Learning to blend a family, after our last trip with just us
After four years as a single mom to two boys, I am talking to my boyfriend about next steps
I’m approaching the end of an era.
After four years as a single mother to my two boys, I am talking with my boyfriend about next steps. By this time next year, I could be living a very different life as part of a blended family.
To celebrate our time as a family of three, I decided to take my boys, ages 6 and 7, on what I thought might be our last hurrah. A vacation for just the three of us, tailored to our interests and needs. A trip that was uniquely us.
As we flipped through a travel magazine, they whooped when they saw an ad for Prince Edward Island, Canada’s tiniest province. This little island, with a population of approximately 146,000, wasn’t on my radar, but it quickly became the only place in the world my boys wanted to travel. I decided to go all out. I reserved a room at the Holman Grand Hotel, in the centre of Charlottetown, the capital city.
I booked exciting adventures: lobster-trapping, clam-digging, a farm adventure. I even scheduled a professional family photo shoot on a beach with sand dunes and a lighthouse.
Somehow, taking this trip felt poignant. It seemed to symbolize the end of one chapter and the start of a whole new book.
Yet according to Noah Rubinstein, a licensed family and marriage therapist and founder of goodtherapy.org, my approach may have been all wrong if I wanted to blend our family soon.
“Commemorating the end of single parenthood in a big way can have the potential to backfire,” says Rubenstein, who is based in Olympia, Washington. “If you believe you’re about to undergo a momentous change, it will be a momentous change. What we fear generally happens. If you focus on it being easy, it will be.”
He advises single parents to celebrate their bond with their children every day. That could mean family dinners, creating photo books, telling stories and expressing love daily.
“If you want to take a trip or do something special, don’t make too big a deal about it or tell your kids this is the last trip,” says Rubenstein. “Make it a happy, fun time. Kids pick up on our feelings of anxiety.”
While it’s important to do things as a new family, parents and their children should continue to have special time together, even after remarrying.
“We talk about blended families and have a vision of becoming one, but that’s not reality,” says Dr. Patricia L. Papernow, an American psychologist, author and expert on blended families. “If you act as if becoming ‘blended’ is the goal, you can set yourself up for feeling like you’re failing.”
The goal should be for the couple to become a team — a team that can talk about their many differences in ways that are caring and understanding so they can handle the glitches along the way.
“Combining families is challenging,” she says. “Successful stepfamilies know it may take years to build trust in new relationships.” As I frame photos and make photo books from our trip to Prince Edward Island, I now appreciate the significance of our vacation differently. Whether I’m a single mom or part of a new family, this adventure with my boys wasn’t necessarily the last, but perhaps just the first of many.
What we fear generally happens. If you focus on it being easy, it will be. NOAH RUBINSTEIN Family and marriage therapist