The 9 Essential Conversations Every Blended Family Must Have

Communication Is Everything in Blended Families

Listen, if you're in a blended family or about to be in one, we need to have a real conversation today. No sugarcoating. No pretending it's all going to be perfect. Because here's the truth: 67% of most issues in a relationship have to do with communication.

That's almost two-thirds of every problem - it's a communication problem.

Genesis 2:25 tells us that "the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed or embarrassed." That's talking about transparency. In a good relationship, there should be emotional nakedness where you can receive and talk about anything - and I mean anything.

Ephesians 4:15 says we need to be "speaking the truth in love in all things." Everyone say "all things." That means the budget, the ex, the discipline issues, the stepkids who don't like you - all things. Both our speech and our lives should express truth as we grow up in all things in Christ.

You're Not Alone - Even Biblical Families Were Blended

Now raise your hand if you're in a blended family or you were raised in one. Look around the church. Look on both sides. This topic affects a lot of people, and it's becoming more the norm than most people think.

Here's something that might surprise you: Joseph in the Bible was part of a blended family. That's why he had issues with his older brothers - Daddy had another wife when he was older, and they hated him for being the favorite.

Jesus was part of a blended family. Joseph was his daddy in the natural, but God was his Father. Remember when Jesus went to the temple and said, "I must be about my Father's business"? That sounded kind of disrespectful because Joseph was his actual father, but Jesus was talking about God.

Abraham had Ishmael and Isaac - blended family. All my life, whether at my mother's house or my father's house, there were always some other people. Papa was a rolling stone - everywhere he left his hat was his home. That was my normal. I'm used to stuff being kind of different.

But here's what you have to understand: bringing two families together is going to be a process.

The Five-Year Rule You Need to Know

Research shows it takes an average of five years for you to truly blend your families together after you come together as a couple. Five years. Do you know most never get to five years?

You're not even catching your stride until five in a blended family. So you have to change your lens on your perspective and say, "We've got to work on some things to get to that spot." The complexity of it makes it so difficult to even get there.

We get frustrated in the process. But it's a process. There are different things that have to go with blending a family - you're coming together with different rules, different traditions, different ways of doing things. It's really hard to mesh those things together and come up with your own traditions as this new family.

Three Non-Negotiables for Blending Successfully

There are three things we have to do in order to blend a family properly:

1. Cooperation - And that's not just with you and your new spouse, but with all of them: your children's other parent, the custodial parent, everybody.
2. Patience - Whole bunch of patience. You're going to need it.
3. Communication - This is the key. You want to make sure that when you blend the families, you find out what the other parent's house rules are. You don't want to have a second set of house rules. Could you imagine being the child and thinking, "Okay, in this house I can do this, but I forgot I can't do that in this house, but I can do it in the other house"? Try to have one set of rules so your child isn't confused about what they should do and how they should do things.

Conversation #1: Create a Shared List of Family Values

Habakkuk 2:2 says, "Write the vision and engrave it plainly on clay tablets so that the one who reads it will run." Proverbs 29:8 says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

You have to submit what you believe. You have to create a value system that's universal. Now you can make a list of 10 things, but you're not going to get to 10. You better stop at three. What three things do we all agree on? What three things are we going to work through?

Here's your challenge: Multiple visions lead to division. Division leads to divorce.

So you have to identify what's going to be the vision of our house that we don't debate about. This is what we believe. This is what we're going to stand on. Before kids are involved, the two of you need to have a conversation about what you believe, and then adjust it for the kids.

Now listen, sometimes we get kids involved in conversations they shouldn't be in. The reason why you need a parent when you're a child is because you can't process everything - you don't know enough, you haven't lived enough life. A parent asking a child "what should we do?" is so backwards and out of order.

Acknowledging Feelings vs. Giving Authority

Now, in blended families we do have to acknowledge a child's feelings. They went through a divorce like you went through a divorce. They're dealing with not having a parent in the household when maybe they're used to having that parent in their life on a regular basis. There may be some hurt, some healing that needs to happen, maybe some therapy.

