Resilience in Kids Following Divorce

Papernow, P. L. (2013). Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships. Taylor & Francis.  https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781136701542

Chapter 3-4 ( Papernow)

Chapter 3 The First Challenge

Insider/Outsider Positions are Intense and Stuck

DOI: 10.4324/9780203813645-3

Claire Abbott and Kevin Anderson provide the script for this challenge. In the dialogue that opens Chapter 1, Claire protests to Kevin, “When your kids are here, it's like I don't even exist”—the distress call of a stuck outsider stepparent. Kevin's rejoinder, “Don't make me choose!” is the familiar plea of a stuck insider parent. (The Abbott/Anderson genogram is on page 3.)

The Challenge

Wednesday Night

It is Kevin Anderson's regular mid-week overnight with his girls. Katie greets Claire with a friendly hello. Kendra walks right past her and, with Kevin's help, begins making the Andersons’ usual Wednesday night meal, pancakes. Claire, who has always cared about healthy eating, finds herself, as always, appalled. She bites her tongue and fixes herself a salad.

Over dinner, Claire sits silently on the sidelines while Kendra and Katie chatter to their dad. The conversation slides into stories of camping at the Anderson family's special lakeside spot. “Remember all the times Uncle Peter flipped the boat?” Katie adds, “Gramma Helen would get so upset!” The girls collapse in giggles and Kevin joins in the laughter.

After the children have gone to bed, Claire is quiet. Kevin asks her if anything is wrong. “I just felt awfully left out again,” Claire says. Kevin had been fully engaged in the conversation. He is surprised and anxious. Not knowing how to respond, he goes quiet. Claire interprets his silence as indifference. They go to sleep on separate sides of the bed.

Stuck Insider/Outsider Positions Are a Core Challenge for Stepcouples

Stepfamily structure puts parents and stepparents on opposite sides of an experiential divide. Every time a child enters the room or the conversation, parents become stuck insiders and stepparents become stuck outsiders. Like Claire, stepparents often feel left out, invisible, and alone. Like Kevin, insider parents are often surprised by this. They often find themselves torn between their kids and their partners.

In a healthy first-time family, sometimes Mom is close to one child and Dad is the outsider. In first-families, however, the adult couple's insider/outsider positions shift back and forth. The swing from insider to outsider can be painful for any parent. However, first-time parents in the outsider position have the soothing knowledge of a pre-existing bond with their child. Furthermore, the next day, or the next hour, the parents’ positions will be reversed—the same child will want only Daddy, placing Mom on the sidelines. First-time parents have also had time to establish an intimate couple relationship to which they can retreat and regroup. Even when this foundation of secure attachment cracks under the stresses of childbearing, shared understandings about “how we do things” offer some easy paths to togetherness.

In contrast, the adult stepcouple relationship begins new and untested, with children already on board. The lines of secure attachment, and the thick middle ground of shared values and comforting routines lies between the parent and his or her children, not in the new step relationships. Stepparents like Claire have no history of ever having been “the chosen one” to soften the experience of feeling distanced or ignored. To add to the isolation, stuck insider/outsider positions deprive stepcouples of the easy attunement that comes from seeing things the same way. Especially for those who begin with expectations of “blending,” the constant lack of alignment can be extremely disappointing and very anxiety-provoking.

Insider/Outsider Challenges Come Early and Stay Late

The insider/outsider challenge emerges very early in stepcouple relationships and threads its way through all of the other challenges. It often remains present, though in somewhat softer form, even in mature well-established stepfamilies. As we will see in Chapter 12, even many years down the road, life cycle events such as weddings and graduations can reactivate long-dormant insider/outsider positions. The insider/outsider challenge is often one of the first that therapists need to address with stepcouples and with individual adult stepfamily members. Because it colors so much of stepfamily life, the theme reappears frequently.

Double Families Aren't Equal

Theoretically, the fact that each adult in a double stepfamily occupies both roles should generate an easier flow of compassion in both directions. However, pain easily trumps empathy. Furthermore, many factors can place one of the adults in the more stuck outsider position and the other in a more insider position. One set of children may come into the family on weekends while the others live with the family more full-time. One parent—child unit may have moved into the other's home. The children of one parent may be more accessible and welcoming. One member of the couple may have little extended family nearby, while the other is surrounded. Old wounds may make the insider, or outsider, position more evocative.

Easy Wrong Turns

Straining to Blend

That phrase “blended family” implies that the best way to soften insider/outsider positions would be to spend lots of time together as a family. It certainly sounds logical. Indeed, when things are going well, family activities do support family development (Baxter, Braithwaite, & Nicholson, 1999). However, the challenges created by stepfamily structure are most intense when the whole family is together. Pushing for family togetherness too quickly can actually exacerbate insider/outsider pulls. (The Chen/Czinsky genogram is on page 5.)

Connie Tries to (Prematurely) Glue Her Family Together

Connie Chen was the widowed mother of eight-year-old Cody. Connie's husband had died six years earlier. Burt Czinsky was the widowed father of Bobby, also eight, and Brandon, 13. Burt's first wife Lorna had died the year before Burt met Connie.

A few months after her marriage to Burt, Connie, eager to actualize her dream of a new family for herself and her son, had planned a week-long family vacation at Disney World. A miserable time was had by all. Brandon had wanted nothing to do with Connie or her son. Burt had spent the week shuttling between his sulking adolescent son and his wife, unable to make either of them happy. The younger boys caught the mood and began bickering. Burt and Connie had barely spoken to each other for several weeks afterwards.

Choosing the Couple Over the Kid

The insider/outsider challenge can be extremely painful for both parents and stepparents. It is enticing to resolve the dilemma by eliminating one side of the pull: Some parents focus their attention entirely on their own children, leaving stepparents to fend for themselves. Connie Chen, desperate to retrieve her dream of a happy family, was trying to move in the opposite direction, with potentially devastating results for her stepson.

Connie Tries an End Run

Connie complained bitterly in her nightly phone calls with her mother that her stepson was “ruining things for the whole family.” With her mother's support, she launched a campaign with Burt. “It's him or me. It's for our marriage. If Brandon can't come around, I think we should send him to boarding school.” Burt, at first, objected vociferously. However, as his son's behavior deteriorated, Burt found himself increasingly frustrated and irritated. Frightened that he might lose Connie, he began, somewhat half-heartedly, looking at boarding schools.

Stories of Stepcouples Meeting Their Insider/Outsider Challenges

Supporting Both Insiders and Outsiders

In successful stepcouples, insider parents and outsider stepparents find their empathy for each other and work together to support one another. Below, Sandy Danforth and Eric Emory find their way to meeting this challenge. Then Connie and Burt get some help and take the first steps of a more arduous journey. (The Danforth/Emery genogram is on page 5.)

Sandy and Eric Learn to Do It Both Ways

In their first few years, Sandy Danforth's young daughter Sabina lived with them almost full -t ime. Eric Emery's adolescent daughter Elyssa joined them for the second half of the week. When Sandy occupied the insider position and Eric was in the outsider position, they easily met their insider/outsider challenge.

Sabina's Bad Day

Eric and Sandy were enjoying a moment of intimate conversation. All of a sudden the door flew open and ten-year-old Sabina burst in from school, sobbing that her friend Yolanda was having a slumber party and she had not been invited. Sabina liked Eric. When she was very upset, however, she needed her mom, not Eric. Sabina threw herself into Sandy's arms and started pouring out her story. Within moments, Eric went from an intimate insider to a dangling bystander.

Over the head of her weeping daughter, Sandy signaled to Eric that she was sorry. As he left the room, Sandy reached behind Sabina's back and gave him a friendly squeeze on the rump. As Sandy said later, “From the start, Eric always knew when to fade.” Eric went off to begin supper, a bit disappointed, but feeling Sandy's affection for him, and fully understanding her need to attend to her distressed daughter.

Later in bed together, Eric put his arm around Sandy and pulled her to him. “Is Sabina OK?” “I think so,” Sandy replied. Eric said, “Think we could make a date to finish that conversation?” “I promise,” said Sandy, returning his hug. “I know we left you there like a lump. Sabina takes these things so hard.” “I think they all do at this age,” Eric said. They talked for a while and went to sleep cuddling.

Elyssa Was a Different Story

Eric's daughter Elyssa's arrivals in the household reversed their positions. Shy and introverted, Elyssa felt extremely uncomfortable and awkward in her dad's new family. For the first couple of years, she often barely looked at Sandy and rarely talked directly to her stepsister. Elyssa had significant learning disabilities that made school a constant struggle. Elyssa's mother Bonnie provided little help with school work. When Elyssa was with them, Eric often spent many hours closeted with his daughter, trying to provide the academic support she needed.

In this configuration, the feelings on both sides were harder to navigate. Sandy, the middle “lost” child in her own family of origin, became withdrawn and distant. Eric responded impatiently. Since he spent so much of the week pouring his energy into Sabina, he was hurt by Sandy's lack of support. At first when they attempted to talk about it, as Sandy put it, “Somebody got angry and somebody cried. Usually Eric got angry and I cried. But sometimes I got angry and Eric cried. Either way it wasn't too pretty.”

Eric, a businessman and lawyer, said, “I was a bit thick. I would simply go to work with my daughter. Sandy was much better than I was at blowing kisses and giving butt squeezes when she had to leave me hanging.” Sandy added a bit shyly, “Asking is hard for me. I had to learn how to ask Eric for a hug.” They also arranged for Sandy to text Eric during “Elyssa times” with a special ring that played “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Eric used this reminder to break away from his concentration on Elyssa and give some attention to his wife. “I’d go find Sandy and give her a kiss, or at least I’d text her back.”

Connie and Burt Begin Their Journey

“Save Our Family”

Eight months into their first year together, after a “disastrous” first Christmas, Connie Chen and Burt Czinsky called for help “to save our family.” Connie and Burt had begun their new family with great excitement and hope. They both looked discouraged and depressed. Connie expressed her anguish over Burt's attention to his sons. “I might as well still be a single mom.” Burt sat hunched in his chair, looking tense.

