Hello, stepparents and welcome. I am delighted to have you join me today because I had the special privilege of interviewing the fabulous Dr. Patricia Papernow, who is the world’s leading expert in step parenting and blended family dynamics. Today’s episode will be just part 1 of my interview with her. I’m so excited to have you join me. Without further ado, here we go …
MARIA NATAPOV:
Hi, everybody. Thank you for joining us. We are here with the fantastic Dr. Patricia paper now. Welcome. We’re so excited to have you. Dr. Paper now is an internationally recognized expert on stuffy Emily’s she integrates a deep understanding of the research with four decades of clinical practice and a wide variety of clinical modalities including psycho educational, systemic and trauma informed the recipient of the award for distinguished contribution to family psychology from the APA couple and family division. Dr. Papernow is the author of one of the classic books in the field Surviving and Thriving in Step Family Relationships: What Works and What Doesn’t.
And with Karen Bonnell, The Stepfamily Handbook: From Dating, to Getting Serious, to Forming a Blended Family as well as dozens of articles and book chapters. Dr. Papernow is a psychologist in private practice in Hudson, MA and director of the Institute for Stepfamily Education. We are so excited to speak with you! Clearly, without a doubt you are an expert in this field. And it’s such a pleasure to get to pick your brain and have you share your wisdom with us. If you could speak a little bit more to, I believe you’ve mentioned there’s step families and there’s blended families.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Same thing. I mean, there are people who say blended families is when both parents, both adults, bring kids. A blended family in my world is if one adult brings kids from a previous relationship that is a stepfamily or a blended family. They are the same thing.
MARIA NATAPOV:
That makes a lot of sense. And if you could illuminate what the differences are in stepfamilies who continue the struggle or have more of a struggle vs. the ones that have success. What is it that they do? Like, what are the concrete most important pieces to focus on to bring about hopefully more success or at least more ease? Because it can be such a struggle sometimes, for all of us. There’s just so many priorities and stakeholders and things to juggle.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
It’s complicated. It’s a complicated family form. Well, I would say let me think about that. First of all struggling step families tend to be more blaming of each other or withdrawing. They tend to go in with a less realistic picture of what it’s going to be and then they hold on to it tight. Straining to blend and upset when not blending. So, the parent is upset “stepparent does not treat my kid the same as she treats her kid.” I love my kids. I have seven step-grandchildren, I just had my first belly grandchild – my daughter had a baby. I love my step grandkids my heart flies open to my own grandchild.
There are plenty of stepparents who feel as loving of step grandchildren as they do of grandchildren. But it’s pretty normal that stepchildren are just not as in love. For lots of reasons – “It’s not my kid, and that kid may not be happy that I’m here, so they turn away, and my partner has to turn away to take care of that kid. And that kid does things that I stepparent find irritating that are normal for that kid.” My daughter loves to stand in front of the TV and TV sorry refrigerator and eat that was quite irritating to my husband. Yeah, I’m fine with it.
I was a single mom I’m glad to have her stand in front of the refrigerator and figure out what to eat. So, there are a lot of reasons that stepparents just don’t open in this same way. And kids don’t. Really little ones do. So that’s the first thing if you’re straining if you’re as a stepparent feel like you’re failing because you don’t love your step kid the way that you love your own kid or their way You want to. And if you as a parent feel your partner is just not trying hard enough. That’s going to be tougher.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Yeah. What do you suggest that they can do? Say they identify? Okay, they’re … the alarm is going off. Yes, you’ve nailed it, this is what’s going on. Is there something they can do in that moment?
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
I think just having things normalized can be very helpful. I just saw a couple last year that I hadn’t seen for 15 years. They came back for just a little help with adult now kids. Now the step kids or adults, somebody was getting married, there was some glitches. And she said, she was the stepmom, “You were so helpful. It was transformative.”
And I always want to know, “Well, what did I do that was so helpful?” And she said, “Insiders and outsiders. Just know that I am an outsider and mine feeling left out is normal. It is not a sign that something is wrong with me.” It can be very, very, very helpful. And the other thing is as a stepparent, you’re going to need more comfort from the parent, because you’re being pushed away all the time.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Right. Yes. Yeah, it’s like tending to your own needs is what I’m hearing you say, which is so absolutely true. And I think it’s true for all of us really, regardless of the situation, but particularly, in these situations, because the home is usually our safe space.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Yes. That’s well put. And it’s not safe for us.
