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Break the [wounds +
unawareness] cycle and guard your descendents |
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A Family Glossary - p.
3 of 3
74 definitions for more
effective communication
By Peter K.
Gerlach, MSW,
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The Web address of this three--page glossary
is http://sfhelp.org/02/terms.htm
Stepfamily -
Many lay people and human-service professionals are vague or unclear on
what this term means. A
stepfamily is
any emotionally-bonded family including at
least one part-time or full-time (custo-dial) stepparent, and one resident or visiting, minor or grown
stepchild. Most stepfamily
rules, and dynamics begin to form
when co-parent couples begin to date seriously, well before
exchanging
vows.
All emotionally, genetically, and financially important relatives to
(a)
each stepchild, (b) each of their bioparents, and (c) each stepparent, are
of
their multi-generational stepfamily. Some may not want to
be. Others will feel confused or ambivalent about membership, or may not realize
they're in a "stepfamily."
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Implication: all ex mates who conceived
a biochild and later divorced are ongoing members of a child’s stepfamily,
whether they and/or other co-parents like that or not. Scan this stepfamily
(map) to make this more vivid.
|
There are almost 100
structural
of multi-home stepfamily,
because of combinations of co-parents’ prior divorce or death, ex-mate re/marriage, child
custody,
stepchild adoption, and "ours" kid
conceptions, Unlike traditional biofamilies, this
diversity guarantees that stepfamily adults and kids will rarely or never meet a person in
a stepfamily like theirs.
This often promotes feelings of isolation and
abnormality
for insecure kids and adults. These increase the need for
–
co-parents’ intentionally evolving and using a stepfamily-aware support network.
Media authors and commentators use a creative set of family adjectives to avoid the negative
taint of "step-": bi-nuclear,
rem(arriage), combined, reconstituted, merged, blended,
reconstructed, serial, second,
bonus, and
co-family. These well-meant terms promote stepfamily ignorance, denials, and myths.
That
promotes toxic
unrealistic stepfamily
expectations,
which cause disappointments, hurts, frustrations, and significant
The moral: to minimize stress...
-
learn stepfamily
norms, and teach them to other members and
supporters,
-
intentionally use stepfamily terms and
in public and domestic settings;
and...
-
accept your stepfamily
and what it
For more perspective on stepfamilies, see these
basics (slides or
text), these
Q&A items, and
and
in this nonprofit educational site.
index
Stepparent
-
Before reading further, try saying your definition out loud, and compare it
to this: a step-parent
is a man or woman who is...
-
emotionally committed to a
or widowed bioparent,
and...
-
chooses to fill the
of
part-time or full-time nurturer, guide, and supporter to one or more of their
partner’s children from a prior union; who...
-
may or may not have biological
and/or adopted children of her/his own,' and...
-
probably has fewer legal
parental rights and responsibilities than a biological parent in the
same state or province, unless s/he legally
adopts their stepchild/ren.
|
Note that stepparent,
stepmother, and stepfather are
family roles (sets of responsibilities), not the person filling the role. If you feel that a
stepparent role is somehow "inferior" or "abnormal,"
grant that the woman or man accepting that challenging role is not an inferior
person!
|
Note also that people filling stepmother or stepfather
roles can be married or not, custodial or not, a bioparent or not, and a different
nationality, race, gender, culture, and/or religion than their mate or stepchild/ren
– or not.
Research suggests that typical first-marriage mates are
significantly more alike in
these factors than average step-couples. Wider age gaps and older
female partners are also more common in
re/marriages. This implies that there are more apt to be
in
stepfamily relationships than in typical intact biofamilies. My personal and clinical experience
validates this. The "/" in re/marriage notes that it may be one partner's
first union.
A stepparent may be emotionally committed to (love) a bioparent, and not
really want to relate to or nurture their mate’s prior
kids. Such men and women provide parenting out of ambivalence,
duty, guilt, and/or fear of something. This lose-lose-lose scenario can occur when a minor
stepchild unexpectedly moves from one bioparent’s home to their
stepparent's home.
One of 60 common stepfamily
myths is "Your (or my) biokids will always live with their
other bioparent." Another is: "Your grown child will never come to live with
us." Over time, the first of these expectations proves false in ~30% of
U.S. stepfamilies!
For more perspective on stepparenting, see this
these slides (or
text) these
Q&A items, and these Project 10
resources.
index
Team, Teamwork:
Family adults seek cooperation and genuine teamwork in and between
their related homes. (Right?) Yet many have only a vague idea about how to
co-create effective teamwork.
What distinguishes a team from other groups of
people? Sports teams compete with each other to see who's "best." Other teams
are non-competitive. A team is two or more people who chose to, or have to, help each other achieve a
common goal.
When team-members achieve their (a) personal and (b) group goals in a way all feel
proud of, they can be called
effective.