We started with their insider/outsider challenge. “You have been trying so hard to bring this family together.” I added, softly, “It's so disappointing. I’m guessing it's not what you were expecting?” I reminded myself to keep my pace very slow. I wanted to give them lots of time to begin digesting what I imagined would be unwelcome, but badly needed, new information.

First Steps

I said, “It turns out that in this kind of family, you might have noticed, one of you is always a stuck insider and one of you is always a stuck outsider. Every time a child enters the room or the conversation, one of you, the parent, feels pulled, engaged, and involved. Right? And the other feels left out, ignored, sometimes even invisible. Does that sound right?”

“It sure does,” Connie said. Burt agreed. Connie moved on quickly. “But how do we be a family?” “I actually have an answer to that question,” I said. “We do know a lot about what works in these situations. I don't know if you’ll like it, though!”

Gently, I began telling them they could best support their new family by trading “blending” for one-to-one time.

Burt Feels Better. Connie Feels Worse

As I always do, I asked, “What is it like to hear this from me?” Burt looked a little bit brighter. “I’m relieved,” he said. “But I wish we’d known. We’ve been entirely on the wrong track!” Connie looked gray. I turned to her. “Not the news you were looking for, am I right?” I helped her turn to Burt and share her grief directly with him. “It's so disappointing. I’ve waited for all these years since Larry died. I wanted a family for me and my son.”

We identified some small ways that Connie and Burt could be intimate several times a day—leaving each other notes, sending a loving text, finding “stolen moments” to kiss or hug out of their children's eyesight, taking walks. I also encouraged them to spend regular time alone with their own kids.

They left this first session looking a little calmer, but there was a lot of work ahead. Over the next few years, the pathway to success for Connie and Burt involved psychoeducation, building more effective interpersonal skills, and considerable intrapsychic healing. We worked individually and as a couple, and in various combinations with other family members.

Best Practices: Key Strategies for Connecting Across the Insider/Outsider Divide

General Guidelines

The Rashomon Effect

Empathy is often in short supply in early stepfamily life. Those who want to help need to provide a lot of it. However, stepfamily structure sets a kind of “compassion trap” for all involved. A stepmother complains that her husband is “abandoning the family” by spending so much time with his son. A sympathetic therapist (or friend, or clergy person) might easily respond, “That's awful! He's being a terrible partner to you! “The next time this stepmother is left out, however, will she react with less agitation, or more?

In the Japanese tale “Rashomon,” made into a 1950s film by Akira Kurosawa, a bandit, a woodcutter, a wife, and a samurai each tell the story of a murder from four unrecognizably divergent perspectives. Stepfamily architecture creates its own “Rashomon effect,” placing each family member in a fundamentally different position, each with its own seemingly irreconcilable viewpoint. This structure makes it all too easy for well-intentioned listeners to join with the story teller in demonizing the others in any stepfamily tale.

Hold on to Your Empathy for Both Insiders and Outsiders

A helpful listener will remember that both insiders and outsiders are struggling: “It is painful to feel constantly disconnected from the man you love. Not what you expected, is it?” This response empathizes with the stepmother's feelings, but without negatively characterizing any other players in the story. It leaves the door open for connection in the stepcouple, rather than slamming it shut. Eventually, when the stepmother is ready, we can add, “These kinds of families do make these stuck insider and outsider positions. It is hard for you to be the stuck outsider. And so hard for your partner to be torn between you and his son.”

Level I Psychoeducation: Strategies for Meeting the Insider/Outsider Challenge

Normalize the challenge

It is often a relief to learn that the constant empathic misses created by stuck insider/outsider positions do not signal a lack of love or caring. They come with the territory of stepfamily structure. Just having the language of “a stuck insider” and “a stuck outsider” can be immensely reassuring and validating.

Normalize the intensity

The strong feelings that accompany these positions are nobody's favorites. They can generate considerable shame. It can be comforting to learn that it is normal for outsiders to feel left out, jealous, invisible, and, as Claire says, “like a stick of furniture.” It is equally normal for insiders to feel torn among people they love, and guilty, inadequate, or anxious about meeting their divergent needs.

Carve out lots of one-to-one time~~`This key strategy for building stepfamily relationships is also one of the least intuitive. Stepfamilies meet insider/outsider challenges not by “blending” but by “compartmentalizing.” One-to-one time supports all the relationships in the family—both new step relationships and long-standing parent—child relationships.

Stepcouples need time alone without children to hold each other, explore mutual interests, build new ones, and talk about stepfamily issues. Couple time also gives stepparents space to rest in the insider position without competing with powerful parent—child bonds. It gives parents the freedom to fully attend to their partners without simultaneously juggling their children's needs.

Parent—child alone time provides the reliable secure relationship that is pivotal for children's wellbeing and for stepfamily success. We will explore this more fully in Chapter 4.

Stepparents and their stepchildren also need time alone together, without parents, to build their own new relationships without being overshadowed by pre-existing parent—child bonds. (As we will see in Chapter 4, the needs of stepsibling relationships vary considerably.)

Help stepcouples establish daily recurring routines for intimate connection

Small intimate moments can help stepparents feel cared for when children are present: a hug before going to sleep and before leaving bed in the morning, a funny text, a quick call during the day. Parent and stepparent can play footsie under the table, make eye contact, or steal a kiss. (The caveat: Do intimate things out of children's eyesight. More in Chapter 4 about this.) I encourage stepcouples to set aside both “play time” and to separate it from “problem-solving time.”

Shift, don't blend

Look for family activities that bring outsiders together and shift insiders out. If Mom and her daughters are expert skiers and Stepdad is a beginner, a “family” ski vacation will exacerbate Stepdad's outsider position, leaving him skiing alone on the bunny slope. In this family, ski trips will be best saved for special Mom- daughter time.

On the other hand, if a stepfather and stepdaughter are excellent ice skaters and Mom is a klutz, ice-skating shifts Stepdad into the insider position to whiz off with his stepdaughter. It moves Mom to the outsider position, clinging to the side of the rink.

Give stepparents a break

The outsider position can be exhausting for even the most devoted stepparent. When possible, establish a private, preferably soundproofed, retreat space in the house for the stepparent. If walls are thin, a really good pair of headphones can help stepparents escape from the fray. Stepparents also need the support of friendships and activities outside the family that provide ongoing easy “insider” relationships. Stepparent “away time” may feel un-family like to some. However, it prevents stepparent burnout. It also leaves space for parent-child time.

Level II Interpersonal Skills Are Key to Meeting Insider/Outsider Challenges

Sandy Danforth and Eric Emery found a multitude of ways to treat each other tenderly. They often went to sleep feeling good about each other. In contrast, other stepcouples in this chapter were on their way to accidentally becoming mutual tormentors.

Empathy, not agreement, bridges the gap

Compassion releases hormones that soothe pain, generate wellbeing, and shift hyper and hypoarousal to calming optimal arousal. For stepcouples, the pathway to intimacy and connection cannot come through seeing things the same way. It has to come from “feeling into” each other's experience, and from creating small moments of caring in the midst of the challenge.

Joining “Joining” is a kind of heart-led mirroring. (Step-by-step directions are in Chapter 15.) In the first case at the end of this chapter, we will see joining at work, helping Angie Gianni and Phoebe Haggarty to feel close to each other despite the disconnection created by their stuck insider/outsider positions.

Level III When Insider/Outsider Positions Trigger Intrapsychic Issues

The signal to shift

The signal to shift to intrapsychic work is often a “looping, looping,” “we’ve been over that” feeling. When information doesn't go in, skills don't hold, or emotional reactivity remains high, there is a good chance that the challenge is hitting a painful old bruise. As we will see in the second case study at the end of this chapter, healing family-of-origin wounds that are fueling reactivity can free resources to meet the challenge. For non-clinicians, this is a time to begin encouraging a referral.

Bruises for outsider stepparents

Nobody likes being left out of an intimate relationship over and over again. However, a stepparent who was the outsider in his or her family of origin will find this experience much more painful than a stepparent who was the favored sibling. Stepparents who were abandoned, ignored, or left unprotected as children will find the outsider position especially painful, even agonizing.

Bruises for parents

No sane person enjoys being unable to please all the people they care about. However, the stuck insider role may be much more evocative for parents who, for instance, grew up feeling they could not measure up, or who were caught between their own warring parents.

Turning inside

“What happens inside you when …” I always like to begin asking this question right away. I want to seed the awareness that, theoretically, we have choices in how we react to external events. To Connie: “What happens inside you when Burt gets absorbed with Brandon?” To Burt: “What happens inside you when Connie gets sharp with you?’

Early on, I focus on fully resonating with the feelings, and then move into psychoeducation and/or skill building. If optimal arousal remains elusive, I have laid some groundwork for shifting the focus from “what the other guy did” to exploring my own client's response to a provocation.

Begin any turn inside by first legitimizing the feelings the challenge creates. “Being stuck in this outsider (insider) position is tough. Nobody would like it. It's upsetting!” “Feeling left out and invisible (torn between the people you love) is nobody's favorite.”

Then make an invitation to turn inside: “And it also seems like, when Burt turns away to his son, something happens inside of you that makes it especially tough.” For some, just bringing awareness to the past and differentiating it from the present is sufficient to ease the triggering. “Would it be OK to think about who were the insiders and who were the outsiders in the family you came from? Which one were you?” As an early story of outsiderness becomes clearer, “No wonder this is so hard for you! Let's think about what is similar and what is different between then and now.” If the wounds are deep, however, healing will require the skills of a trauma-trained therapist. Chapter 16 has more details about working at this level.

Two Case Studies

We conclude this chapter with two very different pieces of clinical work focused on the insider/outsider challenge. In the first, working on the first two levels (psychoeducation and interpersonal skills) creates some calm for Angie Gianni and Phoebe Haggarty and enables them to begin reaching across the experiential gulf created by their stepfamily structure. In the second, Connie Chen embarks on a major piece of intrapsychic work that will significantly impact her ability to meet the challenge of her outsider stepmother position.

