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Expert Q&A

	By John C. Friel, Ph.D. Psychologists

I just became the stepmother of a 4-year-old girl, and we are planning our first extended family vacation. I want everything to go well and to be positive. What are some tips or advice about making our vacation – and spending so much time together as a new family – a success?

"

Being a stepmother can be both a joy and a challenge. Although some experts might disagree with us, as systems therapists we believe that the primary relationship in a family is the marriage, and so Dad and Mom need to be operating as a team as much as possible.

If both parents are internally whole enough to be gentle but firm and clear that their relationship is indivisible, then it makes the rest of stepparenting relatively easy. With that in mind, I encourage you and your husband to share parenting. That means you can correct her when she is doing something that you and your husband have agreed is off-limits, and it certainly means that if she is ever rude or inappropriate with you, you let her know it immediately rather than waiting for your husband to do it. There are some basic rules of civility that have been lost in today's confusing society, and one of them is that elders are due basic respect and have the right as well as the responsibility to expect that and enforce it, no matter whose child it is.

Hopefully, there won't be too many times when intervening in those situations is necessary and so you can spend the rest of the time being a co-parent in other ways. That means you can make up games to play with her, read her books, point out interesting scenery along the way, go on rides at amusement parks with her and so forth. If she is uncomfortable with you, it would be good for your husband to expose her to small doses of being alone with you, by leaving the two of you in the car when he runs into the gas station to buy some bottled water or to get up and go to the restroom in the middle of lunch at a restaurant, so that you and she have some alone time together that is brief and therefore more comfortable. But all in all, I just encourage you to enjoy your vacation!"

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