💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) So many stepparents think the success or failure of their blended family lands entirely on them. But that’s not now any of this works. Both partners need to work together to blend a family. Stepparents are like guests at our partner’s cocktail party. We really need someone to invite us in, show us around, introduce u…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) I spent A LOT of years trying to protect Dan from his own crappy decisions. In doing so, I inadvertently buffered him from the very real consequences of his actions (or inactions). In fact, I protected and buffered him so well that he had zero incentive to change. 🤦🏻‍♀️. If I could go back in time, I'd save both of u…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Okay. I know it’s super easy to take everything about becoming a stepparent and blending your family really seriously. And understandably so — there’s a lot of worrying involved in stepparenting. What if the kids never warm up to you? What if that initial awkwardness never goes away? What if you always feel like an o…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Yesterday I talked about how we don’t need anyone else’s approval to move forward as a stepfamily. This goes double or maybe triple or maybe exponentially times a million for not needing approval from your partner’s ex. I know on some level, wanting the ex to sign off on your presence in your partner & stepkid’s life…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Because stepparents start out as outsiders, we have this tendency to kind of hover around on the sidelines, like we’re waiting for someone to give us permission to participate in our new families. Or maybe we want someone to fill us in on the rules of this new game so we don’t piss anybody off. This can happen even f…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) There's a tendency to act like parallel parenting is the shameful option we only resort to because we've failed at co-parenting somehow. But when you're dealing with a high-conflict ex, co-parenting is not possible, because they will never compromise. In fact their inability to compromise is literally the thing that …

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) The rewards of stepparenting can feel way too few and way too far between for this gig to feel “worth it.” The bullshit outnumbers the wins by at least 10 to 1. That’s the thing, though: we can’t think about stepparenting in those terms — just like no one thinks about whether it’d be “worth it” to have their own kids…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) I talk A LOT about how challenging my relationship with my own stepkid has been, but actually our relationship started out pretty decent… before it took a steep nosedive around 6 months in. Followed by more major issues right around the 2-year mark. Turns out this is super common — this exact pattern, timing and all.…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) When you’re in a relationship with someone who has children, by definition that implies that you’ve agreed to help parent those kids. Let me just say that again: you’ve agreed to help parent. Which implies that your partner should already be parenting their kids. Stepparents: you can't parent your stepkids unless you…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) It’s important to remember that the whole reason that you’re putting up with all this bullshit as a stepparent is because you really really really love your partner. So it’s also important to make sure that relationship is healthy, supportive, and worth it. Look, we can't do any of this without our partners' help. We…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) In a high-conflict step parenting situation, the natural process of blending your family gets set back over and over again with each battle between households. So if you’re blaming yourself for this whole blending thing being a hell of a lot harder than you anticipated, please knock that off right now. Stepfamily exp…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) It’s really common for us to judge our stepparenting performance based on one single metric: whether our stepkids like us. But believe me when I say it’s a huge mistake to base your self-worth on your stepkid’s approval. Honestly, most stepkids are standoffish with their stepparents, especially at first. There’s a lo…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) If you haven’t heard of Bill Eddy, he’s basically the king of kicking high conflict’s ass. And he’s got a fantastically simple tip to greatly minimize communication problems with difficult people called the BIFF response: B = BRIEF: Keep your reply short, and preferably in writing. I = INFORMATIVE: Respond with relev…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Today’s pep talk is really just a list of reminders. Starting with the reminder that there’s no Stepparent of the Year award, so let's please stop destroying ourselves trying to achieve some gold standard that doesn't even exist. It’s okay for stepparents to say no sometimes. Or even a lot of the time. It’s okay to t…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) A huge challenge in defining your role as a stepparent is trying to figure out when that role actually begins. When you become a parent, there's a clear before-and-after sequence. One day there wasn't a kid around. The next day, BAM. You're a parent. Even adoptive parents and foster parents experience this. As a step…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Omg. Your stepkid forgot to pick up their backpack AGAIN? The ex is on yet another rampage about something? Your partner STILL isn't enforcing the household rules you all agreed to? It’s all so rage-inducing some days isn’t it?? Like the progress we made one day gets wiped out the next. We’re continually starting fro…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) A lot of single parents genuinely don’t realize that they’re doing their kids (and their romantic partners!) a disservice by putting the kids first no matter what. Yes, kids have needs, and obviously it’s a parent’s job to make sure those needs are met. However, your relationship has needs too. And pretending like on…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) -- Need a bigger pep talk? Start here or join us over on Substack! xo -- 🧡 Need a bigger pep talk? Start here or join us over on Substack! xoBy Blended Family Frappé

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) There’s no way around it: stepfamily life is messier and more complex and far more confusing than life in a traditional family. Based on my personal experience, a person could just about go crazy trying to make a blended family look or act or feel more like a traditional family. But if we’re able to kind of lean into…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) No one talks about the day-to-day exhaustion of feeling eternally judged and found lacking, of constantly walking on eggshells living in fear that the next thing you say or do could affect the amount of time your stepkid is at your house. This is a very real fear that stepparents in high conflict live with EVERY SING…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Today’s episode is for stepparents who are also parents: the more we lose ourselves in the stepparenting role, the more our kids lose us too. We can’t get so wrapped up in the challenges and drama of stepfamily life that our own kids get lost in the shuffle. I have oh so very many regrets about my first decade of ste…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Only after I'd been dating Dan for somewhere like 2 or 3 years (flying totally blind and feeling pretty miserable the entire time) did it finally occur to me that maybe there were some kind of stepmom resources I could look into that would help me figure out what I was doing so wrong. I guess I thought stepparenting …