Angie and Phoebe Work on the First Two Levels

Speedy Noisy Insider Meets Slower Quieter Outsider

Angie began their first couples session complaining that Phoebe was “not participating” with Angie's two adolescent children, Anna and Andy, who lived with them. “When Philip (Phoebe's son) is here, things just get worse. I thought this was supposed to be a family. We don't have a family.” Angie and Phoebe were clearly caught in recurring cycles of disconnection over their stuck insider/ outsider positions. “But,” Phoebe began, “you don't let me in!” Angie immediately retorted, “What's the problem? Just hop in!” Phoebe sat back and crossed her arms. “I don't know.”

“See” said Angie impatiently, “This is what happens. She won't even talk to me.” I could see that both Angie and Phoebe were feeling stymied and alone. They needed help rechanneling their energy away from straining to blend and toward building their new stepfamily one step at a time. However, I sensed that any information about managing their step structure better would be swamped by the tension between them. In addition, Phoebe's much slower and quieter pace was no match for Angie's verbal velocity. This common difference in couples was thwarting their communication, and exacerbating both Phoebe's stuck outsider position and Angie's stuck insider position.

“You know, I’ve noticed something about both of you,” I began. “For some of us language comes very quickly. For others, it's a long way from the inside to the outside. I’m sort of getting that you, Angie, have a really fast verbal motor! Have you always been that way?” Angie smiled. “I come from a big Italian family,” she said. “You jump in or you get creamed!”

“And it looks like for you, Phoebe,” I continued, “language comes more slowly. You need to cook things inside before they are ready to come out. Am I getting that right?” Phoebe responded immediately. “When I try to think fast it makes my mind go blank.” “But,” Angie rushed in before Phoebe finished speaking, “what do we do?”

Introducing Joining

I hoped that joining might even out the different paces in this couple, help them both feel less alone, and create enough calm so they could absorb some useful information. “I have a lot of answers to that question,” I began. “How about we start by helping you feel more connected to each other. Interested?” I asked them to turn to each other and continue their conversation, securing their permission to interrupt if anything looked unsafe.

Angie, of course, started: “I don't see why you can't be more involved with my kids.” Phoebe replied, “Your kids ignore me. They don't even like me!” Angie jumped at her. “Yes they do! You just withdraw all the time! If you’d just participate more, it would be fine!” Phoebe started to slump, but she got in a parting shot. “That's because you guys do all the talking.”

Putting my hands up in a “time-out” sign, I stepped in, gently but firmly. “I’m gonna stop you! I am guessing this is a familiar conversation. Am I right?” They nodded. They both looked miserable. “I’m guessing you’re both feeling pretty alone. Did I get that right?” (I have never had a conflicted couple say no to this question!)

“I know you are both longing to be understood. I want to teach you something I think will help. It's called ‘joining.’ It's kind of simple and awkward, but I think you’ll like the results. Willing to try?” Angie said a little grudgingly, “Anything that will help,” but she offered to start.

Directions for Joining

Leaning forward to engage Angie fully, I said, “Angie can you take a breath? Can you just take a moment to feel the place in your heart where you know that you love Phoebe? Can you look for what you DO understand about what Phoebe just said? Not what you agree with. Because you don't! But see if you can find what you DO understand.”

Phoebe Finds Her Voice

Angie said, “I heard you say my kids don't like you. But they do!” Racing forward to make her point, Angie had not absorbed Phoebe's pain. “It looks like you got part of it, Angie,” I said. “ Phoebe, I think there was a bit more?” Phoebe nodded a defeated yes.

I tucked away a question about how Phoebe had learned to give up so quickly when someone close missed a cue. “I think you are wanting Angie to hear how hard it is for you. How lonely it is for you, am I right?” Phoebe nodded. “Can you tell her that? You could start with, ‘I really want you to hear that ….’”

Phoebe took the support and moved back into the conversation. “I’d like you to hear that it is really hard to get in with you and your kids.” Angie leapt in with, “But …” I interrupted her, firmly but sympathetically, “That pull to just jump in is so strong! Take a breath. Before you respond, I’d like you to find the place inside where you DO understand about what Phoebe just said.”

Angie Slows Down and Begins Listening

I now stored away a question about how Angie had learned to come out swinging. For now the focus was helping her learn that she could pull Phoebe closer by listening to her, rather than by hammering her. Out loud I said to Angie, “I’m going to stick with you until Phoebe gives you a nod that you ‘get’ her. Then you can add a couple of sentences of your own.”

Angie: “You’re saying it's hard. That it's hard to participate.” Like a school girl proud of mastering a lesson, she said, “Did I get it?” Phoebe's shoulders relaxed just slightly. “Yes.” “But I want you to participate, Phoebe,” Angie said, with real longing in her voice. “I really do.” For the first time she looked directly at Phoebe, rather than hurling complaints at her.

Phoebe responded, “You’re saying you really want me to participate.” Angie nodded. Phoebe, strengthened by the space the structure of joining had opened for her, spoke five full heartfelt sentences in a row: “I get that. But, Angie, your kids don't even look at me when they talk. They look at you. And you look at them! Nobody even looks at me at the dinner table!”

Angie started toward her habitual push back. “But …” She looked at me sheepishly and took a breath. I congratulated her on this tiny new move. “I saw you catch yourself! Good going.” She continued. “You’re saying that my kids don't look at you. They only look at me. And I only look at them.” Pausing long enough to take in her partner had finally enabled Angie to grasp Phoebe's struggle more fully. Phoebe relaxed perceptibly. There was a little more juice flowing between them now.

Intimacy

Slowing her pace also enabled Angie to begin moving under her anger to more tenderness and vulnerability. “I miss you when you disappear. I wish you could just jump in!” she said softly. Phoebe sighed, a deep relaxed breath. She looked touched. “I heard you say that you miss me! That I disappear.” Their eyes locked. “And that you wish I would just jump in.” Angie said, again softly, “Yes,” Phoebe continued, “Well, you may not know it, but you guys all talk so fast! Most of the time, I can't get a word in edge-wise! I think of things and then you’re on to something else! Eventually I kinda give up.” As Phoebe felt more seen and heard by Angie, she was becoming more present. She had just spoken another four full sentences in a row.

Angie said, “So you’re saying that you do want to get in, but the train's moving too fast and you can't get on?” “Right!” Phoebe said exultantly, “You got it!”

Noticing the Difference

Now the threads of empathy were becoming palpable. I wanted them to notice. I said to Phoebe, “What's it like, Phoebe, to feel Angie getting this?” Phoebe said quietly, “I feel …” She paused. Angie waited! “It makes me feel close to you, Angie.” “It's so different,” Angie said. “It's what I want. To feel close to you, Phoebe. It seems dumb. But I totally didn't get that talking fast shuts you out.”

We were nearing the end of the session. I wanted to anchor their awareness of what they had done together. I said to Angie, “It turns out you do have the power to get Phoebe to talk to you. But it's not what you thought, is it?” “Not at all,” said Angie. I turned to Phoebe. “What do you think? Maybe you have some power to step forward and get Angie to slow down, instead of retreating?”

“This is really different for both of you. How about we just hang here for a few moments, and feel this very different place together?”

“It's like I can breathe!” said Phoebe, after some silence. “I want to be here with you, Sweetie. It helps so much when I feel you hearing me instead of arguing with me.” Angie replied, quietly, “It's weird but it does feel good. It's like I can feel you, Phoebe. Like we’re connected.” I added, “Even though you see things so differently. It turns out it's not agreeing that gets you close. It's working together to slow things down and really hear each other.”

Adding a Little Psychoeducation

Angie and Phoebe had now become enough of a team to make use of some concrete information. They liked the idea of spending more one-to-one time. Phoebe had already been helping Angie's son Andy with his insect collection. They decided that Phoebe, “infinitely more the girly girl of the two of us,” could teach Anna how to do a French manicure. Finding something that the highly verbal Angie could do with quiet nonverbal Philip stumped us all. Phoebe suddenly perked up. “He's a pitcher! Angie, you could help him with that.” “Perfect,” we agreed.

Connie Begins a Courageous Journey Inward

The level of reactivity between Connie and Burt remained relentlessly high. Unlike Angie and Phoebe, the structure ofjoining could not hold them for more than a few moments at a time. Neither could speak more than a few sentences without raising the other's emotional temperature. Interspersing individual sessions with couples therapy gave them each a chance to feel fully heard. It also provided a safe space to begin the considerable intrapsychic work they needed to meet their challenges. (Genogram on page 5.)

“It's Lonely”

Connie arrived at an individual session looking very dejected. Burt had spent a full Saturday with his son Brandon. “Why would I want to be married if I can't spend time with my husband?” We had talked about insiders and outsiders. We had begun a conversation about balancing couple time with parent-child alone time. Knowing the level of Brandon's need for his dad's attention, I could feel an urge to throttle Connie. I took a breath. I reminded myself that her sharpness hinted that something very vulnerable was being protected.

Validating the Challenge and Heading Inside

Gathering my full compassion for Connie's outsider position, I began again. “This really wasn't what you were longing for, was it?” “Of course not!” she snapped. Now I had my feet under me. “It's so painful when the person close to you isn't quite there. Nobody would like this spot in a family, this outsider position. It stinks. It's not anybody's favorite.”

Connie sighed. Inching inward I said, softly, “It's like something happens inside you, doesn't it, when Burt and Brandon go off together.” She paused. “It's lonely.” She had taken a small bite of the intrapsychic apple. Quietly I asked, “Got any sense of where that happens in your body?” “Nope,” she said quickly. “I guess I just harden up.”

No “Mushy Therapy Stuff” for Connie

Working in the Internal Family Systems model (Schwartz, 1995, 2001), I had been inviting both Connie and Burt to view their internal world as a group of interrelated parts. Treading tenderly but firmly, I tried another move inward. “Sounds like there's maybe a vulnerable part of you that's really lonely. And wanting to feel cared about? But the one who shows up to take care of business is that Harden Up part. Right?” “Yup!” she said, almost triumphantly. “Then what do you do?”

“I get mad at Burt.”

I asked, as innocently as I could, “And then how does Burt respond?” “He basically disappears.” “Bummer,” I replied. “More loneliness, right?” We sat there for a moment. “What if we could help that lonely part of you, Connie? So that the Harden Up part didn't have to show up so fast.” “I am NOT doing that mushy therapy stuff,” she said stiffly.

