The Remarried Family

I really enjoyed learning about how the family system changes with remarriage. It makes a lot more sense now why second marriages have higher rates of divorce than first. When we drew the family system for Joe and Mary up on the board things started making so much sense. I think that being able to see it drawn up on the board like that will help me a lot in dealing with people that get remarried in my own life.

I really liked the steps he gave us for handling discipline as a non biological parent.
1: It takes at least 2 years for "normalcy". This is patterns and traditions within this new family system.
2: Biological parent has to handle the heavy discipline for the first 2 years.
3: The new step parent needs to be a really great uncle or aunt type figure. They support the biological parent's rules and discipline but they don't enforce any of their own.
4: New couple needs to spend a lot of time counseling with each other.

I thought that these steps are really helpful advice. I personally hope to never have to use them within my own life, but I hope to use it to help others.