Remarrying when there are children involved is complicated. There are so many things to take into consideration. It can be a time of great happiness, but it can also be a time of chaos and misunderstanding. Communication is key. Discuss things with your new spouse and the children before the marriage has taken place. It is important that everybody is on the same page. Lots of changes are happening all at once and the more you communicate with your children the easier that transition will be for them. It gives them a chance to prepare themselves for the changes that are taking place.
Be understanding of your children. It is normal for them to feel some anxiety about this new person coming into their lives. When my parents got married I remember my brother saying to my dad once, “I’m worried. What if she is just like the wicked step mother on Cinderella?” We laugh about it now, but it was a big change for all of us. We went from having three kids to six. Things were crowded and I’ve mentioned before that I wasn’t too fond of the idea of my mother getting married again. Ideally children want their parents to be together. When one of them remarries it erases that hope from the children’s mind. They are likely to be going through several different emotions during this time and they may not know how to deal with them. It may help for the family to see a therapist in the beginning. It may help the children especially to deal with their emotions and to be able to express them effectively.
One of the most important things to work on when you remarry is bringing the two families together as one. Your goal is to be one family. No more your kids and my kids. They are all “our kids” and you have to treat them as such. It takes a lot of work in the beginning, especially when the emotions are running high among the children. One of the things that I think is important is to refer to all the children as your children. This isn’t my step-daughter, this is just my daughter. You may not be blood, but you are still family. It is something that takes a lot of work, but as time goes on it just becomes natural. Nobody thinks twice about it because family is family no matter how it happened.