I looked at my genogram. Connie's parents had immigrated from China just before she was born. Both had worked two jobs, leaving Connie and her younger brother alone for long stretches of time. By the age of six, like many children of immigrants, Connie was functioning as her non-English speaking parents’ translator in the grown-up world. I reminded myself that Connie's Harden Up part had very likely served her well at a time when softening was not an option. Now, however, that originally protective part was eroding her marriage and threatening to irreparably damage her relationship with her stepson. However, asking it to relax would require exposing the overwhelming feelings it had shielded her from.

Connie Meets Her White Knight

Connie was clearly not ready to go there. I wanted to respect this. But if I backed off completely, she would remain stuck and miserable. I went instead for forging a respectful relationship with the protective Harden Up part. “I’m betting that Harden Up part has taken very good care of you for a long time, am I right?” “Yup!” “How about if we get to know it?” This felt less threatening and allowed us to move forward.

Turning her attention fully inside, Connie identified the Harden Up part as a tight feeling in her chest. As we extended our curiosity and interest to that feeling, it gained more shape, becoming a White Knight with a massive beautiful shield. As often happens in IFS work, the White Knight began telling us his story. He had stepped forward to help when Connie was five. The White Knight bragged that he had given the little girl a suit of armor to help her “be big, not weak” so she could take care of her two-year-old brother in their tiny house in a dangerous, gang-infested neighborhood.

The White Knight Begins to Trust Connie

Over time, sometimes individually, and increasingly with Burt present, Connie began to access her own large loving compassionate adult self. The knight began to sense that he was no longer alone. He also admitted to being quite tired of his job, especially since, he confessed, despite all of his hard work, he could not actually ever get rid of the girl's fear and loneliness.

Other protector parts also appeared—one that went numb and an extremely self- critical perfectionist. Other young parts of Connie told her about feeling ashamed of having “feelings that made trouble” for her parents. A furious adolescent joined the group. All of the girls shared a sense of worthlessness. As each girl soaked up Connie's compassionate presence, some of these old burdens started to lift.

Gradually, Connie's outsider position became less evocative. It became a little easier to sit by patiently or leave the scene when Brandon needed his dad. She was increasingly able to soothe herself rather than “go hard.” This in turn, enabled her to reach for her husband when she was lonely, rather than attacking him.

Conclusion to Chapter 3

Stuck insider/outsider positions are a core challenge for stepcouples. Sadly, straining to blend too quickly only heightens the challenge. Meeting this challenge requires both members of a stepcouple to bear some very uncomfortable feelings. All three levels are often important for success: supporting all relationships in the family with ample one-to-one time, reaching across the emotional divide for understanding and empathy (rather than responding with accusations or withdrawal), and, for some, healing old bruises that are heightening reactivity.

Chapter 4 The Second Challenge

Children Struggle with Losses, Loyalty Binds, and Too Much Change

DOI: 10.4324/9780203813645-4

Seeking a therapist for couple forming a blended family. Each has 2 adolescents. Kids are resistant, hostile, and splitting. Couple very motivated—wedding in 3 months.

In this email, taken almost verbatim from a therapist listserv, the adults are able to tell only one side of a much more complex story. The stepcouple is in love and understandably eager to move forward. However, the new relationship that is so comforting and exciting for the adults, often brings losses, loyalty binds, and an overwhelming amount of change for children, especially when things happen too quickly. For children, the entry into a stepfamily brings a dramatic shift in family roles, routines, and relationships, including a whole slew of new smells, tastes, ideas about what's funny, what's a loud noise, and what's OK to do with a wet towel. In fact, the adjustment to becoming a stepfamily is more stressful and requires more time for many children than the transition to divorce (Ahrons, 2007; Hetherington, 1999b).

The Challenges for Children

Gains for the Stepcouple Are Losses for Kids

Adults experience their new stepcouple relationship as a wonderful, often long awaited, gift. Some studies show that, at least initially, remarried couples experience more happiness and satisfaction than first-time couples (Stewart, 2007). In contrast, for children, the experience is often saturated with losses. The first step in supporting children in stepfamilies is for the adults to understand this important emotional reality.

I often say to adults, “Have you ever had a friend who suddenly went ‘gah gah’ over a new lover? Did you feel left out and even irrelevant? Did you really want to watch them kiss or snuggle? Now imagine that your sense of security and wellbeing, already shaken several times, depends upon that person, who has turned away from you toward an outsider.”

In their ground-breaking qualitative research about children's experience of living in a stepfamily, Claire Cartwright and her colleagues report that loss of parental time and attention emerged as powerful themes across seven studies (Cartwright, 2008).1

In fact, parent–child relationships are very vulnerable in early remarriage, becoming more distant, conflicted, and negative, just when children most need warm, responsive parenting (Cartwright 2008).2 3 With all of this in mind, let us return to Claire Abbott's complaint in Chapter 1, that her stepdaughter Katie “just came and sat between us,” and her husband “did nothing” about it. Here is the children's side of the story. (Genogram on page 3.)

Untangling the Snuggle Night Fiasco

Kevin and Claire had been dating for a few months. They decided that it was time for Claire to meet Kevin's daughters. Friday night at Kevin's had become “Snuggle Night.” The girls arrived at Daddy's house for the weekend, dropped their backpacks and unpacked. Everyone got into their pajamas. They ordered pizza, snuggled together on the couch, and watched a movie together. Kevin wanted to bring Claire into this special time in the heart of his family. He invited her to join him and his girls on a Friday night. It certainly seemed like a reasonable idea.

As the movie began, where did Claire expect to sit? Next to her new sweetie, of course. Kevin's first wife, Ellen, had stopped being affectionate years before they divorced. He was delighted. While Kevin and Claire cuddled on the couch looking adoringly at each other, the children sat on the sidelines, feeling left out, scared, and awkward. At a moment when they needed, and were expecting, a soothing ritual of closeness with their daddy, a stranger had intruded. Kendra spaced out and began texting a friend.

Katie, the spunkier of the two girls, simply remedied the situation. She got up and sat next to her daddy, between him and the offending intruder. Claire suddenly found herself sitting alone on the end of the couch. She attempted to engage Kendra, who did not respond.

When things go badly, this experience of intensely competing needs and feelings repeats itself over and over. The stepcouple's understandable eagerness for “blending” results in “family time” increasingly filled with apprehension and disappointment. Two of our first moves when Claire and Kevin came for help were to return Snuggle Night to a Daddy–girls time and to save the couple's cuddling for more private moments.

Understanding Children's Loyalty Binds

Loyalty Binds Are Normal

The second major challenge for children in stepfamilies is loyalty binds: “If I care for my stepmother/stepfather, I have betrayed my mother/father.”4 While children's losses are just beginning to enter the literature, clinicians and researchers have been talking about stepchildren's loyalty binds for decades (Pasley & Lee, 2010).5 Loyalty binds seem to be almost genetically coded—even children in friendly collaborative divorces report feeling “guilty” or “disloyal” at the entry of a stepparent. However, parental conflict tightens these binds unbearably.

Children very often do not have language to describe their loyalty binds. This means that adults often need to deduce their presence. Below, Claire Abbot's well-meaning effort to make a special birthday cake for Kendra inadvertently activated a loyalty bind that initially looked like “ungrateful” behavior.

Claire Makes a Birthday Cake

Knowing that her stepdaughter's mother only baked from a box, Claire took the afternoon off from work to lovingly prepare Kendra's favorite carrot cake from scratch for her thirteenth birthday. As the birthday dinner ended, Claire brought out her creation, fully expecting her stepdaughter to be thrilled. Kendra was barely responsive. She picked at her cake, said she felt sick, and left the table, leaving Claire feeling hurt and disappointed.

Several years later Kendra finally found language for this experience. “I felt so bad about not eating your cake,” she said to Claire during a rare late night conversation between them. “But I just felt funny. I don't even know why. It just felt wrong. It's weird. Like if I ate that cake, I was being mean to my mom.”

When One Child Is “More Resistant”

Sometimes one child is especially distant or “resistant.” Claire Abbott complained in Chapter 1 that Kendra treated her “like a piece of furniture, at best.” When I hear about an especially distant child, I always ask if that child is particularly close to the parent in the other household. As is often true, Kendra and her mom had a very close relationship. Ellen, Kevin's ex-wife, had been fairly supportive of her ex-husband's new marriage. Still, for Kendra, any move toward her stepmother created an especially tight loyalty bind. On my genogram, I added a third line to the relationship between Kendra and her mom to remind me of this. “Loyalty bind talks” (see Best Practices at the end of this chapter) can help release many children from these binds. When the bind is intense, as it was for Kendra, this reassurance can soften a difficult position, but not eliminate it.

Being rejected, even for the most understandable reasons, is hard. For Claire, an extra hug from her husband accompanied by a dose of compassion (“Ouch! You worked hard on that cake!”) would have helped a lot. However, in this early event, Kevin defended his daughter and did not comfort his wife (“What's the big deal? “).

A repetitive unhappy choreography can evolve between children caught in especially tight loyalty binds and their stepparents. As children become more distant, stepparents redouble their efforts, only to be pushed away more firmly. In another early move in the Abbott/Anderson family, we released Claire from the pressure of forming a close relationship with Kendra, and freed her to concentrate on getting to know Katie, who was more available.

More Kids: Stepsiblings and New Babies

New stepfamilies often bring new stepsiblings, and, sometimes, new half-siblings.

Stepsiblings

Stepsiblings can change family life dramatically for children. Youngest or oldest children may suddenly become middle children. Only children find themselves sharing parents with siblings. A family of two or three children quickly expands to five or six. Stepsiblings also have stuck insider/outsider positions. Children who are more part-time residents in the family enter as outsiders to the rules, rhythms, and relationships of their nonresidential parent's new family. Full-time children are the stuck insiders in this equation, expected to share physical space, parents, and sometimes even friends with stepsiblings they did not choose and may not care about or even like.

Adults sometimes imagine that children will be glad to have new stepsiblings. Available data suggests that stepsibling relationships can be sometimes more positive and sometimes more negative than sibling relationships (Anderson, 1999; Stewart, 2007). As Burt Czinsky describes it, sometimes both are true in the same family. (Genogram on page 5.)