But at the same time, you have to pass off some type of authority to their new parent. If you don't, Little Johnny is going to be looking at them like "you ain't my daddy" all day long.

Passing off authority can look like you saying: "I know you have a father, and your father does not live with us right now. This is my new husband. I love you and I love my new husband. When he asks you to pick up your socks off the floor, I expect you to do that in a respectful way."

You're not asking them to call him daddy or love him the way they love their father. But you're asking for mutual respect as an adult, and that's not too much to ask.

A lot of custodial parents feel guilt because they know the child and what the child has been through. You tend to give a little bit more grace when you know all the traumas, but that does not give them a pass to disrespect an adult.

Conversation #2: Build Household Rules Together

Research recommends these top conversations you should have with your spouse before you get married:

• Whose house will we move into? The best thing research shows is to move into a new house if you can, so everything is new for everybody - neutral territory. Everyone starts on the same plane.
• What are the rules around chores, TV time, homework, sports, and curfew? You don't want a divided house where Sarah is six and John is seven, and John can stay up till midnight but Sarah has to go to bed by 9:00. It doesn't work.
• What are the consequences for not following the rules? It's got to be straight across the board. It's got to be balanced.
• Does everyone have their own room? This is huge. I spoke to one of my siblings who had to move into a house with a new stepmom and share a room with her stepsister who already had that room by herself for years. The sister didn't want to move her stuff over in the closet or give her drawers in the dresser, so she lived out of her suitcase for years. As an adult, it still hurts. That's traumatizing for a child - you're a guest in your own home.

Conversation #3: You'll See Your Spouse Differently

When you're dating, you don't know everything. But when you get in the house and you're there every day, you're like, "You know what? You are a terrible parent."

What happens when you just date and see them every now and then versus when you're actually in the house every day? Now you see their disciplinarian style. You see if they're clean or dirty. You see if their child is manipulating them.

Often times it's hard to correct our biological children in front of our new spouse because there's some guilt there. "That's my baby, don't talk to my baby like that." "Oh, don't talk to your baby? Did he just hit my baby?"

Key Questions You Need to Ask Each Other

• What was your established parenting style in your previous relationship?
• What works for you? (How do you talk to your daughter? How do you talk to your son?)
• What's not working for you?
• What's working for your kids?
• When we get married, what do you want to see change?
• Do you want to be more nurturing or more of a disciplinarian?
• Where do you want to grow as a parent?
• What are your goals for growing as a parent?

Often times you do this: "I'mma wait till your daddy get home." Why can't you say, "Talk to him"? Why wait? If it's wrong, baby, you know the house rules are X, and you didn't do that, so these are the consequences. Clarify what the consequences are beforehand.

Conversation #4: Make Schedules and Color Coordinate

This is so important because something you may prioritize in your previous relationship with your child, your new spouse may not see as being super important.

I think it would be very helpful to color-coordinate the schedule so you can identify how much time you're spending with your bonus children, with your biological children, and how much time you're spending together as a couple.

You want separate time with each set of kids because:

• If you're not spending individual time with your bonus children, they don't get a chance to really know you and grow a relationship with you
• You have to spend time with your biological child by themselves because that's what they're used to
• You have to spend time together as a family
• You have to spend time as a couple

Four categories. I know the first question is "I ain't got no more time!" I know, but here's the thing: the divorce rate is higher for blended families because you don't have any more time.

The time could be spent even if you're just sitting down eating dinner together. Everybody has to eat dinner, so just making time to eat dinner together and have a conversation with no iPads, telephones, or anything - that could be family time.

The Power of Color-Coding Your Life

Color-coordinating your schedule and seeing where you spend most of your time will really give you a wake-up call as to what you're prioritizing in your life.

I have ministry stuff one color, our family stuff one color, my appointments one color. I'm like, "Okay, wait a minute. We got way too much yellow. Yellow is ministry. Way too much yellow. I need to balance this out. Maybe I need to put a little blue in there. I need to take the kids somewhere for lunch or ice cream."

It's so important for you to make time and prioritize because tomorrow's not promised. Make sure you're spending the time you're supposed to.

