Successfully blending a family is never easy but it’s not impossible. Parents, stepparents, stepkids and stepsiblings all have their different experiences, feelings and concerns. All this emotion mixed with the stress of change can create an extremely difficult environment for everybody.
That is why family counseling can be beneficial for blended families. Here are some reasons why you may want to consider counseling for your family.
Changes Are Hard
Few people actually enjoy going through life changing events. Even the exciting ones like a marriage can be difficult. During these changes, people act in different and sometimes confusing ways. 
A counselor can help everybody understand, work through, and accept the changes that come through creating a blended family. Counseling can also help the family understand each others’ reactions to the situation.
This is especially important for the children when one parent gets married. It can be incredibly difficult to accept this reality, no matter how old your children are.
Counseling can also come in handy for kids when they have to get used to living with a new stepsibling. While some of these things may seem trivial to us, kids may have a much harder time adapting to even the simplest changes.
Everyone Is Emotional
Blending a family together creates a lot of emotional tension. Everyone, 
adults and children, are going to have very strong reactions – positive or negative to the situation. Since everyone is emotional it’s hard to talk about those emotions objectively. A counselor can add that objective voice to the conversation and help offer perspective and advice that isn’t emotionally charged.
Space to Talk
Counseling gives everyone a space to air their fears and concerns. Some children are quiet and won’t speak up without being asked. Other children may lash out, but have a hard time truly expressing what they’re feeling. Counseling gives everyone a space to talk about how the changes are affecting them and how they’re feeling about them.
Giving children space to open up is important moving forward. You and your spouse should also feel comfortable talking to counselors about anything particularly frustrating. Talking to a counselor can help you to understand the situation before lashing out to loved ones.
Help Develop New Relationships
Here’s a secret no one likes to say out loud: you may not love, or even like, your stepchildren right away. That’s okay! Developing a new relationship will take time and effort. Counseling can help you develop healthy relationships with your spouse’s children. You also may need help figuring out how to develop a healthy relationship with your spouse’s ex and other extended family members. Counseling can help you figure all of that out.
Create a Habit of Open Communication
Going to counseling with your blending family and giving everyone the space to express themselves is a great precedent moving forward. Children will know that their opinions and feelings matter. While you may not feel the need to go to counseling forever, you can develop skills their that will foster a relationship of open communication that can last a lifetime. Even periodic counseling for a long period of time cam help open communication between everyone. Things don’t necessarily have to be difficult or frustrating to benefit from counseling.
Blending a family is difficult, but not impossible. Going to counseling with your family can help create a positive experience for everyone involved. Families should be able to feel comfortable, safe and happy together, and this is not always the case when blending families. Counseling will help children understand and become comfortable with the situation so everyone can move forward.
Informational credit to Dalton Associates.