Better than Brothers and the Worst Ever

My son Bobby and Connie's son Cody became best buddies in a flash. Connie and I both say that in some ways they are better than brothers. They’re a lot less competitive than I was with my brothers. They almost never fight. They ride bikes together, make a mess together, and they have secrets from us together. My older son Brandon is a totally different story. Brandon keeps saying that having another little brother is the worst ever.

Lest you believe that same-aged stepsiblings are more likely to get along, here is Norman Heller's 16-year-old daughter Nicole. Nicole was ten when she and her two siblings began living with her stepmother, Mona, and Mona's two daughters, Maddie and Molly.

My Stepsister … Even Thinks Loud!

When we first started living together, my dad and Mona made Maddie and me share a room. I think they thought we would be best friends because we were the same age. For me, Maddie was the sister from hell. We’re pretty quiet in my family. My stepsister does everything LOUD. She talks loud. She eats loud. She even thinks loud. For a while there, I actually hated her.

Mona got it before my dad did. Thank goodness she got him to listen. We made me a bedroom in the attic. It's cold in the winter and hot in the summer, but it's SO much better. Maddie still drives me nuts sometimes. But being able to get away made it a lot easier for me to get along with her.

New Babies

Half of all remarried couples go on to have a child together (Pasley & Lee, 2010). Although most children clearly distinguish between “my brother” and “my stepbrother.” Most speak about half-siblings as if they were full brothers or sisters (Bernstein, 1990; Stewart, 2007). Many stepcouples believe that having a new baby together will cement the family. However, beginning with Ganong and Coleman's “concrete baby” study, the research proves more complicated. Sometimes new babies do “glue” the family together. Just as often, they do not (Ganong & Coleman, 1988; Stewart, 2005).

For previously single stepparents, the birth of their own biological child can usher in an unexpected kind of “head over heels” parental love that feels (and looks) qualitatively different from their stepparent–stepchild relationships. For older half-siblings, watching a stepparent love a new baby in this more wholehearted way can create more than the usual sense of displacement.

Becoming a Stepfamily for More Vulnerable Children

Temperament Matters

Children with more flexible temperaments cope more easily with major transitions, including the adjustment to becoming a stepfamily, than children who are more anxious and sensitive. Lively outgoing children who enter as weekend outsiders have an easier time holding their own with new stepparents and step-siblings than more introverted children do. Elyssa Emery, Eric's daughter, talks about her experience of being “shyer.” (Genogram on page 5.)

“I Was a Double Outsider”

Elyssa Emery was a shy, poetic, and somewhat anxious girl. She was 12 when, after four post-divorce years of “just Dad and me,” her dad remarried and moved in with Sandy Danforth and Sandy's lively nine-year-old daughter Sabina.

“I didn't live there most of the time, and I’m a lot older than Sabina, so I already felt like a second fiddle. Plus I’m just a lot shyer than Sabina. Sabina would just climb up on my dad's lap. I’d be sitting there by myself. It was like Sabina had such a strong vibe. I just couldn't hold my own note. When she was around, it was like I was a double outsider—like a sub-second fiddle. I spent a lot of time in my room. I felt bad. But I didn't know what else to do. My dad and Sandy kept saying I should just join in. It took them a long time to get how hard it was for me.”

Children with Multiple Losses

For some children, losses have accumulated so quickly that becoming part of a stepfamily is particularly overwhelming.

Brandon: Running a Marathon “with Two Broken Legs … and a Broken Heart”

Connie Chen and Burt Czinsky had fallen “hopelessly and unexpectedly” in love when friends had fixed them up after both had lost their partners to cancer. After a whirlwind romance, Connie and Burt had married and moved in together, hoping to create a new life for themselves and their children. For the adult couple this new family was, at least initially, a source of hope and nourishing new beginnings. Connie's eight-year-old son Cody and Burt's eight-year-old son Bobby had made the transition easily. But Connie felt that her older stepson, Brandon, was “determined to break up our marriage.” In late-night phone conversations with her mother, Connie complained bitterly, “He is wrecking everything.”

The story from Brandon's side was very different. Brandon and his mother had been very close. Her illness had consumed his parents’ attention for the two years before her death. Within the next year, Brandon had lost his mother to cancer, lost his father to Connie, lost his little brother to Cody, left his childhood home, and started a new school. As Brandon said later to his own therapist, “I guess it felt like they expected me to run a marathon with two broken legs.” He paused for a moment. “And a broken heart.”

Special Needs Children in Stepfamilies

For children with serious mental health issues, or a history of abuse or abandonment, the cascade of change involved in becoming a stepfamily can dramatically increase the risk of further deterioration. A successful transition requires moving especially slowly, with an especially high level of warm, empathic, and yet still moderately firm, parenting.

The Importance of Empathic Parenting

Integrating the News from Neurobiology

The converging fields of interpersonal neurobiology and attachment point to the key role of secure parent–child attachment in creating resilient children and in regulating their distress through upsetting events. Dan Hughes captures the kind of parenting that creates secure attachment with the acronym PLACE: Playful, Loving, Accepting, Curious, and Empathic (2007). Dan Siegel describes two important components of empathic, regulating parental presence: Helping children “feel felt” by resonating empathically with their feelings, and being able to tell the story from the child's point of view (Siegel & Hartzell, 2003).6 7 8

Stepfamily Structure Can Obstruct Parental Empathy

Because stepfamily structure puts parents and children on such different wave lengths, it creates major challenges for this critical aspect of good parenting. Kendra Anderson says to her dad, “I hate Claire.” Kevin will help Kendra most by fully empathizing with her story—the painful losses and loyalty binds created by Claire's presence. “It does change things when Claire is here, doesn't it? It used to be just us.” However, Kevin loves Claire. His daughter's comment produces a distinctly uncomfortable pang that he rushes to fix. “That's a terrible thing to say! Claire is a nice person!” Another parent might have responded even more fiercely, “I don't want to hear you say such an awful thing ever again.”

Katie, Kendra's younger sister, would have become outraged and picked a fight with her dad. Kendra starts to pull away, saying weakly, “You don't understand.” Kevin, feeling a little panicked, begins pushing harder. “I don't see why you’re saying such awful things about Claire. She works really hard for you.” While this is true, it is not Kendra's story. She is left feeling even more lonely. She tries for a few more sentences, then gives up. She sits through dinner feeling depressed and lost. Claire, unaware of Kendra's struggle, chastises Kevin for letting his daughter get away with sulking at the dinner table.

What the Research Says about Children in Stepfamilies

Negative Outcomes Are Statistically Significant, but Numerically Small

Early research on stepfamilies employed what Larry Ganong and Marilyn Coleman have aptly named a “deficit comparison” model (Ganong & Coleman, 1994) that compared children in first-time (“intact”) families with all children in single-parent families and stepfamilies (“broken families”). As the field has matured in the past 25 years, researchers have increasingly abandoned this “deficit comparison” paradigm, moving toward a more complex understanding of the specific factors that contribute to positive and negative outcomes.

It is well-established that stepchildren score slightly lower than children in first-time families on measures of academic, behavioral, and psychological wellbeing. However, while these differences are statistically significant (i.e., they do not occur by chance), those reviewing the research remind us that the effect size (the actual size of the difference) is actually very small.9

Variation Is the Norm

Early research looked at stepchildren as a single homogeneous group. This approach obscured much more complex realities. For instance, Amato's 1994 meta-analysis of 21 studies found 43 percent of stepchildren scoring higher than children from never-divorced first-time families (Amato, 1994).10

Children Under Nine Adjust More Easily

Younger stepchildren make the adjustment to becoming a stepfamily more easily than older children (Van Eeden-Moorefield & Pasley, 2012). Under age nine, remarriage is linked with fewer behavior problems and more adaptation over time (Hetherington, 1993). Early adolescence appears to be a particularly challenging time for remarriage, especially for girls (Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992; Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan, 1999; Van Eeden-Moorefield & Pasley, 2012). However, even within this subgroup of early adolescent girls, adaptation levels ranged from well below to well above girls in first-time families (Hetherington, 1993).

Several major longitudinal studies report a spike in behavior problems in adolescent stepchildren, a “sleeper effect” that can appear even among children who had previously seemed to be adapting well (Bray, 1999a).11

Boys Have an Easier Time than Girls

Generally, the data suggests that boys do more poorly in divorce and fare better in remarriage, with the reverse being true for girls (Hetherington, Bridges, & Insabella, 1998).12 Like Kevin Anderson's daughter Katie, younger girls tend toward more openly antagonistic behavior, while adolescent girls like Katie's sister Kendra demonstrate more withdrawal (Hetherington, 1993). Older adolescent stepdaughters are most at risk for poor outcomes (King, 2006).

I believe that a number of factors may contribute to greater difficulties for girls. Single mothers and their daughters often develop warm and nourishing relationships. Girls can thrive in these single mom–daughter relationships.13 Falling in love can pull mothers out of their close relationships with their daughters, often rather abruptly and completely. In addition, identity and wellbeing for girls is more likely to be rooted in their relationships. This is especially so in early adolescence, when we often find them awash with insider-outsider issues with their peers. The good news is that, while girls’ behavior can remain more challenging over a longer period, longitudinal research does find improvement over time (Hetherington, 1993; Hetherington & Jodl, 1994).

Pace Matters

While children can recover from divorce within about two years, estimates range from two to seven years and beyond for adjustment to a stepfamily.14 As the number and intensity of transitions increase, children's wellbeing deteriorates (Amato & Booth, 1991; Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan, 1999; Jeynes, 2007). Moving slowly creates better child outcomes and supports stepfamily development.

Step Relationships Change Significantly Over Time

Early stepfamily research did not differentiate between early and mature step-families. Research overwhelmingly confirms what clinicians and stepfamily members know to be true: The early years are hardest for both children and adults (Ahrons, 2007).15 Over time, many of the negative outcomes found for children in early stepfamilies not only soften but actually disappear.16 In longterm stepfamilies (average nine years) even the gender differences in adjustment, a consistent finding in earlier stages, disappear (Bray, 1999b).

