if you have children of your own and stepchildren, you have other challenges. Well now researchers at the State University of New York-Buffalo are conducting the first ever study to look at the experiences and satisfaction of stepmoms who do and do not have biological children. They invite all stepmoms to participate in their research. The survey is short and is online.
Permalink
06.06.07
Posted in Perspectives, Research About Stepfamilies at 11:27 am by Dawn Miller
The Washington Post’s “MyTime” column reported that in a California study, 75% of adults said that they had difficult childhoods. When a support group was asked what they would change about their lives – 20% of them said their parents!
Clearly, a lot of adults carry scars from their upbringing into adulthood. For many, those wounds are healed through new relationships as adults. But not everyone makes it – there are a few people who never recover from a difficult childhood and remain stuck in the muck of a bad past.
These findings serve as a warning to stepfamilies. Strive to do what is best for children, and help them grow up to be competent, and well-adjusted adults.
Permalink
06.05.07
Posted in Dawn's Life, Dawn's Writing at 8:06 pm by Dawn Miller
I’ve got a new column out about my efforts to lose weight and get in shape. Here it is:
If you’ve ever looked in the mirror and wondered how did I let the weight get to this point? How did I let my health become an afterthought? What can I do now to get myself out of this mess? Then you know where I am right now.
As I looked at my pudgy out-of-shape body in the mirror, I wondered how I had allowed my weight to creep so high. I was at the heaviest point in my 36-year-old life – with a body mass index qualifying me as obese. My older thinner clothes ended up in a tidy box – set aside for “someday” when I got around to losing weight.
I had rationalized stress eating with the demands of a blended family, career, and (like everyone else) my all-around busy life. In a catty moment, I figured hey, I was still skinnier than my husband’s ex-wife (not by much). Now here I was – heavy, out-of-shape, and unhappy about it. So here’s what I’ve done to start my diet:
Ease into better eating. Five weeks ago, I began gradually changing my eating habits. It was small steps at first – a declined extra helping, more water all the time, a switch to fruit for snacks, and the occasional walk around the block to clear my head. At business lunches with dessert, I still ate a little dessert and even rolls. Unlike my previous yo-yo diets, I didn’t feel deprived or like I was giving up anything. I lost 9 pounds in five weeks without making any major changes.
Reflect on your eating habits and why you ate what you ate. I’m a sugar addict and have quite a sweet tooth. Bad habits and stress eating did it. There were days working in downtown Washington where I would eat a bagel with cheese for breakfast, a greasy lunch with fries, and have two large whole milk lattes with flavor shots – imagine all those extra calories (not to mention the expense)! And then I’d get home exhausted from an hour and a half commute to eat a big dinner.
Start moving and get some exercise in a positive atmosphere. My fitness level was so bad, that just walking a mile and a half winded me. I was mortified to realize how bad I had let things slide. At a charity auction, I bought a cheap month-long membership for a lush women-only gym. I expected to see stick-thin Stepford Wives perched on the treadmills sneering down at me the first time I lumbered in – but instead found women of all sizes at all sorts of fitness levels. There was no judgment. Just encouragement.
Take it to a new level. And then it got more serious than just how I felt about myself and the box of clothes I can’t wear. During my last visit, my ob/gyn told me that I need to lose weight before we go to the fertility clinic for in-vitro fertilization. She ran through a long litany of potential problems if I get pregnant carrying extra weight – like gestational diabetes, stillbirth, and complications that could endanger my health and our child.
The doctor’s words gave me a new surge of motivation and she put me on a high protein and low-carb diet. So now the game is on and the diet is moving up a notch. When my month at the fitness palace ends, I’ll switch to the freebie gym that’s part of our homeowner’s association benefits. Look out weight – you’re coming off!
Permalink
