With its strong focus on family, the holiday season can sometimes pose challenges for blended families, especially when children travel from one parent’s home to another. Yet, despite this busy time, stepdads need to inspire positive experiences with their partner’s children to strengthen bonds that, let’s face it, can be fraught with tension or resentment.
In the best cases, kids form close bonds with their stepdads and enjoy the positive impact they can have on their young lives. But it takes commitment to nurture and develop this bond into genuine familial relationships based on love and respect.
Here’re seven tips to help stepdads win at Christmas with their stepkids.
1. Stepdads in the Kitchen
Even if you’re not at home in the kitchen, much less with a mixing bowl, invite the kids for a Christmas cookie-making session. If this happens to be Mom’s specialty, create an experience where you and the kids bake her some holiday treats together.
Play some Christmas music, put on some aprons, and get baking.
2. The Winter Zoo
In most cases, zoos stay open in winter and may even offer special events during the holidays. Unfortunately, few people think about paying animals a visit when it’s so cold or when many other holiday events are taking place.
Bundle up and spend a morning or afternoon visiting wildlife and top it off with hot chocolate from a nearby coffee shop.
3. Pick Out the Christmas Tree
Choosing a Christmas tree and transporting it home is exciting. Stepdads and stepchildren can share this unique experience to create a lasting memory. Stepdads can also help little kids decorate the tree and lift the youngest to place the star on the tree’s top.
Similarly, for an extra special tree-trimming activity, take a walk together in a nearby forest preserve, gathering pine cones, small twigs, and other organic material to create a nature-inspired garland for the tree.
4. Shop for Mom
Plan a Christmas shopping afternoon with your stepchildren and help them choose gifts for Mom. This can be a fun way to bond while getting some holiday shopping done. Be sure to also include some fun activities like riding the mall merry-go-round together, enjoying pizza for lunch, or taking funny photos in a mall photo booth.
5. Get Out in the Snow
Winter activities like sledding, making a snowman, or taking a sleigh ride can strengthen family bonds and consequently, bring you closer to your stepkids. If you live in a warmer region, find another activity the kids are sure to enjoy, like horseback riding or an indoor water park. On the other hand, If you’re surrounded by snow during Christmas, bundle up and go build a snowman.
Bonus tip: Stepdads can help mom out by leaving her alone to wrap presents and bonding with her kids at the ice skating rink. If your stepkids don’t know how to skate, you can introduce them to this experience.
6. Have Future Conversations over Hot Chocolate
Being a stepdad is not always an easy task, and many stepchildren will feel like you’re taking their mommy away from them. Well, build plans for the future. If mom is ‘the one,’ sit down with her and the kids and talk about the future.
Ask the kids what they want to be when they grow up. Decide if more children are in the picture for the future and your living situations.
Having an open conversation about the future and moving into a new home as a family can, for instance, break those barriers. If the living together conversation goes well, you could even look online for available houses for sale and include the children in the process. The majority of kids love swimming, maybe a new house with a pool for next Christmas?
7. Volunteer
Stepdads and stepkids can bond together by doing something wonderful for others together. Consider volunteer opportunities in your area. See if you and the kids can volunteer at a local food pantry or soup kitchen, a nursing home, or your local animal shelter.
If you can’t find any last-minute ways to volunteer, you can always shop together for some holiday toys to drop off for children in need.
In conclusion, Stepdads and stepkids can forge strong relationships, but it takes positive experiences to support these bonds. Consider trying out these tips this Christmas and holiday season. They can add so much joy to this special time of the year.