Family Processes Matter More than Family Structure

Increasingly sophisticated research unequivocally puts the “deficit comparison” to rest. Family processes, particularly the quality of parent–child relationships and the level of conflict, predict child outcomes much more powerfully than family structure (i.e., whether a child lives in a first-time family, single-parent family, or stepfamily) (Lansford, Ceballo, Abbey, & Stewart, 2001).

Higher Family Conflict Levels Predict Poorer Child Outcomes

As we will see in Chapter 7, decades of research establishes the harmful effect of adult conflict on children in all family types (Grych & Fincham, 2001).17 Children in high-conflict, never-divorced families exhibit consistently poorer adjustment than those in low-conflict single-parent families and stepfamilies (Fosco & Grych, 2008). Recent research extends these findings to young adult and adult children. Outcomes for those with never-divorced parents with continuing unresolved conflict are significantly poorer than for those with low-conflict divorced parents (Amato & Afifi, 2006).

The Quality of Parent-Child Relationships is Central to Children's Wellbeing

Substantial empirical data affirms that the quality of parent–child relationships is not only a key predictor of children's wellbeing in all families, but mitigates many other factors such as socio-economic status, family structure, and number of transitions (Dunn, 2002; Hetherington, 1993; Hetherington et al., 1998; Isaacs, 2002). According to some researchers, high-quality parent–child relationships also ease the impact offamily conflict (Isaacs, 2002; Shelton, Walters, & Harold, 2008).

Easy Wrong Turns

Putting the Couple First

Our first-time family model holds that, “If the adult couple is close, the kids will come along.” This seemingly reasonable advice, to “put the marriage first” and “keep your marriage at the center of the family,” lifts the stepparent out of the stuck outsider position and relieves parents of their stuck insider position. It is particularly comforting to stepparents, whose websites are its more avid promulgators.

It is generally accepted that in first-time families, a better adult couple relationship predicts better adjustment for children and family wellbeing.18 The early clinical literature in the stepfamily field uniformly emphasized the primacy of the adult stepcouple relationship in stepfamily development (Mills, 1984; Visher & Visher, 1979, 1996). However, in stepfamilies, extremely close adult stepcouple relationships actually result in more stepchild adjustment problems, particularly for pre-adolescent girls (Hetherington, 1993; Hetherington & Jodl, 1994). Prioritizing the adult stepcouple relationship over parent–child relationships pulls parents away from their children, resulting in an extremely challenging transition for kids.

Blaming the Child

The behavior of stepchildren who are struggling can be distinctly unpleasant. As in our opening email, it can easily be read as “resistant” or “uncooperative.” Thrilled with their new relationships, adults easily miss, or misconstrue, children's cues.19

Stories of Stepfamilies Meeting Children's Challenges

Both/And, Not Either/Or

When adults meet this challenge, stepchildren can, and do, eventually thrive in their new families. The guiding principle needs to be “both/and,” supporting both the adult stepcouple relationship and parent–child relationships, not “either/or.” (The Heller genogram is on page 47. The Danforth/Emery family is on page 5.)

Mona and Norman Heller Found Their Way Intuitively

Mona and Norman Heller brought five children between them to their new stepfamily. Six years later, Mona remembers, “I had two pre-adolescent girls. Norman had three kids between six and 12. Things were not always smooth. We had to learn a lot on the job! But we both understood from the start that when one of the kids needed us, that came first. We purposely made special time for the two of us and we also deliberately made time to be alone with our own kids.

Young Sabina Danforth traveled a slightly rockier road to a good place with her mom.

Sabina Gets Her Mom Back

For a while there, my mom was a goner. She’d be on the phone with Eric, or having coffee with Eric, or texting Eric. I started to hate Eric. Once I cut up his picture and I got in a lot of trouble. Finally my mom and I had a big huge screaming fight and I told her everything. The good thing is, when you come right down to it, my mom is a really good listener. After that, she made sure we had Our Time almost every night. We called it O.T. I like that, because backwards, it's Time Out. She must have told Eric because he didn't call during that time. That was good! When Eric and Elyssa moved in, that was hard at first. But we still kept Our Time. Having that, and knowing my mom would listen, made a hard thing a lot easier.

With significant help, Connie Chen and Burt Czinsky also struggled forward. In this early session we began addressing the issues with Brandon.

“He's Ruining Our Marriage”

“He's ruining our marriage,” Connie stated flatly. Burt looked gray. I turned to Connie, knowing Burt was listening. “It is so painful,” I said to her, “to live closely with a child who wants nothing to do with you.” Then to Burt, “It is awfully hard, isn't it, to be torn between the people you love. I think I can help,” I said. “But it's maybe not what you expected.”

“This might be hard to hear,” I began. “But I am pretty sure that if you can understand some more about what is happening with Brandon, that you will be able to help him through this, and things will be better for everyone. Want to give it a try?” I proceeded slowly and gently, inviting Connie and Burt to consider the last year's events from Brandon's point of view. Despite my care in delivering the news, more fully understanding his son's experience threw Burt into a paroxysm of guilt, and evoked another deluge of bitter disappointment for Connie. We spent some time just sitting together with all of their feelings. “We’ll work on this together,” I reassured them. We were at the beginning of several years of intensive therapy. Weaving among all three levels, I met with Connie and Burt as a couple, in individual sessions, and with other members of their family.

Stepparents Also Bring Resources

While gaining a stepparent can be challenging, it can also bring new resources into the family. Sabina Danforth, an outgoing, sometimes volatile, child, was nine when her mom met Eric:

“Eric Keeps Us from Tipping Over the Top”

Both my mom and I have a temper. Eric usually just stays even-steven. The only time he ever gets upset is when he's mad at Elyssa's mom. Most of the time, he keeps us from tipping over the top!

Eric is a businessman and he knows about being organized. Eric taught me how to clean up my room. My mom would just tell me to go do it. I would go up there and get nothing done and my mom would get really mad. Eric would get her to back off. Then he’d come help me. He showed me about making piles and about how to make a place for each thing.

Noah Heller, now 18, feels, probably correctly, that his new stepmother's understanding and support saved his life. (Heller genogram on page 47.)

“Mona Saved My Life. I Think She Also Saved My Family”

I always knew I was a boy, but I got born in a girl's body. My mom made me wear my hair long and curly and she kept trying to make me wear dresses. I’d bring my jeans and t-shirts to school and change. Once when she found out she completely flipped and burned all my jeans and t-shirts. When I started to grow breasts, I began to truly hate my body. I started cutting. I started doing drugs and drinking. I couldn't imagine continuing my life as a girl, but I couldn't see any way out. I was on my way to a dark place.

My dad met Mona when I was 12. There were hard things about Mona—like my brother and sister and I are really quiet and her daughters are the noisiest people I have ever met. But Mona was the first person in my life who got it. She helped me talk. She took me to meet some other kids like me. She helped my dad get it. She dragged him to PFLAG (Parents, Family, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).

Now she's getting my mom to go to PFLAG. Mona's smart. She didn't attack my mom. She understood that my mom was having a hard time and she talked to her a lot. She helped us find people I could talk to about transitioning. Mona saved my life. I think she also saved my family.

New stepfamily relationships can add to the isolation and stigma for children already struggling with being “different.” The extra load can be crushing. For kids like Noah, the research shows that even a slight move towards acceptance by the adults significantly lowers the risks of suicide, depression, and drug use. This means that the entry of a supportive stepparent can significantly shift the trajectory.20 These findings are undoubtedly applicable to other stepchildren who struggle with feeling that they are “different” from their peers.

Best Practices: Key Strategies for Supporting Stepchildren's Wellbeing

When the transition is managed carefully and well, with consideration for the children, the adaptation is likely to be easier.

(Cartwright, 2008, p. 217)

General Guidelines

Ask about the kids

My own practice focuses on adults. However, early on, whatever challenge we are focusing on, I always want to know a little about each of the children in a stepfamily: Can you give me a few adjectives for each child? Which children are easiest/hardest for each adult? What comes easily to each child and what does he or she struggle with? If children's challenges become focal, I add the assessment questions in the paragraph below.

Who should come for help?

Child therapists and school counselors are often asked to see “resistant” or unhappy stepchildren. Especially in a stepfamily, children's adjustment problems are frequently rooted in misaligned adult expectations, a shortage of parental compassion, exposure to conflict, and too much change too fast. A skilled, caring therapist can be very helpful to a beleaguered child. However, it is important to conduct a careful assessment with the parent. Here is a checklist: Check for sufficient parent-child alone time. Listen for the adults’ understanding of children's challenges, and their capacity to respond empathically. Often adults, in their excitement, are simply moving faster than children can bear. Chapter 5 will add, ensure that parents, not stepparents, remain the disciplinarians. Chapter 6 will add some detail about regulating the pace of change. Chapter 7 will add: Closely track the level of exposure to adult tension and conflict.

Parent–child meetings focused on deepening parental attunement are often a crucial part of work with children in stepfamilies. It is important to also support the adult stepcouple by providing psychoeducation and guidance around insider/outsider issues and children's challenges, and effective roles for parents versus stepparents.21

Meeting with the whole stepfamily is rarely a good idea

Increasingly, parents of unhappy stepchildren ask for family therapy. Adults may also request a meeting for their entire stepfamily with the school psychologist or social worker, their minister or rabbi, or a medical professional. However, colliding agendas of children, stepparents, and parents cannot be met in each other's presence. We best meet the divergent needs of each subsystem by working separately with the stepcouple, the parent–child unit, sibling/stepsibling groups, and, if necessary, the ex-spouse parenting team. For family therapists, Scott Browning's excellent book on therapy with stepfamilies is an invaluable resource (Browning & Artfelt, 2012).

Watch for “compassion traps”

While meeting with a whole stepfamily is not a good idea, avoiding compassion traps by thinking systemically is critical. In the email that opened this chapter, adults characterized stepchildren as “resistant,” “manipulative,” and “splitting.” Children themselves tell us they are doing their best to cope with overwhelming changes and frightening attachment breaks. The more desperate the situation, the more likely it is that parents, stepparents, and children will be able to tell only their one side of the story.

