As it is, I am new to the parents blog, but am definitely not new to parenting or to families.com. I’m Nicole Humphrey, and I am the new parents writer and will be dedicated mostly to the topics of blended families and single parenting in this blog. I’m pretty excited to embark on these topics here at families and thought I should take a moment to introduce myself.
I am the proud (and somewhat frazzled) mother of five children. Two are mine, three are his – which makes seven of us living our life in a never-ending blender (and a house that really isn’t big enough for seven people – we’re working on that). It is my hope to share my experiences with you, provide tips and advice and hopefully learn something from some of you who might be going through the same things.
Our situation is a little bit different than a lot of blended families, in that we have custody of all five of our children who live with us full-time. They do see their opposite parent, but not as often as typical.
I have a son and daughter biologically. They are 14 (boy) and 10 (girl). They were seven and eleven when we decided to blend our families. His children are currently 9, 11 and 14 – all daughters. To make it easier, they were six, eight and eleven when we became a blended family.
The dynamics of our blended family have provided me plenty of opportunities to do public speaking engagements, write articles and provide advice for other families. They have also caused me to take a deeper look at many aspects of regular parenting and see how they work and don’t work within our blender (essentially to keep me sane, but also to actually figure things out). I am especially interested in birth order and how it affects a child in a typical two family home, as well as the changes that occur upon blending. I hope to share these things with you.
The one thing that has been hard for me to swallow for the past several years, is that most people complain that Blended Families are difficult, and tend to be dysfunctional. Could that be any more generalized? I disagree whole-heartedly. Like any family, a blended family takes work and commitment, loads of love and patience, and the general desire to want things to be good. I hope I can shed some insight, dispel some myths and just generally share experiences both good, bad and indifferent with you – to make your lives just a bit easier.
If there is ever anything you would like to see, please contact me and ask. I’m happy to help when I can.
Nicole Humphrey writes about the creative and memory preserving side of life and families in the Scrapbooking Blog and Fun Blog, provides helpful hints to blended families and single parents on the Parents Blog, and provides informative tips and advice for students, teachers and parents on the Education Blog. She also guest blogs on a variety of topics. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.