MARIA NATAPOV:
It’s not that it requires a lot more effort, a lot more like watching your every move. Being careful, especially in those early stages. And putting in more effort to really either be mindful of your own actions or your own, you know, what are you bringing to the table? How much tension?
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
And taking breaks. You know, sometimes that’s harder for parents, parents say, but we’re a family. I don’t need to go away when my kids are here. Well, yeah, but when your kids are here, this stepparent is an outsider. First of all hard for the step parent, and kids want time along with their own parents. One of the things we haven’t talked about yet that successful stepfamilies do is, they do spend time together to begin to make a way to be to do fun things together, to begin to make some rituals and traditions.
But my colleague Ron Diehl says, “You do not make a birthday tradition with one birthday.” You need five or six before it’s a tradition. So, stepfamily traditions are brand new. Stepfamilies do need to do fun things together. However, and stepfamilies also need one to one time. Every time the whole family is together, there’s competition. Come close, the kids feel left out. If a parent is close to the kid, the stepparent feels left out.
So, the couple needs time without kids, the parent and child need time without stepparents or stepsibs. And the other thing is stepparents and stepchildren need some time alone together to do fun, low key shoulder to shoulder things. Because the parent is there, that relationship is so much stronger. It will always trump the stepparent-stepchild relationship.
MARIA NATAPOV:
You’re so right. And you know, it just gives them an opportunity to learn more. And to bow up those bonds have their own unique thing and their own unique either interest or just their own hobby.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
If you’re lucky as a stepparent, you’ve got something that one or both of your stepkids are interested in that there’s not another adult that does. You know, a stepparent loves to play soccer and neither parent is very athletic. If stepparent loves to cook, kid can cook with stepparent. Now, if mom is also a good cook in the other household, that may be kind of tricky. You want to find something else to do.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What I’m hearing you say is the stepparent can just have an open mind and just choose something that there’s an open window for, in a sense.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
It’s called affinity building or affinity retaining, and some kids will be more open than others. Th other thing that happens in struggling stepfamilies is when stepparents are struggling, parents will say, “You’re not trying hard enough.” The truth is some kids are going to be more open. And especially adolescent girls, the age my daughter was when I met my second husband, will be 13, the worst. But I hadn’t read that research yet.
But I certainly lived it. 11, 12, 13, 14 year-old girls have a really, really hard time when a parent re-couples. So as a stepparent, I say, look around. Pick the easiest kid. Simple one to one things. And if you’ve got a tough kid, see something you’re interested in that you could get interested in. “Well, she just plays on a computer. I don’t know anything about computers.” “So, see if she’ll teach you something.” Kids can teach grownups things. See if she’ll teach you something. Just say, “I’m an idiot. I don’t know how to do this.”
MARIA NATAPOV:
That’s so true. Just getting curious and wanting to know anything they would be willing to share, essentially. Yeah. That’s such a wonderful way in, to start.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
And if you can’t get in, it’s painful. And you need to go get a hug. Yeah. And it’s not because your stepparent isn’t trying hard enough. Maybe the cheer he needs is to soften up a bit. But you know, your kid is in a loyalty bond with her mother. And she’s uninterested in this stepmom, and this stepmom is trying and will keep trying. But she needs to come to you behind closed doors and get hugs, love hugs, because it’s hard.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Yeah, that’s such a wonderful thing to recognize. And you’re so right just naming these things and knowing that it is common is helpful. What I’m almost hearing through our conversation is that a blend in the blended family, almost might not happen. It’s so challenging. So it’s best to almost put that as it would be nice, but not even making it a goalpost. Because you’re right, it can be so painful, every time that things are either feeling like they’re getting in the way or it’s not moving in that direction.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Yeah. If you’re straining to blend, actually, one of the things that I say is a better metaphor than blending. Blending is like if you take frozen blueberries, and frozen strawberries and you make, you know, a drink out of it, if I’m together. Becoming a stepfamily’s much more like you have a group of Japanese and a group of Italians, and you’re telling them to live closely together. And what does that mean?