Child therapists are particularly vulnerable to feeling outraged when adult behavior hurts their clients. The grieving adolescent Brandon Czinsky said to his therapist, “My stepmother gets upset if I need time with my dad. My dad just gives in to her.” Brandon's therapist, Jill, might easily have joined him in painting his stepmother as heartless and his dad as passive. This well-intentioned “support” would have only increased Brandon's isolation and fueled the divisiveness in his new family.

I had carefully chosen a therapist for Brandon who could fully understand his feelings, but who would not ally against his dad or stepmom. Jill responded with, “Ouch. You really need your dad right now.” Later, she added, “Sometimes it's hard for grown-ups in stepfamilies to understand how kids are feeling. That makes it tough for kids. Let's work on how you can tell your dad about this. How about we bring him here and I’ll help?”

Jill also deftly navigated Brandon's initial objections to allowing her to maintain contact with me. “You can tell me if there is anything you don't want me to share,” she assured him. “But I think Patricia can be much more helpful if she understands what's happening with you.”

Level I Psychoeducation

Help Ease Children's Losses

Establish regular, scheduled, consistent parent-child one-to-one time

Sometimes simply increasing consistent time in the parent–child subsystem can markedly lower “acting out” and depression. Multitasking time doesn't count. “This is our time. Just us.” If possible, include some parent–child vacation time.

Both/and, not either/or

Balance parent–child time and reliable adult couple one-to-one time.

Consciously maintain parent-child warmth and connection

The challenges of early stepfamily life generate a significant rise in negative parent–child interactions. I coach parents to increase parental warmth and attunement during this period, before, after, and during time with a new partner. It can be helpful for adults to actually keep count of the number of positive versus negative messages they give to children. Maintain a ratio of at least five positive moments to one negative.

Use the “in-between” spaces for parent-child connection times

Navigating the many emotional and logistical details of stepfamily living makes for distracted parenting. I suggest that parents make good use of what Ron Taffel calls “the sacred in-between times” to listen, snuggle, and be fully present with children.22 Catch a few minutes before breakfast. Make bedtime an intimate moment each day. Walk a child to school. Take a quiet moment while knitting.

If family time is tense, keep it short

If family time works well, go for it. If not, keep it short and concentrate on supporting all relationships in the family with one-to-one time.

Let children know what will stay the same and what will change “We will still do Snuggle Night. We will still have alone time together. It's new to have quiet time after 8 p.m. That's a big change. We’ll do it together.”

Keep physical affection between adults private

New couples are often especially affectionate and physically expressive. Many adults believe that this sets a positive example for children. In moderation, this is true in some first-time families. In a stepfamily, watching a parent be physically affectionate with a stepparent exacerbates children's sense of loss, and heightens loyalty binds. It feels intrusive. Stepcouples can and should fully enjoy cuddling, kissing, and hugging, but in private. At first, even hand-holding can be too much for children.

Require bathrobes!

Nudity or semi-nudity that might be acceptable in a first-time family carries too many sexual connotations for stepparents and children and for unrelated stepsiblings. Except for very young children, insist, calmly, that all family members remain fully covered in front of each other.

Help Loosen Children's Loyalty Binds

Children's loyalty binds are normal “Loyalty binds” appear even in cooperative friendly divorces: “If I care for my stepmother/stepfather I feel like I have betrayed my mom/dad.” An especially tight loyalty bind may simply indicate that a child is especially close to the parent in the other household.

Watch for “leaking”

The urge to complain about an offending ex-spouse, or a stepparent in the child's other household, can be powerful. I say to my clients, “Talk to your friends, your hairdresser, or to me. Not to your children.” Make sure that adult disagreements are aired out of children's earshot. Chapter 7 discusses the impact of conflict on children in more detail.

“Loyalty Bind Talks” “Loyalty Bind Talks” can help loosen the bind for children. They can (and should) be delivered by parents, stepparents, ex-spouses, teachers and counselors, aunts and uncles, and grandparents. Here is an example: “Having a stepparent can be kind of confusing. I want you to know that your mom has a permanent place in your heart. Like the sun. Like the earth. I hope you come to care about Claire. But even if you do, her place in your heart will be a totally different place from your mom's place.” Adolescents like to feel they are in control and in the know. Approach them with, “You probably already know this …”

Help with Stepsibling Issues

Attend to children's insider/outsider issues

Children of nonresidential parents enter as outsiders. Conversely, for their stepsiblings, a stepparent's children can feel intrusive and even overwhelming. While sharing is important, children in complex families need some places where they don't have to share. Insure that each child has some space that is theirs—a particular dresser drawer, one wall of a bedroom, a specific area of the bathroom. Establish family rules that respect both the insiders’ need to maintain continuity and the outsiders’ need for some say in television programs, food, use of space, family activities, etc.

Help stepsiblings to connect and/or disconnect

Some stepsibling relationships become intimate and nourishing. Others add more stress to the challenge for children. “We’re a family now” may be the adults’ wish but not the child's reality. If stepsiblings don't like each other or rub each other the wrong way, help them maintain some space from each other.

Establish rules for safe respectful behavior

This is not the time to “let the kids work it out.” Protect all children in the family by setting clear rules for respectful behavior between siblings and stepsiblings. Closely monitor and calmly enforce them.

Other Things That Help

Slowing down speeds things up

Begin with a low-key introduction between stepparent and stepchildren. A neutral space often works well (a playground, a park). Graduate to including the stepparent in a few activities. Introduce overnights slowly. Especially in the early stages, intersperse “family time” with ample one-to-one parent–child time. Avoid inserting the stepparent into special parent–child activities. Do tell children when an outsider will be present. Help stepcouples not to rush into living together. For some children, bringing friends along to family events can lower the intensity.

Different children in the same family move at different paces

Successful stepfamilies allow for “different rates of psychological traveling time” (Pryor, 2008, p. 583). Children under nine and boys generally make the adjustment more easily than older children, especially girls. Children with multiple losses or tighter loyalty binds, more introverted and anxious children, and children with special needs, will usually need to move much more slowly. When in doubt, slow down, decrease “family time,” and increase parent–child alone time (balanced with couple time).

Require civility, not love

We cannot ask stepkids and stepparents to love each other, or even to like each other. We can and should expect all stepfamily members to be civil and decent with each other. Do remember that it is difficult, though still important, to be civil to someone you wish wasn't there.

Level II Interpersonal Skills That Help Adults to Meet Children's Challenges

Use joining to deepen parental empathy

The structure of “joining” is very helpful in supporting parental attunement with children's losses and loyalty binds. “Can you tell Brandon what you do understand about what he just said?” (See Chapter 15 for step-by-step directions for joining). Joining helps parents tell the story from their child's point of view, giving that regulating sense of “feeling felt” (Siegel, 2003). When working with parent–child pairs, joining begins, and often stays, one way, from parents 4o children. Young children, and older kids in a lot of pain, should not be asked to empathize with their parents. Adolescents and older children, after they feel fully understood by their parent, can be asked to begin to master the skill of hearing what the other guy has to say.

Help adults give children language for their losses “It was just you and Daddy. Then Daddy got together with Paula and everything changed.”

PLACE

Dan Hughes’ acronym PLACE (playful, loving, accepting, curious, and empathic) is a great guide for parents (2009). The first half of the classic book, How to Talk So Your Kids Will Listen and Listen So Your Kids Will Talk (Faber & Mazlish, 1980/2012) is a terrific step-by-step primer on parental attunement. Faber's excellent videos can be found in local libraries. I often assign couples to watch them together.

Adults need to stay calm inside, but match children's energy by half

Parents who “flip their lids” heighten children's disregulation (Siegel & Hartzell, 2003; Siegel, 2010). On the other hand, when parents maintain control by gritting their teeth or going numb, they leave children feeling very alone. Dan Hughes offers a useful clue: When a child is very upset, calm yourself inside, but match the child's energy level by about half (Hughes, 2008). “You are really upset about Claire coming tonight!” (This also turns out to be a lot more fun for parents!)

Help stepcouples stay connected when children are struggling

The same neurobiological pathways of empathic connection that calm children also operate between adults. Being rejected or ignored is hard for stepparents. A parent's compassion is often the most powerful tool for calming an upset stepparent. Parents are sometimes oblivious, or defensive, not because they don't care, but because they have a fundamentally different experience of their children.

Level III Intrapsychic Issues for Adults When Children Are Struggling

As more child therapists share their expertise with these issues, I look forward to their contributions to the clinical literature. Meanwhile, working with adults is often the key to helping children meet their challenges. The case at the end of this chapter is an example of this.

Issues for Adults That Impact Children

Vulnerable spots for parents

Effective parenting in a stepfamily requires parents to move toward their children's pain. No parent wants to see a child struggle. However, parents who were poorly parented themselves, or who as children were left alone to manage overwhelming feelings, may find it especially challenging to move toward their children's pain.

Some may quickly launch into “fix-it” mode. Others may shut down or numb out. Still others may become almost obsessed with their children's pain. When, despite psychoeducation and some skill building, parents cannot consistently maintain a caring, calm, compassionate connection with their children, it is time to begin turning attention inside or encouraging a referral.

When, despite information and skill building, the system remains stuck, it is time to turn away from focusing on outside events (the behavior of a partner, child, or ex-spouse), and toward exploring the person's internal world. Shifting to this deeper level requires what Dick Schwartz calls a “U-turn” inside (Schwartz, 1995, 2001, 2008). The cue to begin shifting into intrapsychic work is a sense that “we’ve been over this already,” a “looping, looping, looping” feeling.

Tough spots for stepparents

No sane person enjoys living with a child who cannot look you in the eye or who barely grunts when you come into the room. However, stepparents who were rejected as children, who were left unprotected from physical or emotional abuse, or whose basic needs for attention or safe connection were not met, may find this behavior especially unbearable. Psychoeducation about children's losses and loyalty binds, and balancing parent–child time with enough couple time can help. When stepparents remain extremely activated by their stepchild's behavior, it is time to shift down to the intrapsychic level, or to move toward a referral.

