By CATHERINE MASTERS
Step families are becoming the norm rather than the exception these days but that does not make it any easier on children who suddenly find their lives turned upside down and have no choice but to cope.
New brothers and sisters, changes in the pecking order, changes in the gender make-up of a family - all put enormous stress on children.
Parents can make it easier on them by simply understanding what they are going through and offering as much support as they can, says Carmela McHardy, a counsellor with Barnardos, which offers a course in Auckland to help "step couples" to help the children to cope.
"There is a great need for understanding around what happens to both the adult couple and particularly to the children," she says.
"This course is for couples - the children are not part of it - but the need is for the couples to understand what is happening to the children and therefore change their expectation from what is the normal dynamic within a 'biologically intact' family to what is an acceptable dynamic within what is a step family."
People are making a mistake, she says, if they think that just because the adults decide that they want to be together the children will fit in automatically and everything will be rosy.
"It isn't, of course, because the children don't make the decision to form this family, adults do. So we say that couples need to have a different kind of expectation and that step families are different, but that's okay.
"It's understanding that it's going to be different that is the important part."
Ways need to be found to enable everyone to live together harmoniously and children should not be conditioned to think that, because this is their new family, the other parent does not count any more.
"And this is also an adult problem. It's the adults who have to learn to interrelate with one another so that the children aren't left feeling guilty or feeling chopped off from their other parent or any of those sorts of things."
Step families are born of many losses for the children, says Carmela McHardy.
The first thing is what they expect of life.
The children expected to have two parents who were there for them all the time - and now they are expected to fit in to two different situations.
"They go from one family environment to another one in different ways.
"Some children go backwards and forwards in equal chunks of time spent with each parent. Some children hardly see one parent at all."
Another issue is that they quite often lose their place in the family.
If in the biological family they are the eldest, they can sometimes suddenly find themselves in a new family where they are the youngest.
Or if they were in a family where there were, say, only girls or only boys, then suddenly they are in a family where it's mixed.
"All of this stuff is huge for children and it's these things that the adults, in their eagerness to set their own lives on a better path for themselves, tend to forget because they're so bound up in their own relationship."
All human beings want to have the best life they can organise for themselves and when children are very young they do not have a voice.
"They don't have any power of their own. They can't say, 'Oh well, you do that and I'll go off and do my own thing.'
"When they get older they can, but when they are young and dependent they have to go where the adults in their family decide."
A full understanding takes parents halfway and gives them the ability to work together to make things better and to organise a life that is acceptable for everyone.
And this can and does happen, says Carmela McHardy, if parents make sure they understand the impact on the children.
The eight-week course does not offer counselling for couples.
It does offers support from other parents in similar circumstances and offers information and skills around communication, being able to talk to their children and find out what is troubling them.
If issues come up that a couple need face to face counselling for, then Barnardos can arrange that.
* The course costs $120. Three or four are run a year and places are still available for the next one in August, but if demand is high more courses will be run. At this stage they are offered only in Auckland. To find out more, telephone Barnardos on (09) 638-8935.
Helping children cope with major upheaval
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