The Italians are outgoing and a bit aggressive, and their energy is offensive to the Japanese. Japanese are more controlled. They tend to avoid conflict. And then Italian says that looks cold to me. What does that mean about how things are going to unfold over time? One of the things I talked about is learning by goofing. You can learn by, you know, stepmother puts colored lights on the tree and stepdaughter burst into tears and runs upstairs.
Stepmother could say, “Stepdaughter ruined Christmas.” Or she could say, “Gee, that’s disappointing. What happened?” Turns out the kid’s used to white lights. That’s one more change. That change is hard for kids. And so once you understand that, what do you do? Maybe half the tree has colored lights half has white. You can have a white lights tree. Colored light’s tree. I mean who knows what you’re going to work out?
MARIA NATAPOV:
Right. It almost sounds to me as you’re describing that for those kinds of things and certainly around holidays in particular we want traditions, but you mentioned having, I forget what you refer to it in your book, but you call it thickening up the …
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Thickening middle ground.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Thickening the middle ground. Thank you. I was gonna say connector.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Right! That’s exactly right. You got it right.
MARIA NATAPOV:
And I really love that concept. And I so agree. And in theory, it makes such perfect sense and I absolutely love that you talk about it. But it almost seems like a great a great place to start is to come with a clean slate to the child and say, “Hey, what would be a really cool brand new tradition or thing that you want to try to incorporate?” And that way it’s like there’s none of the loyalty bind.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Kids don’t really know what a tradition is. I just gave a blurb for a good book about called Preparing to Blend, by Ron Diehl. He’s Christian and religious. And in some of his books the couple is special and comes first but bleeds through sometimes, but not this book. And one of the things he said, “If you ask a child – Do you want a traditional or a non-traditional wedding? The child doesn’t know what a traditional wedding is.”
But you could watch YouTube videos of stepfamily weddings and see what you like and don’t like. Kids often don’t know – this is learning by goofing – what matters. In my first stepfamily – my first husband had two kids, we had a child together and then we divorced and I I’m in my second marriage for 25 years. But in my first marriage we had our first Christmas, that’s so happy we’re having Christmas together. Halfway through my stepdaughter burst into tears and runs upstairs.
I knew enough to, you know it was disappointed, but I knew enough to go after and she was sobbing and sobbing “jammas, jammas, jammas” it turns out we’re in our pajamas. Oh, no, we weren’t in our pajamas. We were dressed. She was upset that Christmas happens in pajamas. Now in own a pair of pajamas either of us at the time. Christmas happens in pajamas, but she couldn’t even have said that. She saw us dressed fully. So it’s not easy to find language for this stuff. But you can try something and you can say “Let’s all talk about what did you like best?”
MARIA NATAPOV:
Yeah, I love the debrief.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
“What did you like less? What was funnest? What was hardest? What should we do more of? What should we do the same? And let’s hear from everybody. We’re not gonna argue and try to agree. We’re just gonna hear from everybody. That helps.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Absolutely. Almost like from the onset be okay with making mistakes like almost expect things are going to go wrong.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
And mistakes are hard. You know, golfing is hard. My stepdaughter runs upstairs in tears, I’m like “squeek”. So it’s all governed arousal.
MARIA NATAPOV:
And who wants to see that?
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
You have to expect the spike of arousal and then, “ahhh.” And you know, things do change over time. I mean, look, I always like to talk about the refrigerator in my house. My husband’s last name is Goldberg. My daughter could go through the entire kitchen actually, not just the refrigerator, and point to foods when we’re first together. Papernow, Papernow, Papernow, Goldberg, Goldberg, Goldberg. So of course all the sugar cereals were Goldberg. The whole wheat cereals were Papernow. In the refrigerator, the whole milk was Goldberg, the mayonnaise was Goldberg, the red meat was Goldberg.
The entire fruit and vegetable compartments were Papernow. The skim milk was Papernow, the chicken and the fish were Papernow. What else? Low fat mayo. That was your 1. About your 2, year 4, my husband and I joined Weight Watchers – red meat has a lot of points. So he started to eat chicken, he would only eat fish fried. He started to drink skim milk.
