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Navigating Blended Family Dynamics with Rich Nicolosi
This week in the “Shed” is our tool of the week – Rich Nicolosi!
Rich joins us in the shed to talk about blended families. What is a blended family? Listen to the episode to find out more but in summary a blended family is any family where someone within the immediate family structure is not a blood relative. In other words, step kids, step parents, adopted children, etc. In this episode we discuss the “padora’s box” of challenges and adventures involved in being a parent or child in a blended family and the complexities of how to handle each individual situation.
In general statistics divorce rates amongst 1st marriage is around 48%, 2nd marriage = 67%, 3rd marriage = 73%, and sadly military or couples who co-habitate before marriage = 80%. For the first time in U.S. history a majority of babies born in the U.S. will be born into homes without a mom and a dad of blood relation in the home. So what do we do? One of the responses is to help build up blended families.
Rich is a husband, dad, head varsity football coach and former heavy metal band superstar…who happens to also be an experienced Information Technology Manager, cloud technology expert, and builder of successful high performing teams. On top of that Rich is the director of Blended Family Fellowship where he is able to coach others to tackle these challenges not just from an educational standpoint, but as a practitioner. Now in his 2nd marriage Rich has learned through the storms of life and 8 years of being equipped to counsel blended families. Common challenges & questions that arise within blended families are:
- How do we curb growing marital conflict around discipline of blended children/step children, etc?
- What roles/functions should step parents have in the day to day life management of non-blood children?
- How do we juggle custody and holidays with other parents?
- How do families overcome the sense of shame that is often associated with divorce, re-marriage, etc? How do we equip our students to not bear that sense of inferiority or “damaged goods”.
- How do parents build bonds with step-children?
- What are good skills for step parents to have when engaging with the blood relative or birth parent? What will lose trust with step children? Build trust?
Our hope is that this episode equips you to grow healthier families no matter what context you represent. We also hope these tools help you serve other families and individuals around you. This episode is loaded with tools we hope equip you to build stronger relationships. Hope you enjoy!