Shaken, Stirred, and Blended
Stirred And Blended
Empathy, An Open Mind, And A Lot Of Love And Respect For Each Other
Fast forward three years.
So here we are – as blended as possible, in two separate houses, for now anyway. Our four kids think of themselves as siblings that spend half a week apart with their other parents and the other half together with us. They love each other most days. They get annoyed with each other intermittently, like most siblings do. As far as creating a warm, welcoming, and loving home for them, James and I have done a pretty darn good job. And as someone who has grown up in Europe, where children get in serious trouble if they are being boastful, this was a hard thing for me to write.
THE NUMBER ONE REASON BLENDING OUR FAMILY CAME SO EASILY
I think the main reason why we were able to create an environment that provides all of our kids an opportunity to thrive is that James and I are both open-minded and empathic by nature. As an empath, you have the ability to read other people’s emotions and respond accordingly. The higher your level of empathy, the more you can actually share in those emotions; it’s almost like you’re going through the same thing yourself. Armed with this ability and having come from two vastly different backgrounds, we were able to understand and share in each other’s views of the world and especially each other’s views on family and raising children. Keeping an open mind allows us to take the best of American parenting and the best of European parenting and blending it in such a way that our children benefit greatly from it.
THE BIG CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
I remember a few years ago, this book “Bringing up bébé”, written by an American raising her children in France, became all the rage in this country. Many of my friends read it; I read parts of it and I am still trying to arrive at how typical European upbringing somehow became “the French way of parenting”. Either my German parents are secretly French (as would then all their friends be) or I dreamed that I was raised in Germany and Switzerland by German parents and I grew up in the middle of France instead. Either way, many things are the same in most European countries, so this is neither here nor there, I suppose.
The differences between how my two children have been raised and how James’ two children have been raised before we became a blended family are few, but they are significant ones, for instance:
- My kids have always had a framework of rules; I expect them to push against those rules as much as possible to try and assert their own will, but in the end, it is me who commands, not them. James’ kids were raised to abide by rules, but those rules were pretty flexible and any parent or grandparent in their lives could adapt those rules as he or she saw fit. With especially grandparents having an almost god-given right to bend the rules, it essentially made his children the rulers of any house. (Evidently, his kids spent many days and weekends at one of their three sets of grandparents’ homes, due to the parents’ respective work and workout schedules.)
- In the same vein, my kids are used to hearing the word “no”. I try to tie it to a reasonable explanation as to why I tell them “they can’t ride their bicycles 30 minutes before we need to leave for church, because they’ll be sweaty by the time they’ll get into the car”, but it is a no nonetheless. They are free to argue it respectfully – my son has some really good arguments at age 7 and might tell me in this situation that he could just ride his bike for 15 minutes which would still give him time to take a super-fast shower and be out the door in 30, which would, on a good day, make me put a watch on him, warn him that he’d better be back inside and in the shower in 15; otherwise… and send him on his way.
James’s kids, in the beginning, would make a crisis out of this “no”. They would start crying, and my answer would remain “no.” Consistency is key with kids, or so we believe in Europe. In response to that next “no” on my part, they’d ask their father. And when he would say “no” as well, the full-fledged tantrums ensued.
HOW DID WE ADDRESS THIS PARTICULAR DIFFERENCE?
The first time this happened, I was stunned. His son was 9 and his daughter was turning 5 when we met. It was unfathomable to me that the almost 10-year-old would still throw tantrums like this, only because he wasn’t getting his way. The almost 5-year-old invoked my empathy enough to where it was tolerable; after all, these poor children had just been through a divorce. But then again, so had mine; my son was 6 ½ and my daughter was 9, too.
Being the bold German that I am, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut and incredulously asked my guy why his kids were behaving like that. His answer was, “They’ve never really been told no. Instead, to quiet them so they wouldn’t do what they wanted to do, we handed them each their ipads.” More astonishment on my part. “You mean, they each had their own ipad?” “Oh yes, they got their own ipads when she was 2 and he was 7 – they were matching ipads; it was cute.” Mouth wide open, I inquired as to what happened to those ipads and was told that, eventually, the ipads broke and that he wasn’t planning to replace them. Whew! So far, so good. I like technology as much as the next person, but I don’t believe it can or should ever replace the role of the parents.
This was one of the first major differences we had to deal with in order to bring our split-families-kiddos all onto the same denominator. Empathy, an open mind, and our love and respect for each other helped James and me tremendously. After much talking and laying out for each other what we would like to see the kids learn and become in life, we agreed that we would
- Try to get the kids all on the same schedule. Luckily, I was still in mediation with my husband at the time and I was able to work out that we have either all four kids at the same time or none of them at all. We both share custody 50/50 with our Exes. Some days, we feel like we’re at the circus; other days, we enjoy the intermission of the circus show.
- ALWAYS represent a united front, no matter whose kid it is. If one of us says yes or no to something the child asked, he can save himself the trip to go ask the other side of the present parental unit, because the other side will not tell him anything different.
- Treat them equally lovingly and fairly. Neither one of us will walk out of the room, shrug and say, “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” It’s OUR blended family; hence, they are either OUR crazy monkeys that embarrass US or OUR shining stars that make US proud.
- Not replace their other mother and father, but treat them all like a mother and father would. This means that each one of them has the same basic rights in our family, but with that come – much to the kids’ dismay – the same basic responsibilities.
- BE PRESENT in our kids’ lives. We instituted family dinners early on, even if that meant driving 30km to and from each others’ houses on a school night. At every dinner, at the end of the day, we do “Peaks & Pits”. Each of us takes a turn to talk about the highlights and the sad parts of his day. It really helped us blend and form a strong family bond. I had, even in my previous marriage, insisted on family dinners, so my two kids were already used to that. It wasn’t hard to get James and his kids on board with that; it was the food beyond the Mac&Cheese with Hot Dogs that I cooked, which took them much longer to get used to 🙂
- Create more meaningful family rituals to solidify the bond for the kids. To that end, we added to the Peaks & Pits dinner ritual a Good Dreams ritual, which involves everyone drawing a circle on another’s forehead 3x with his index finger to “plant good dreams for the night.” It’s amazing how even our pre-pubescent, too-cool-for-school 10&11-year-olds line up to get good dreams from us and give good dreams in return. Better be safe than sorry as far as nightmares are concerned, right? 😉
Ashley@Shakenstirredandblended
Hi, I'm Ashley and I am a freelance writer and editor for one local and one national publication. In my spare time, I teach foreign languages and manage two households. Oh, and raise four children. It's a crazy life that I chose and I love every second of it :o)
