by Gary Maclean

Created on: September 17, 2009   Last Updated: September 18, 2009

Blended family: How to plan celebrations and holidays

Simply getting through a holiday with a normal family is challenge enough. If you are working with a blended family you have even that much more of a task ahead of you. With a blended family, suddenly, your kids as well as the kids of your spouse, now, not only have two sets of parents but, if everyone is alive, they have four sets of grandparents. All of these people must be attended to and visited during the holidays.

A few rules before we even begin talking about what to do;

1) Do everything together as a family. Do not separate into two different families.

2) Visit every family member in the parent / grand parent realm.

3) Include both sides children in all visits.

4) Do not show favoritism in any manner to any of the people you are visiting.

5) If you visit a special uncle on one side, pick someone special on the other side to visit.

1) TOGETHER AS A FAMILY

You are now one family, regardless of how anyone feels about it, you are one family. When it comes to visiting the other set of parents you might use a bit of judgement but I have even visited my wife's ex at the holidays, and he has been over to our house. Generally the kids will visit the other parents alone but occasionally you may all get together.

Grand parents are even a bit easier. You will know if you have specific grand parents who may be angry at your new situation and angry with your new spouse, but if none of that is present I would certainly plan on full family visits to grand parents.

2) VISIT EVERY MEMBER

Don't visit one favorite gramma and grampa and not all the others. Granted, the visit may be more comfortable or enjoyable at the nice grand parents but you run the risk of making one of the children feel slighted if only one set of their real grand parents were visited while both of the others were.

Make sure your plans include getting your children to their other parents and the step children to their other parents. This must happen and it must happen every year. Maybe they can't all get together on the day of the holiday but with our society, most holidays are built around weekends now. You should be able to plan a holiday visit of some kind to every parent / grand parent.

3) INCLUDE ALL CHILDREN

Whenever possible and practical, include all children in any grand parent visit. Some times you just have to make sure gramma and grampa understand that you have a new family and these are your kids just the same as your other kids are.

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