Blended - Navigating The Blended Family Experience

As a step-parent hopeful or someone dating a single parent, it's necessary that we do our homework and find out if we fit for them, and they for us. Much is at stake when we enter into this process so answering those big picture questions should be a must before moving forward. 

The impact that we have as parents is incredible! Whether that impact will be for their good, or to their detriment, depends on what we do with the opportunities that we're given every day. 

If you don't assert your value, then your value will be assigned. 

Before engaging in another dating relationship, single parents should allow significant time to heal, learn from mistakes, be attentive to child(ren), and re-establish their value. 

Tools that can be used to assert value:
1. Behavior: Actions identify values. 

2. Communication: Clarity concerning what the expectation is and what won't be accepted. 

3. Progressive Work: Being in pursuit of something and heading in a specific direction. 

4. Community: It's best to have people to support you and cover your blind spots. 

The goal isn't to find someone that's good for a single parent and their child, the goal is to find someone that is right. 

Counting the cost is the process of honestly and unselfishly gauging whether someone is willing and able to pursue a relationship with the intent to create a healthy, functional blended family. 

A single parent cannot perfectly determine whether someone is entirely prepared for that commitment and ready to do the work to make it work over time. However, there are some indicators that could provide clarity concerning readiness:

1. Behavior - actions and daily conduct over time

2. Communication - ability to convey understanding, emotional experience, and empathy

3. Personal Progressive Work - involved in support group, schooling, church, mentorship, etc. (putting themselves in positions to be challenged and held accountable) 

Ending a relationship with your child's mother/father is one of the most difficult decisions that someone will ever make. Even if that relationship is full of abuse and dysfunction. This was the decision that Margo had to make for her sake, and the sake of her young daughter. When to know enough is enough. Figuring out how to follow through with your conviction; and then facing the reality of how you got here, are all things that she had to face.

It's essential that we identify, assume, and function within a specified role. We need a standard to operate from! It is our job to hold ourselves accountable and we should invite those within our family to hold us accountable to that expectation as well. Upon realizing where we are needed, we can then determine how to be most effective!

The health of the family unit is trending in the wrong direction, and blended families are even worse off. 

Marriage (the pinnacle of human relationship) 
- 50% of marriages end in divorce 
- 75% of divorcees remarry (60% of those marriages end in divorce - the percentage increases with more marriages) 

Marriage has been diluted and it is affecting all levels of relationship:
- Friendships: underestimating the power of influence 
- Dating: Tends to be driven by sex, status and satisfaction
- Authority Figures: lack of respect due to broken promises, identifying imperfection in others, and self-preservation 

X vs. Y(upside down) 
The X represents two people intersecting/landing on the same page, and trajectory, based on past and previous experiences, lands them on opposing destinations

The upside down Y represents two people intersecting/landing on the same page, but despite trajectory based on past and previous experiences, they choose to identify purpose, exercise urgency, and intentionality within their relationship. This allows for growing together opposed to growing apart. 

Children 
- 25% of youth from divorced families end up with serious social and/or emotional issues (this applies to 10% of people with parents that remained married). 
- 70% of children of divorce say that divorce is an acceptable alternative to an unhappy relationships (40% of youth with parents that remained married agree).

Cohabitation
- Definition: one or both individuals in a relationship have children from a previous relationship and they're living together outside the confines of marriage
- 46% of children, by the time they turn 16, will have experienced their mother cohabitating
- 50% of kids that are subject to a cohabitating relationship will experience separation at the age of 9 (20% of youth with married parents will experience divorce/separation by the age of 9) 

https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/17/1-the-american-family-today/

http://www.stepfamily.org/stepfamily-statistics.html

'What is family?' 

Families need to answer this question to establish a strong foundation and direction for each individual and the family as a whole. 

Society is a reflection of the condition of its families: 
- Family impacts those within the family 
- Those within the family impact people in their circles 
- People in the circles impact their own families and circles make up the community 
- The collection of communities is what makes up society 

Dr. Myles Munroe message:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfU-s69cxjU&t=1785s

Principles that should be functioning within each family: 
- Socialization 
- Protection/Preservation 
- Identification
-  Accomodation 
- Liberation 
- Classification 
- Transformation 

Two things that should be done as a blended family to get the process started, or to continue the process of determining what family is: 

1. Understand that because of the blended family dynamic, that your family has been compromised. 
- the principles that should be functioning within the family are hindered as a result of a lack of parental control, identity struggles for both child and parent (especially step-parent), inability to protect child completely due to plethora of potential influencers, etc. 

2. Figure out what family is / Establish what your values are for your family specifically / Determine your direction as a family (what family looks like at the height of its operation)

Intro to Jeremiah
Born in Chicago / Raised in San Diego / 31yrs old 
Interests: Jesus / Seeing people become their best 

Why Blended Exists: 
- Personal experience within my blended family and the lack of existent information/support available 
- Both the good and the bad stories that come about as a result of the blended family dynamic 

Goal Of The Podcast: 
- To see blended families thriving 
- Providing support, information and encouragement for anyone navigating the blended family
- 25 to 30 minute episodes every Wednesday