These are the steps

In a perfect world you grow up, get married, have children, and live happily ever after. This is not a perfect world though, and not all marriages are perfect either. Sometimes you don't find that person you should have married the first time, the first time, and your marriage falls apart, and other times you marry the right person and live happily ever after.

Today we are going to talk about a perfect marriage that was not exactly the first marriage.

You all know that Cindy and I were married before. My most recent reference to this was in my post about our twentieth anniversary in Twenty years later.

I really hate labels, but in life you tend to add labels to most anything. For instance when you get remarried and begin blending your families, Mom and Dad become "steps" to another group of children.

1997 Family photo, Jimmy, Cindy and our five living children.

Cindy and I have six children between us. Cindy's children from her first marriage you may have noticed I brag about frequently, I feel they are my own rather than "steps". For over twenty years these kids have been in my life, so I have a problem adding step when talking about our children, and Cindy always treated my boys as her own also, my youngest son even called her "Mom" for quite a while.

When you remarry after you've had children, and your new spouse also has children, everything gets really strained, really quickly. There is nothing "Brady Bunch" about real life.

I'm sure you all remember that TV program where a man with three boys married a woman who had three daughters, and they all moved in together and became The Bradys, everybody was suddenly a Brady. Yeah right...

OK that's good for TV entertainment, but in real life things are a lot different. Number one when you fall in love with a person and decide that you want them to be part of your life, the first thing you have to accept is that this persons children are also part of the package, and if you really love this person you have to accept their children, don't treat them as steps, you should treat them as your own.

Children are confused enough as it is, but when their parents split and then remarry, this throws a monkey wrench into the works immediately, as I said and can't say enough you should never, never, never treat your new spouses children as the proverbial red headed step child, even if they are red headed.

Children have questions and fears, and they really want their parents back together. It's not that they hate you, but you are not their parent, and in a sense you are "moving in on their turf". You will definitely hear things like "You are not my Dad!", "I don't have to listen to you", "You're not my Mom!", children will lash out, but this is simply because they are confused and don't know how to handle it.

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You remember Randy and Scotty from I was winning, these two were close from the beginning, at nine years old they hatched a plan to break up Cindy and I, and to get all of the original parents back together.

This may sound cute on the surface, but I'm here to tell you it was Hell, and all it did was to get all of the adults at each other's throats, that is until everyone figured out their little plan, and what they were trying to do.

If you are lucky the children will tell you their fears and ask questions. I actually had to take Randy for a ride one night to "go and get a Coke", he didn't really want a Coke, he just wanted to talk to me. He was confused as to what his name was going to be since his Mom's last name changed.

Randy told me that he was used to his last name and didn't want to change it (thank you Brady Bunch for confusing our kids), I explained that he was born with a family name, the same as his father's, and that would always be his name and he should be proud of it. Then I had to explain why a woman's last name changed when she married. Legitimate questions from a nine year old in my opinion.

What are we supposed to call you, Dad or Jimmy? He asked. In our particular situation I had known all of them for a number of years, and they knew me as Jimmy, and their Dad is still pretty much active in their lives, so I gave them the option of calling me either. I would be honored if you want to call me Dad, but you can still call me Jimmy if you want to.

They chose to call me Jimmy and still do, but they always introduce me as their Dad when I meet any of their friends.

You have to be patient with your spouse's children, you also have to treat them as you would your own, you should answer their questions and ease their fears, and give them options on what to call you, if they don't call you Dad or Mom it's not the end of the world, it's not that they are disrespecting you, they do have a Mom and Dad that you are not replacing. We need to remember that we are not replacement parents, we are in fact an additional parent and it's up to us to act as a parent.

These are the steps that will help you blend a family. The main step is to not use "steps",  you don't have a step spouse so with this said you don't have step children, you and your spouse have children.

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Once you master this fact, then you can live happily ever after.