remarkable Pages: 1 2 All In an ideal world, holidays would bring all families closer together and heal all wounds. Parents, stepparents, ex-spouses, children and grandparents would embrace each other in perfect harmony, and family discord would disappear, at least until after the New Year. Unfortunately, this isn t an ideal world, and holidays reflect that. Holidays are stressful for everyone because we have this image that things should be perfect, said Margorie Engel, Ph.D., president of the Stepfamily Association of America. Stepfamilies are not unique in this regard. She compares the difficulties of a stepfamily facing the holidays to those of a recently married couple: two families are coming together to form a new entity, and the expectations and pressures are enormous. Moreover, stepfamilies face the additional stresses of ex-spouses, multiple sets of grandparents, joint custody arrangements and children with divided loyalties. This can present unique challenges around the holidays. Sometimes, just the sheer number of people involved turns holiday gatherings into logistical hurdles. Limited Time, Unlimited Demands For Trey Dixon, Christmas typically meant dividing time between his mother and stepfather; his former stepfather, who has remarried; his father s parents; and four other sets of grandparents formed through various divorces and remarriages. All of these family members lived within a two-hour radius of Trey in southeast Texas, and everyone wanted to see him for Christmas. By the time Trey had a son of his own in 1997, the period between Thanksgiving and New Year s was one big road trip. That was when Trey and his wife, Nancy, learned the importance of saying no. We realized that if we didn t draw boundaries, we wouldn t be able to establish any of our own traditions for our son, Nancy said. And, we d be traveling all the time. The Dixons began alternating holidays among various relatives and announced that from then on, they would spend Christmas Eve at home alone. According to Engel, establishing new traditions is a key part of the stepfamily s success. You have to recognize that holidays will be different now no matter what, she said. If you try to approach them in the same way you used to, you re doomed to failure. She adds that in new stepfamilies especially, there will be a jockeying for position, with each person trying to determine how the holidays will be spent. Elizabeth Einstein, a former board member of the Stepfamily Association of America, writes in her book, The Stepfamily: Living, Loving, and Learning, that part of the solution to this dilemma may be to play up other occasions throughout the year, like birthdays or Halloween, so that the stepfamily isn t trying to center all of its traditions and rituals around a single holiday. This leaves more room for compromise. Related Articles Pages: 1 2 All Related Content from Our Sponsors Read more articles by this author Hot Topics Today 1 PTSD Patients Show Heightened Sensitivity to Deviant Sounds 2 Developing the Evidence Base for Mindfulness Therapies 3 Dominant Hand May Begin in Womb 4 Why Empaths and Sensitives Must Take Special Care of Their Energies 5 5 Types of People Who Are Naturally Attracted to Each Other Most Popular News PTSD Patients Show Heightened Sensitivity to Deviant Sounds Developing the Evidence Base for Mindfulness Therapies Dominant Hand May Begin in Womb Bipolar or Depression? Heart Test May Help Tell the Difference Avatar Therapy May Ease Schizophrenia Symptoms Join Over 195,000 Subscribers to Our Weekly Newsletter Find a Therapist Enter ZIP or postal code realise
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