Have you ever been part of a really effective team (or committee, troupe,
troop, clan, gang, squad, cast, task force, or class)? If so, what made it
effective? See how this premise compares
to your experience: Elements of an effective team include...
One or several clear
goals that are (a) understood and
(b) genuinely valued by all team members; and...
An evolving
plan
to achieve the goal/s, including agreement on
who is responsible for what
(clear roles), when, and how (team
and...
One or more people who choose to, or
agree to, lead the team.
Effective team leaders are adept at...
|
delegating
guiding
coaching
limit-setting
enforcing |
communicating
problem-solving
motivating
balancing
appreciating |
validating
deciding
encouraging
coordinating
goal-setting |
confronting
focusing
prioritizing
organizing
pacing |
|
and matching team-members' talents and interests with
steps in the plan (responsibilities) |
And an effective team of any sort...
maintains
enough human and other
resources to progress toward the team's goals; and...
needs freedom and
social stability
to act on their goals.
Typical stepfamily adults can profit from
sharing a common definition of "effective teamwork" in four or five domains:
their...
-
of
-
their household,
-
their
multi-home
-
any professionals they hire, like lawyers, tutors,
doctors, clinicians, and child-care helpers; and...
-
any stepfamily support group
they participate in.
 In this site, co-parent
focuses on building an effective
family team over time, which strives to fill the
adults' and dependent kids' respective
To do this, typical
stepfamily co-parents must overcome
key
as they work together to master
challenging, concurrent family-building tasks.
My Project-10
guidebook
Build a
Co-parenting Team after divorce and/or re/marriage
(Xlibris.com, 2002)
integrates the Project-10 Web articles and worksheets, and
includes addresses of other useful Web links in this site and elsewhere. For
more perspective, scan this index of Project-10
resources, and these Q&A items on co-parenting.
index
Trauma
- This and the related words "traumatic" and "traumatized" are emotionally
evocative for most people. Try saying out loud what you associate with them
now. ("A trauma is ____ ...") Like other
"hand-grenade" terms, many
people casually use these without really defining what they mean.
Because people vary in defining what a "trauma" is and what it causes,
misunderstandings can occur if speakers don't clarify what they mean in
important conversations. Example; "I was SO traumatized this morning - I
lost my car and house keys!" has a far different scope of meaning than "My
doctor just told me I have pancreatic cancer and will die soon!"
A general definition trauma is "an
event that causes extreme emotional, mental, and perhaps physical and
spiritual discomfort and injury." Extreme is a subjective
judgment. How does this compare with your definition?
index
Wholistic
Health - All
articles in this Web site are based on the idea that anyone can be judged to
be somewhere between "very wholistically healthy" and "very wholistically
unhealthy." Wholistic (usually spelled "holistic") means
(mental +
+ emotional + physical). Health means "functioning
and growing at maximum
."
Premises:
-
a
person's physical health is directly proportional to their emotional,
spiritual, and mental health. Those are directly proportional to the
degree of
present, if any - i.e. whether the person's
is guided by a
or their
Family
here offers a way of
who's
in charge,
and
the resident true Self to
-
a family’s (or any
group’s) degree of wholistic health and its
are directly proportional to the personal
wholistic health of it’s individual leaders.
How do you feel about
these proposals? On a scale of one (very low) to ten (very high), how would you
rank your current wholistic health? Your family's nurturance level?
For more perspective
on wholistic health, see this article and
this sobering research summary.
index
Family Identity -
Hundreds of times
in an average day, your brain compares visual images
to those stored in your brain to
identify what you're looking at - a
frog, a mailbox, a sunset, your face in the mirror, etc. We order our
complex world by categorizing things into unique identities with certain
characteristics. (A frog is not a radish because...).
All families are the same in some respects, and unique in others - for
instance, dwelling, education, number of members, race, ethnic background,
religious and political preferences, wealth, health, names, lifestyle,
etc. Most people unconsciously make comparative judgments about their own
family's status compared to other family types. This is a modern form of the
ancient human reflex of judging "our tribe" to be inferior or superior to "their
tribe."
Current examples
are the common social bias that divorced families and stepfamilies are
"inferior in some ways" to traditional intact biofamilies, Some feel that
Catholic or Jewish families are "better" (or worse) than Muslim, Hindu, or
Navajo families, and Christian families are superior to (or "more fortunate
than") atheist clans.
Family identity can be a significant
source of personal and social
or anxiety and embarrass-ment in families run by wounded
adults. Such
are often highly sensitive to being seen as "better" or "worse" than other
people or groups, and may need to aggressively boast or disparage others to
maintain the illusion of self-respect. Families run by adults with empowered
are apt to view all families as equal in worth despite their differences
("We're all part of the human
family.")
index
+++
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Updated
November 04, 2008
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