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How you might be feeling:
 
When you become part of a stepfamily, you may face different challenges and have all kinds of different feelings and questions:


Feeling like you have to choose:
Having more than one family unit can feel like you have to choose between two different families or that you have to divide your loyalties and love between the two. This might make you feel guilty or distressed. If you feel this way, it is important you speak to your parents about it.


Getting used to new siblings:
As well as adjusting to your parents’ new partners, you may have to adjust to the partner’s children and other members of their family.


Your parents are trying to cope too:
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that your parents and their new partners might also be going through a difficult time coping with the changes too. 


Accepting and adjusting:
Like any new relationship, working out your needs and expectations within the new family can be difficult. It can also be hard to accept and adjust to a new partner in your mum or dad’s life.
For example, you may not like the idea of being knownas the ‘daughter’ or ‘son’ of your mum or dad’s new partner.

If this is the case, it is important that you let your parents know how you feel early on, so that it doesn’t continue to annoy you.

Talking to someone outside of the family can help you work out how to raise this subject if you think it might be a sensitive one.


New rules:
Your mum or dad’s new partner may want to impose certain rules as a ‘parent’ in the household. This may be difficult to accept at first, especially if the new ‘parent’ has different rules than what you’re used to. Again, it is important to talk to your mum or dad about your feelings, or someone else.


What about the past?
A new family doesn’t mean you reject or forget your experiences with your original family. You might feel a range of emotions, including grief, confusion, or anger. You might also feel like you no longer believe a happy family environment is possible. 




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