I'm going to be transparent: in our family, when I looked back, we were all in on one child because of an illness. My daughter's illness absorbed all our time. When I see my baby boy, he didn't get some exposure because we were so focused on trying to get my daughter well.

I say this because as parents, life happens. When life happens, you do a full-court press to get one baby healed, but in the process of getting one baby healed, you look back and realize another child got less attention.

Every parent looks back and thinks, "I could have, I should have." But listen - there's no perfect parent. Stop beating yourself up. You did the best you could with the information you had. Get rid of the guilt trip. Get rid of the shame.

Conversation #5: Maintaining Old Traditions and Creating New Ones

It's important to maintain some traditions from your original family, but sometimes it's not received well. If my mama baked cookies with me on Christmas, I don't want you to bake cookies with me on Christmas. Your cookies don't taste like my mama's cookies. You don't sing the songs. We don't play the same music. You're not the same person.

Sometimes in a blended family you can incorporate some old traditions, but I recommend starting some new ones together that everyone agrees on.

Conversation #6: Dealing With the Ex

Oh my God. So whether it be an ex-boyfriend, ex-girlfriend, ex-wife, or ex-husband - this is a whole series right here.

Let me illustrate this with dominoes. When you play dominoes, you turn them over and wash them - mix them together. Everyone gets seven pieces. The challenge with the game is the ex has seven too.

If you have a lot of one suit, it's very easy to win. But if you have a lot of variables, it's harder to win. When you have a blended family, you have a whole bunch of variables.

When a person in a blended relationship has an ex with a good hand, they'll block your whole life. Have you all jammed up. The whole game blocked. Nobody can play. And you've got to pray.

The more people that are involved, the more variables you have. The harder it is to work it out.

Critical Conversations About the Ex

How does transition look? Where do we drop the child off? You're not dropping the baby off at her house. Where's the neutral site? We're meeting at a neutral location.

For me, I was dropped at the airport and a steward took me on the plane. I landed and the steward took me to my mama. That's how I was transferred, and I was seven or eight years old on a plane by myself. That was my life.

Speaker phone policy. What are we going to do if we're going to have a conversation? It's going to be on speaker phone. I want to know all the junk in the trunk because I can't make a good decision on bad information.

I want to know why your attitude changed when you got off the phone, because that same stank attitude you just got off the phone with? Guess who's about to deal with it?

These are conversations we have to have because when you're in a blended family, you might think you're winning one day, and all of a sudden they took you back to court. You've got a new job, came up, got a new house, new car - oh yeah, we're going back to court. You're living too good.

And you can't control what your children tell your ex. The real deal is the informer is your child. "Daddy, you should see how Mama's living. Mama got a new car and a new man."

The Reality Check You Need to Hear

This is really good stuff, and I want you to get the understanding of what you're getting into. If you don't get the proper perspective on the work that will be needed, you're setting yourself up for failure.

On average, five years before you hit your stride. Five years. So stop getting frustrated because this is what you got into.

There are relationships with the parents, other parents, friendships. Then you have to deal with the friends who used to be friends. You have to deal with the family members who liked your ex better than your new one. "Boy, you had a better one last time. Boy, I miss her. She really could cook." Just because they had a longer relationship and knew them more - it does take time.

All these things you need to talk about. The whole purpose of having this conversation is so you can limit the challenges. There will be challenges - you're not getting past that. But our goal is that we can minimize the challenges by having conversations.

Can We Talk?

The greatest gift you can give your blended family is honest communication. Speaking the truth in love. Creating space where everyone can be heard, even when it's uncomfortable.

Romans 3:23 reminds us that "all have sinned and all have fallen short of glory." None of us are perfect. We're all under construction. If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, you shall be saved.

Jesus is knocking on the door of your heart today. He understands blended families - He was in one. He understands complex relationships. He understands stepparents and biological parents and all the messiness that comes with it.

Will you let Him guide your blended family? Will you commit to having these hard conversations? Will you give it the five years it takes?

Your blended family can thrive. It just takes work, transparency, patience, and a whole lot of Jesus.

Stay Connected

Submit a prayer request

Join us online

Watch previous sermons