Blending Families

With divorce occurring frequently in our modern day society, how to successfully “blend” families after remarriage has become a challenging issue! So many factors impact on the ability to “create” a totally new family system while also honoring what is left of the old family system. There are certainly no easy answers.

The clinicians at Silber Psychological Services are regularly involved with families that are going through the “merger” stage and have experience with what kinds of solutions are needed to develop a viable and positive family system as well as knowing what kinds of “solutions” have a tendency to prevent a positive “regrouping”.

Some of the factors that impact on how “family blending” goes are unresolved conflict with former spouses, children and stepparents with significant personality conflicts, stepparents that want to parent their new spouse’s children either too much or too little, difficult personality issues amongst the stepchildren, and the children having unresolved issues and loyalties related to their parents’ divorce and remarriage. Research has indicated that one of the most significant factors in a child’s ability to adjust to a divorce is the amount of contention between their parents. This is certainly a factor in successful family blending as well. Parents that have put aside their own personal issues related to a previous marriage and/or spouse are better equipped to “blend” a new family when they remarry.

At Silber Psychological Services helping a family to “blend” successfully can include parent counseling focused on the family unit, individual therapy for either parents or children with issues that are interfering with positive interactions in the new family system, group therapy with a child or family therapy sessions. The process of “blending” a new family is complicated. It takes time and commitment. Our staff is well equipped to help a “new” family pinpoint where the problems lie and learn successful ways to develop a system that builds up trust amongst its members and an ability to involve everyone in the process of “becoming family” over time. Every family is different and our staff focuses on developing an individualized treatment plan to serve each family.