Life...

Grandparents

Instead of having two sets of grandparents on the scene, the kids now have up to five sets hanging around:

• The husband's parents.
• The first wife's parents.
• The second wife's parents.
• The second wife's first husband's parents.
• The wife's new husband's parents.

Some of these will be focused on the husband and wife's children. Others will be focused on other children in the family.

If the second wife's parents live right in the neighborhood and visit with the family all the time, this may make the first wife's children sad, because their grandparents live far away. The second wife's parents should try to include the first wife's children in their activities when they visit.

Also, the first wife's children can end up feeling very hurt if their step-siblings get much nicer presents from the other grandparents than they do. This is a delicate balance for all concerned. Ideally, grandparents will be sensitive to this issue and try to remember all the children (custodial or not) roughly equally.

From the parents' perspective, each parent must deal with all these grandparents. They all encourage the grandparents to develop relationships with the children, knowing that the grandparents can be examples of stability in the children's lives.

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