Helping Adults Turn Attention Inside to Meet Children's Challenges

As always, begin asking right away, “What happens inside you … when you see that your daughter is sad?” “… when your son says he hates his stepmother?” “… when your stepdaughter doesn't say hello to you?” In early sessions, take time to fully empathize, and then weave this into psychoeducation and skill building.

If reactivity persists, begin moving your own attention away from listening to a recounting of external events (“His child won't say hello”). Begin focusing on internal processes. Always begin each move inward by fully validating the reality of the challenge: “No parent wants their child to feel sad.” “Nobody loves living closely with a child who won't look at you.” Then add, “And something about this seems to make it especially hard for you to handle this with your wisest best self.” There is more in Chapter 16 about shifting into this level.

Two Case Studies

In these two cases, two families move very differently toward meeting the challenge of supporting their children. A few sessions of psychoeducation help Jody Jenkins and her boyfriend Duane King to begin charting a better course. The journey for the Chen/Czinsky family continues to be much more arduous. (Jenkins/King family genogram is on page 6.)

Jody and Duane Steer Their Ship Off the Rocks

Jody Jenkins was a former individual client. She called after a long break saying that she had finally met a wonderful guy. However, she was confused and scared. Her 11-year-old daughter Jenna's behavior was deteriorating and “things were getting tense.”

I Thought She'd be Glad to have a Dad

Jody came in with her new sweetie, Duane King. They had been living together for about six months. Jenna, in Duane's words, had become “increasingly bratty, whiny, and clingy.” Duane added, “I can't get two sentences in with Jody before Jenna interrupts us. It's upsetting!” I watched Jody reach for Duane's hand and remind him, affectionately, “Jenna and I lived alone together for 11 years. This is a big change.” I noticed Duane return her reach. “After all those years without a father, I thought she’d be glad to have a dad,” he said, somewhat sadly. “I know,” Jody replied, “I thought making a new family would be such a good thing and it's turning out to be awful.”

A Better Map for Jody and Duane

Despite their dashed hopes, this couple seemed calm and affectionate. They had both expressed some negative feelings, but without blame or criticism. I noted Duane's rather unsympathetic description of Jenna as “bratty.” But I also saw that he had said it without an edge, and that he softened in response to Jody's reminder. These clues suggested a fairly grounded couple with good interpersonal skills. I hoped that a better map and some accurate directions might be enough to put them on course.

“Not what you hoped for, right?” I began. They both nodded and settled back into the couch together. “I think I can help you understand what is happening with Jenna. The good news is, as scary and painful as this is, it's probably pretty normal and there are definitely things that help. Ready?”

“First, the hard part.” I explained that what is a gain for adults is often a loss for kids, and that this appears to be especially so for pre-adolescent girls when their moms fall in love. “That would be Jenna!” Jody declared. Duane and Jody immediately realized that since Duane had moved in, Jenna's time alone with her mother had evaporated. “We thought spending time all together was the right thing,” said Jody, a little wistfully. “You wouldn't be the first to think that!” I reassured her. “How about telling each other what that's like to hear from me?” They easily and sweetly shared their feelings of disappointment and relief with each other. Duane, taking in the level of Jenna's losses, said thoughtfully, “No wonder she's been such a nudge.”

Shifting from “Blending” to “Compartmentalizing”

Now they were ready to put some changes in place. We carved out some regular chunks of afternoon and evening as “Mom-and-Jenna time.” We talked briefly about Jody and Duane's stuck insider/outsider positions. “Sound familiar?” I asked. “Boy does it,” said Duane. We established a regular date night for Jody and Duane. They easily agreed to cool their physical contact in front of Jenna and to substitute some more private intimate rituals like a morning snuggle. We thought about activities Duane and Jenna might do alone together, without Jody, to begun building their own separate relationship. Jody suggested baking bread, something Duane loved that she was sure Jenna would enjoy.

I floated the idea of making a “hideaway” in the house where Duane could retreat for relief from his outsider position. When I checked to see how this felt, Duane said with a little smile, “Wow. Actually, I was feeling guilty. Like I wasn't being a family person if I wanted to get away! This makes me feel better.” He turned to Jody. “How about you, Honey?” Jody said, “Maybe a bit disappointed. But I get it. You do have that kind of grimace when she's getting on your nerves. It makes me tense! I guess those are the times you’d best get out of there!” She was silent for a moment. Then she said quietly, “It's not the end of single-parenting, is it?”

Jody and Duane and I met for just a couple of sessions. Over the next few months, the stress in this new family eased. Despite a few continued bumps, Jenna's behavior improved significantly. Duane announced proudly in an email to me, “We’ve pulled the ship off the rocks!”

Journeying Inside Helps Burt Step Up to Parenting His Son

While Jody and Duane were relaxed and affectionate, Burt and Connie often sat hunched and tense in my office. Jody and Duane fairly easily abandoned their fantasies of blending and started on a more realistic course. Their empathy for Jenna was palpable. The very same news had been devastating to Connie Chen and Burt Czinsky. In Chapter 3, Connie had begun her own internal journey to heal the bruises that made her outsider position so triggering. Burt also had considerable work to do. (Genogram on page 5.)

Burt's adolescent son Brandon was not doing well. Connie could easily have been seen as the villain in this new family. However, feedback from Brandon's therapist was making it increasingly clear that Burt's lack of emotional presence was a major contributor to his son's depression.

Burt arrived at his individual session distraught. He immediately launched into story after story of disastrous interactions with Connie and his own urgent, failed, attempts at trying to set both Brandon and Connie straight. In our couples sessions, I had seen that Burt's knee jerk advice-giving also fueled Connie's desperation. Burt was a well meaning, loving man, but “this attunement stuff” did not come easily. By now, he understood, intellectually, that his son (and his wife) needed his empathic presence. However, when people close to him were in pain, something inside him seemed to reflexively go almost numb, or move into fix-it mode. We had talked about “Papernow's Bruise Theory of Feelings.” So far, Burt had refused several invitations to explore his own internal world. The deepening crisis with Brandon finally opened the door.

Validating the Challenge and Inviting a “U-Turn”

I gathered myself to make another move toward shifting levels. “It is so hard for any parent to see a child as depressed as Brandon is,” I began. “It's the worst. Like torture for a parent.” He sighed. “You so want to help,” I said. “But something takes you out, doesn't it? Even though another part of you knows what Brandon needs most is your compassionate presence.” For the third or fourth time I said, “We both know there is something painful inside of you that makes this hard. How about we begin to heal that now? That will free you to be the dad Brandon needs. And I’ll bet that will make it easier with Connie, too.” This time, in his desperation to help his son, Burt accepted my invitation.

Getting to Know the Wall

Working in the Internal Family Systems model, we followed Burt's sense of “kind of shutting down.” Burt caught a glimpse of himself as a six-year-old, crying himself to sleep. Then, “Nothing. Blank.” Burt's parents were second-generation immigrants who had “made it.” His father was a beloved physician outside the house, and an abusive terror at home. I guessed that the “blank” might have protected a little boy from becoming totally overwhelmed. “I’m guessing someone doesn't want to go there. For very good reasons. Let's check and see.”

Burt brightened. “There's a big Wall. The Wall says, ‘This is too much.’ ““It was too much, wasn't it,” I replied, “for a little six-year-old boy.” Touching this truth relaxed something in Burt. Although the Wall was not ready to move, it was willing to introduce himself to us. The Wall proudly told us how he had helped a little boy hold himself together when there were no grownups to help. Now, it bragged, it kicked in immediately and efficiently at the slightest signal of affective distress. The Wall confided that it did feel very alone, trying to take care of a helpless, frightened little boy. However, it told us, there was no other choice.

Speaking to the Wall, I said, “That was true,” again purposely using the past tense. “What if Burt and I could help the boy now?” The Wall was, quite understandably, extremely skeptical. In fact, from where the Wall came from, this was a truly ridiculous idea. However, the Wall admitted that despite its efforts, it could only hide the boy's helplessness, not heal it.

When the White Knight Hits the Wall

As safety increased in the couples therapy, both Burt and Connie began doing more of their individual work in each other's presence. Burt shared with Connie, “My dad would lose it, beat up my brother or me or my mom. My mom would say, ‘Don't tell a soul or you’ll ruin the family.’ So we didn't.” The resulting sense of “hiding something horrible” had fed a deep well of shame, which in turn signaled the Wall into action. Later we learned about a “Mr Fix-It” part who worked closely with the Wall to try to hold off the helplessness and shame.

Over many sessions, the corrosive sense of inadequacy began to lift. Burt gradually became more present, not only to Brandon, but also to Connie. We also began to track the interplay between Burt and Connie's parts: Any hint of inadequacy launched Burt's protectors, who injured the lonely frightened girl inside Connie, activating her White Knight, who in turn re-wounded the frightened helpless boy. This signaled Burt's Wall to “gather the troops.” Connie joked, “When the White Knight hits the Wall, it isn't pretty!”

Burt and Brandon Begin Repairing Their Relationship

With Connie's somewhat begrudging agreement, Burt and I also had several meetings with Brandon and his therapist, Jill. Brandon, with Jill's support, told his father about the years when his mom was sick, how frightened he had been, how much he still missed his mom, and how horribly lonely he still felt. Going one or two sentences at a time, we used the structure of joining to help Burt slow down and, for the first time, truly resonate with his son.

Connie was relieved to find that, as is very often true, the focus was on Burt and Brandon's relationship, not on Connie. This seemed to free her to ask Burt about how he felt hearing all this from his son. “It was tough stuff,” Burt said. “But it was also a relief. I feel like I’m getting my son back.” In a later session, Connie said to Burt, “You know, I can see that you’re more here, Burt. There's a way you haven't been here for either me or Brandon. I can see you’re showing up more for both of us.”

Conclusion to Chapter 4

Remarriage does not constitute a neutral event for children.

(Claire Cartwright, 2008, p. 213)

Becoming a stepfamily faces children with losses, loyalty binds, and, very often, too much change too fast. Parents who, despite their own happiness, can empathize with their children's feelings, help ensure a better transition. When stepcouples can balance their desire to start new lives together with children's needs for security and connection, children do well, and even flourish in their new relationships.