Step Parenting Power Tool: Using Family Rituals and Traditions to Create Identit

If you are in a step family and struggling for some sense of family identity, don't despair. You can enhance your feeling of togetherness with the use of family rituals and traditions.
Step Parenting Power Tool: Using Family Rituals and Traditions to Create Identity

by Ron Huxley, LMT http://parentingtoolbox.com

If you are in a step family and struggling for some sense of family identity, don't despair. You can enhance your feeling of togetherness with the use of family rituals and traditions.

Rituals allow nontraditional and traditional families to form collective identities, facilitate healing, celebrate life changes, and pass on expressions of beliefs. Rituals include daily activities, even if they are taken for granted, such as getting ready for bed, eating at the table, and watching a television program. They can also be much more elaborate, although not necessarily more symbolic, such as weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, graduations, and religious ceremonies.

Regardless of their format, rituals are an important aspect of our social lives, and parents can utilize this hidden resource in developing more intimate families. Family therapists have used the concept of rituals to help families that have been hurt by past actions toward on another or by an unexpected traumatic situation. Wedding vows have been restated by stepfamilies and have included all family members, including the children. Letters of anger and sadness have been written to unknown mothers and fathers and then ceremonially burned or destroyed as an act of saying good-bye. Marriage bands have been melted down or thrown into the middle of lakes to break emotional ties and symbolize the need for an emotional divorce, even after families have already been legally divorced. Again, how one performs these valuable tools is not as important as finding a way to signify a gain, loss, or both in the lives of families.

Often the most powerful rituals and traditions are the ones that come up naturally in a family. Forcing a tradition, in a step family especially, is a guaranteed way to create more disharmony. Keep an eye for routines and activities that bio and nonbio family members seem to enjoy. What causes anxiety and frustration to leave the home and fosters a fun, creative, or relaxed atmosphere? Do more of those things.

If you still are unable to come up with a family ritual or tradition, have a family meeting or kitchen table discussion about what members of the family would like to do on a regular basis. You might be surprised what ideas come up. If reasonable, try these suggestions until you find one (or two) that fit your newly formed family.

As children get older and situations change, rituals and traditions may leave or no longer be of interest. If they are not related to deep spiritual values, allow them to pass and look for new ones to arrive. Rituals and traditions are there to serve your family and not the other way around.

Get more ideas on how to create richer, more peaceful step families when you become a member of the ParentingToolbox.com website. We have hundreds of power parenting tools guaranteed to fit your families needs. Get exclusive charts, articles, presentations, blueprints, and expert consultation all for one low lifetime membership fee. Get the answers you need now at http://parentingtoolbox.com

Ron Huxley is the author of the book "Love & Limits: Achieving a Balance in Parenting." Visit his website at http://parentingtoolbox.com and get expert advice on anger management, mental health, and parenting issues.

The Woes of Coparenting

Co-parenting and joint custody can be tricky, but it's really all in the way you look at it.
Teri Worten is a freelance writer and the founder of the inspirational website for women and single moms called Gotta Be Me, Girl.Com. Visit Gotta Be Me Girl at http://www.gottabemegirl.com or http://www.teriworten.com. She has been featured on various television and radio shows as well as numerous publications in the metropolitan Kansas City area. Her passion is motivating and inspiring other women to reach their fullest potential.

Ms. Worten's interest also includes writing, public speaking and internet inspiration ministries. She has been featured on various Kansas City television shows, radio shows and featured in several of Kansas City's major and ethnic publications. Her hobbies include attending her church and creating and facilitating, fun, interactive workshops for women's groups. Visit her on the web at http://www.gottabemegirl.com or http://www.teriworten.com!

Parenting Teens: The Future

A look at a possible alternative for our future.

In the future, parents won't send their teenagers off to summer camp or junior high. The states came up with a better plan. On a child's 12 1/2 birthday, Mom and Dad would help him pack his bag and take him to the local Adolescent Processing Center. I am not sure why they had to pack a bag, perhaps it was a comfort fact dealing more with feeling like they were just going away for a few days.

At the processing center, Mom would sit with a social worker and fill out papers. What kind of music does he like? What is his cats name? What is his career choice? For an extra fee, would you like to interface weekly family reports?

At the same time, Dad accompanies Son to a cubicle where two medical professional meet them. Son is given a physical, says good-bye to Dad and is taken from the room. Dad waits. Later, a woman in a pink jacket leads him down a hall to a viewing window. On the other side of the window are dozens of teen-agers, each cocooned in what resembled a large vial. Some wearing headphones, others had electrodes attached to their arms and legs. Their limbs would jump as an electrical current rushed through their bodies in an attempt to keep them from atrophying.

The woman points toward a vial to his left. There is Son, resting comfortably in his vial--his home for the next 6 1/2 years.

While there, Son would be fed an education, memories of the football games that he has won, although he never leaves his vial. He dates, has birthday parties, goes on family vacations, only these things are just memories.

In the meantime, Mom and Dad don't have to worry about sexual promiscuity, failing grades, beer bashes, early pregnancy, college fees. Stasis is more cost effective than a traditional education.

The school system saves billions by only hiring teachers for grades 1-6, no extracurricular activities, no building maintenance for upper grade school buildings. In fact, those buildings were sold years ago.

Police forces are reduced, colleges are non-existent, unwanted pregnancies and abortions are down.

Health insurance rates go down, as parents are relieved of the stresses of raising teen-agers. Cases of high blood pressure have dropped by 75%, along with that is a reduction in heart problems, the use of tranquilizers, and hair lose.

When the adolescents have grown past that stage, they are brought out of stasis. They awaken with a full set of memories and a college diploma. Corporate recruiters meet them in the lobby; many will leave with a job. This was only a dream, but still, it all seems too logical. Is it a possible alternative for our future?

Betsy Gallup is a full-time mother to an 11-year-old son, and infant twins. She has had several articles, essays, and short stories published. She is now writing a non-fiction book under contract for publication, and she has recently procured an agent to represent her first novel, Destiny, a suspense/romance delving into the world of a renown psychic. With what time she has left, she operates www.whimsplace.com, a showcase for the work of talented writers.