By Katherine Salant
As is frequently the case with a newly formed stepfamily, the parents want to begin their new life together in a new house, untainted by the ghosts of their first marriages. But, just as frequently, their kids have no enthusiasm for the project at all. They desperately want to be living back in their old home with both biological parents.
Against this emotional backdrop, trying to get the family to work together on anything can be challenging, especially a new house that the kids may regard as a constant reminder of everything they have lost - their old family, their old neighborhood and their old friends. But, however reluctant the kids are about this project, the more they can be induced to participate in the planning of the house, the more that they will feel that they have some control over a situation not of their making, and the more comfortable they will feel when they move in, psychologists said in recent interviews.
How you structure the decision-making will also make a difference. If the parents are the final arbiters - "You have three choices and I, the parent with the decorating bent, will have the final say" - the kids will think it's a sham.
But, if the family makes decisions by consensus - everyone has a veto and everyone has to agree - the decision-making process can help establish a more positive dynamic between family members. This in turn can help them begin to form emotional bonds, a process that often takes years, the psychologists said.
The consensus approach can also help bring on board the disaffected teenager who says, "I don't care, whatever," and it will help squelch the children's qualms about not being treated equally, said Belvedere, Calif., psychologist Judith Wallerstein. The results may not be cutting edge design, but the potential for establishing positive relationships is clearly more important than getting the house published in an architectural magazine, she added.
The family may hire an architect to design the new house, but the decisions and discussions among the family members are best left to the parents, who know how to engage their children and what level of participation is appropriate, depending on their age.
The parents do not have to put everything up for discussion because the kids won't be interested in everything. Very young children, for example, may not get much further than saying that they want to have their favorite toys in their room. Older children's eyes will glaze over when the topic is an abstract floor plan, though they'll be very interested in their own rooms. Teenagers will carry the room details a bit further with questions about closet size, computer data ports and phone lines. But, by the age of six or seven, the children can get really interested in some aspects of the decision-making about the new house, if the parents devise age-appropriate strategies to involve them. For example, David and Judy Sloan of Duchess County, N.Y., turned the selection of some of the items into an engaging adventure.
Rather than build a new house, the Sloans, who were both divorced, decided to begin their marriage by radically remodeling what he characterized as a 1960s "builder special." David's children, who were 11 and 12 at the time, had little interest in "adult stuff" like flooring and kitchen cabinets, but they came on board when the Sloans took them to salvage shops to search out old and unusual paneled doors, Victorian-styled door hardware, and raised walnut paneling, as well as the truly unusual conversation piece. The Sloans' old kitchen pantry is now entirely occupied by a large, refinished, mahogany-and-nickel, 80-year-old apple cooler that the family uses as a combination wine cellar and food storage room. Another salvage shop treasure in their kitchen is an antique coffee bar dispenser that is now used as a dry dog food dispenser.
Realizing that his kids' attention span for such excursions was "one to two hours at the max," Sloan tried to fold in other activities such as apple picking, always an option when you live in the middle of New York's apple-growing country. The salvage shops also provided plenty of diversions for the kids, he said. There's so much junk, the kids could immerse themselves in things like a stack of old comic books while he and Judy completed a transaction.
Picking out the doors did not engender much debate, in part because they were covered with decades of paint and the kids had no idea what they would look like when refinished and installed, Sloan said. But when they discussed finishes like the Corian countertops they have in their new kitchen and bathrooms, everyone got into the act. For the kitchen, the family limited the voting to 10 colors that were on sale. For the master bathroom, they weighed in on all 106 Corian colors, saying yea or nay by color groupings to narrow down the choices to a manageable 10, and then they voted. For the kids' bathroom, Sloan left the decisions to them. Budget in hand, the kids went to a local Home Depot and chose the floor tile, sinks and wall colors.
The goal through all of this, Sloan said, was to have a good time and to create a house filled with happy memories before they ever moved in. "We see the doors now and remember the out of the way places where we bought them, which were often converted barns or part of someone's garage." But the more important lesson he hopes his children absorbed is the feeling that "this house is ours because all of us together made decisions and everyone's opinion was respected."
Besides learning to share in the decision-making, planning a house gives a newly formed stepfamily the opportunity to talk about family rituals and traditions, said Hudson, Mass., psychologist Patricia Papernow. For example, if you talk about the living room and then ask where a Christmas tree might go, each family has an opportunity to talk about how it celebrated Christmas in the past and how it could honor and combine these traditions in the new house. In talking about the dining room or the breakfast room, you have an opportunity to talk about everyday events like eating, and how you can have a blending of routines.
Logistically, bringing all the members of a stepfamily together for discussions and decisions may be difficult because the children are together only infrequently. The ones there full time may feel that ones there only part time should get less of a voice, but the psychologists said everyone should have an equal input in the things that the parents deem appropriate. "Weekender" children, who live most of the time with one parent, often feel marginalized when they stay with the other one. Including them in the planning and respecting their input will help them feel more connected to the new house and the new family, said Seattle psychologist Laura Kastner.
This may begin to sound like a stepfamily's planning of a new house will lead to a family that is too child centered for some tastes. But the sobering fact about second marriages is that 60 percent of them fail, and most of the failures occur in families with kids, Wallerstein said. Anything you can do to make this enormous transition easier for the children involved will make it easier for you.
Some Helpful Books:
- "What About the Kids? Raising Your Children Before, During and After Divorce," by Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee, Hyperion, 2003.
- "The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce," by Judith Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis and Sandra Blakeslee, Hyperion, 2000.
- "Becoming A Stepfamily: Patterns of Development in Remarried Families," by Patricia Papernow, Gestalt Institute of Cleveland Book Series, 1998.
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