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Stepparents have the best of intentions. We think we’re supposed to support our partner, help parent their kids, smooth things out between houses… basically make our partner’s lives better, in the interest of becoming a family together. Seems sensible enough, right? So it can be a REAL FRIGGIN SHOCK if none of our ef…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Even if you love having your stepkids in the house, the switcheroo from kid-free to kid-full can feel like... a lot. And if you don't love having your stepkids around — well first of all, that's normal, and secondly that means transition days are that much harder for you. (And don't get me started on the complication…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Would it be nice if the ex supported you? Of course. But if they don't, that's also okay... because you don't actually need their approval.⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ You don't need the ex to acknowledge the importance of your stepparenting role for your contributions to be valid. You really don't. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Remember t…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Because stepparents are the new kids on the block, we tend to think that A) anything that goes wrong must be our fault and B) it's all on us to make our blended family work. Nope! Wrong on both counts. It takes ALL the people involved to make a blended family work, but especially the support of your partner. It's not…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) I expected my stepkid to be a little distant with me at first. What I didn't expect was her extreme and total rejection of me. And not just for a little while — for YEARS. So I’m sharing with you what I wish I would’ve known earlier: that some hesitance from your stepkid is totally normal, but an extreme and dispropo…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) You are not obligated to a life of thankless servitude just because you're in a relationship with someone who has kids. FAR too many stepparents find themselves in the position of primary housekeeper, primary scheduler and organizer, even primary parent. All of this is somehow just assumed rather than discussed (let …

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Let me just start by saying it’s totally, totally normal to feel some jealousy about your partner’s ex. Even though, if you’re anything like me, all of that feels sooo very 8th grade. I promise it’s not just you. In fact it’s so common, I included jealousy as one of the 7 stages of becoming a stepparent. Anyway, here…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Letting “blending” become our sole life’s purpose doesn’t serve anyone, especially ourselves. Continuing to push down and push through our mixed feelings and stress and frustration and uncertainty is a sure recipe for burnout. Stepparenting is part of who you are; it’s not everything you are. And you cannot put your …

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) The stigma against stepparents is so real and so deeply engrained in our society, it’s practically palpable. If you dare to admit you think stepparenting is hard — boy will someone launch a witch hunt against you. But saying stepparenting is hard is just a fact. Just like saying any type of parenting is hard. It does…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) If you're dealing with parental alienation and the idea of a light at the end of the tunnel feels like an impossible dream, don't give up! No matter how hard everything is right now, your family will keep evolving and changing. What you're living right now isn't necessarily your forever. Alienated kids deeply want th…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Stepfamily life, even at its happiest and simplest, is still far more complex than a first family. It's easy to compare a blended family with a traditional family and think crap, this looks reallllly different. We must be failing. But we're not. Different is not "lesser than"— it's just different. Constantly wishing …

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) The ex only has as much power as we’re willing to give them. Like the Wizard of Oz, a high-conflict ex is actually just a scared little person behind a curtain who uses lots of smoke and mirrors to intimidate us. Once we stop buying into the story that the ex is all-powerful and in charge of everything, we can create…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) It’s ironic that stepparents are so often accused of not loving our stepkids like our own. In my experience, having talked to thousands of stepparents over the years, it’s far more common for us to care too much about our stepkids. Sometimes even to our own detriment. If our stepkids don’t seem to like us, we keep tr…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) There's no set standard for blended families — stepfamilies are very different from each other due to hugely varying factors like visitation schedules, the kids’ ages, how many kids, whether both partners have kids, how the in-laws handle the new partner, how the ex factors in, etc.⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Step 1 in blend…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) -- Need a bigger pep talk? Start here or join us over on Substack! xo -- 🧡 Need a bigger pep talk? Start here or join us over on Substack! xoBy Blended Family Frappé

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) All unrealistic expectations to the contrary, the truth is… you probably aren't gonna love your stepkid out of the gate. Which is totally okay — they're probably not gonna be your biggest fans on Day 1 either, which is also totally okay. All that matters is your willingness to keep showing up and doing your best. And…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) The experts say that blending a family takes 5 to 7 years on average, but add some high conflict to the mix and that number jumps up to 10+ years. I know that's a bleak statistic, but I'm actually sharing this info to give you hope in case you’ve been wondering why all of this feels soooo friggin hard — like every da…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Your partner needs to serve as the connection between you and your stepkid. If they’re not acting as a bridge, then you can find yourself standing on the wrong side of the chasm. You can't stand alone as a stepparent; it's not all on you to "just try harder" with your stepkid. The entire success or failure of your bl…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Your partner’s ex doesn’t get to dictate what happens at your house. No matter how big and scary they come across, no matter how convinced they are that they’re in the right and you’re in the wrong. If the custody order doesn’t give them a say in your day-to-day life, guess what: they do not get a say in your day-to-…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) What we think makes us good stepparents and what actually makes us good stepparents are sometimes exact opposite things. We come into this gig with our own ideas about what being a good stepparent "should" look like: active, involved, hands-on parenting. And then we go so overboard trying to prove that we're not evil…

💬 Send us a text! (Yes really!) Hello! If we haven’t met before, my name is Maarit. I’m a former single mom turned stepmom, and the voice behind Blended Family Frappé, together with my husband Dan. Who will probably pop in on this podcast from time to time, as he likes to do. If you know anything about our work, then you know we are ALL ABOUT the d…