We’re now year 25. If you look in our refrigerator, it has actually soymilk, we both drink. There is only real mayonnaise, he still will not touch low fat mayonnaise, it’s not even mayonnaise and his world. There’s chicken. I eat a little more red meat than I used to. Vegetable drawer – entirely Papernow he’s still doesn’t touch it. He was actually made to eat his vegetables – that ruined it completely. However, he eats a lot of fruit now. So the fruit is both of us, the skim milk is both of us, or silly milk …
MARIA NATAPOV:
I love that visual so much, Dr. Papernow the way that it’s incremental change, and it can get there and just we don’t have to … ah … maybe some things, like you say, we’ll never budge on or we’ll never agree on and that’s okay. And then other things can flow.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Come slowly. You know, if you go back to Japanese and Italian we’re not going to become a family by making everybody eat pasta with chopsticks. That’s the backfire. We find a few things. How do we try our Japanese food? They try out Italian food. How do we we all like Indian food? I’m just making that up. How do we find a few things we can do together? And how do we make them for Us and Them in that we’re making a We?
MARIA NATAPOV:
Yeah. I love that so much. Really powerful stuff. I really loved our conversation. I think there’s been so many fantastic and really important nuggets here. And I just know that the audience will have gotten a lot out of it. Where they and ask keep up with everything you have going on?
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Well, the first thing is that the two books are really there’s so much garbage out there. There are tons and tons of blogs and books and twitter feeds full of advice but they’re mostly one person’s experience and a lot of it is pretty misleading and some of it is quite destructive. So my two books, Surviving and Thriving and Step Family Relationships and the newer one, The Step Family Handbook, are really evidence-based.
The Step Family Handbook where the subtitle is From Dating to Becoming Serious to Forming a Blended Family, that starts much earlier and goes step by step. It was written for the public. There’s a little less step family in it more of step by step by step. A lot of good ex-spouse stuff in it, a little less stepparent in it. Surviving and Thriving and Step Family Relationships is entirely focused on step families. It was written for both clinicians and people and step families and seems to be accessible to anybody both step family members and clinicians. The person who designed it laid it out beautifully.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Yeah, I’ve read it and it really is.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Isn’t it designed well?
MARIA NATAPOV:
So well designed.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Very visually accessible.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Yeah. And then it gives you even some literal visuals to reference but I also love the, the multifaceted examples. And the real like, it was just such an aha moment of like, “Yes! I’ve been there. I know exactly what that’s like.” It’s so refreshing. And yes, such a weight off of I would think anybody’s shoulders to recognize, “Oh, yeah, this this common. It’s okay.”
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
I can tell you people still say, “Oh, I just read your book. I wish I’d read it earlier.” The thing is, some people don’t like to read I have a kid with language-based learning disability. So that’s made me very sensitive to some people just don’t like to read, find reading difficult. My website, and you can find it just by Googling my name. Patricia Papernow, but my website is www.StepFamilyRelationships.com.
There are radio interviews and videos on it. And there’s an hour long video that a lot of people have told me they really like. But there are videos of all different lengths. The radio interviews are mostly a half hour you can listen to them in your car. Listen to them is you’re walking. So if you don’t like to read or you want to take something in another way, that’s accessible. And also Surviving and Thriving and Step Family Relationships is an audiobook now.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Oh, fantastic. Is it through audible? Or?
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
I assume it’s through audible. I haven’t tried it. But that is available on Amazon. It has to be on Audible. Don’t you think? I have to go look. I shouldn’t go look.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Fantastic. It was such a pleasure speaking to you. And we so appreciate all of your wisdom. And we’ll definitely be keeping an eye out on more from you.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Well, thank you. And thank you for getting this information out. Really, that means a lot to me for it to be in the hands of people who can use it to make our lives better.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Absolutely. Well, it was lovely. And we appreciate you.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Take care.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Take care. Bye. Bye.
Thank you so much for joining me for this incredible interview. It was such a true privilege and an honor to speak to Dr. Papernow. She’s so full of wisdom and insights and I know that I’m coming away with so much from this conversation and I hope you guys are too. I will see you next week. Until next time, be well.
Want more? Listen to Part 1 and Part 2 of this interview for more of Dr. Papernow’s tips and insights!
Related Episodes:
Interview with Dr. Patricia Papernow: Part 1
Interview with Dr. Patricia Papernow: Part 2
Stepparenting Feels Like a Culture Clash
Links for this show:
Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships: What Works and What Doesn’t
The Stepfamily Handbook: From Dating, to Getting Serious, to Forming a “Blended Family”
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