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Wednesday, Dec. 23, 1998

Helping stepfamilies cope during holidays, step by step

Flexibility, creativity, understanding are key to minimizing stress

By ROSEMARY BARNES
Staff Writer Medical Writer

   New stepfamilies encounter more difficulties than typical nuclear families during the holiday season, health professionals said.
   Because Christmas is a holiday steeped in family traditions, adjusting to new customs tends to prompt quarreling among stepfamily members, said Mary Jackson, executive director of Family Counseling Services and a licensed marriage and family counselor.
   Everything from how to carve a turkey to how many gifts to buy and when to open them is potential fodder for a clash, said James Bray, a psychologist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
   "There can be a lot of frustration and hurt in stepfamilies around the holidays," said Jackson, who is a stepmother. "Suddenly, you're facing complications, primarily children from two families wanting to follow the same traditions they followed in years past."
   Jackson said she consults with more stepfamilies about such conflicts than any other type of family.
   "Just think about it for a minute. Very often, you've got children with two sets of parents and parents with two sets of children," Jackson said. "Family life today is already a complicated situation. So, when you add these other conflicts, you're dealing with an extremely stressful situation."
   

Making adjustments

   Bray said new stepfamilies should not set themselves up for failure by expecting their new families to carry on the same holiday traditions from their previous families.
   "Parents of newly formed stepfamilies need to realize that their children now belong to more than one family and to adjust their holiday routines to accommodate the situation," said Bray, director of the Family Counseling Clinic and family psychology programs at Baylor.
   Bray and Jackson agreed that the best way to minimize conflict is to discuss expectations with the children before the holidays and negotiate a compromise.
   "Flexibility is the key," Jackson said. "You can't say that your way is right and the other family's way is wrong. For the sake of both families, you need to bend. They need to bend too."
   For instance, Bray said, if one family is used to opening presents on Christmas Eve and the other family has always waited until Christmas morning, the stepfamily can compromise by opening a few gifts on Christmas Eve and saving the rest for Christmas Day.
   "It's important that the stepfamily develop new rituals for celebrating holiday traditions because it gives them a sense of identity," Bray said.
   

Time to celebrate

   Jackson recalled that during the first holiday season with her new family, her son decided to spend Christmas Day with his father.
   As much as Jackson wanted her son to be with her on Christmas, she supported his decision, she said.
   "I had to be flexible and support my son," Jackson said. "You have to remember that just because you have a new spouse and family, your children still have strong, loving ties to your former spouse. You can't deny them that."
   Bray said he encourages stepfamilies to be open to creative ideas when trying to resolve holiday-related conflicts, such as not sticking to a particular date for celebrations.
   Some stepfamilies plan their Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas festivities on a day other than the actual holiday, Bray said.
   Such an arrangement allows children time to celebrate the holiday with both biological parents, Bray said.
   "When all goes well, the kids love it because they get to have Christmas more than once a year."
   Medical writer Rosemary Barnes can be reached at 886-3716 or by e-mail at barnesr@scripps.com
   

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  © 1998 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.