Blending Families Successfully

Helping Parents and Kids Navigate the Challenges So That Everyone Ends Up Happy

By: George Glass

Narrated by: Brian Troxell

Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, less than half of the people who get married in the United States remain with their first spouse, and less than 50 percent of children grow up with both biological parents. In short, we live in a society of blended families. Everyone who survives a divorce and enters a new family is vulnerable. George Glass, MD, a board-certified psychiatrist, has designed an audiobook to help parents understand the challenges of beginning new lives with blended families, and to help their children make the necessary adjustments. He explains how to approach unavoidable dilemmas when they occur and offers invaluable lessons about the link between divorce and issues of self-esteem, depression, substance abuse, and relationship failures that often result from the breakup of a family.

Gathered from his years in practice and his own personal experience as a member of a blended family, Glass provides practical solutions to everyday problems. Blending a family, Glass explains, is a process, which requires patience. It can take a long time to develop trust, acceptance, and a willingness to overlook transgressions that in the beginning can cause tension. Each chapter offers specific advice to help blended family members improve their communication skills and ease the transitions from separate households into a larger, combined community. Taken together with a steady dose of "Dos and Don'ts", this book provides an inspiring toolkit for families in need.

©2014 George Glass (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Excellent book

Very helpful and informative It covered many topics and situations that I had not thought about.

Better for when you’re closer to marriage

Great book! I was looking for something for the beginning stages of dating/relationships with partners who have small children. This would be great for couples who are deeply committed and ready for marriage/living together.

It’s not impossible

I recommend giving this book a try. Very inspirational. It can be the difference between success and failure.

meh

predictable and repetitive... nothing innovative... but affirming wisdom for anyone seeking to blend families. left me wanting more.

Great book. Great content

This book really helped me see and learn how to properly deal with my and my significant others kids in our new blended family.

The only complaint I have is that some parts of the book are too long and hard to follow.

Great if you are not already "Blended"

This book covers a lot applicable to those in the midst of divorce or not yet in a Blended Family to give insight on one day having a Blended Family. I felt like I wanted to fast forward through the book as I'm already in a Blended Relationship. Then again, I do read a lot of self development books, so if you don't, you may still take away a lot more good insights.

Narrator is really good.

This is an autobiography

The entire book can boils down to the following advice, “Get over it & get lucky in love”. This book isn’t about blending families, it’s a recap the author’s personal story which begins and ends with biological children.

The book rarely discusses how the author incorporated his step children into his relationship.

I was also disappointed that the lengthy descriptions of his own experience wasn’t followed by actionable ways to adapt & mold to the family.

Ugh

I picked this up to get practical blended parenting tips. After 20 minutes of doom and gloom about how horrible a divorce can be and how bad the outcomes are for kids and partners, and all around negativity I had to turn it off. It seems more a diatribe about his bitter divorce than a helpful how-to for setting appropriate coparenting boundaries. Yikes.

dated

This contains some very obvious advice if you have done any kind of reading on the subject so far. The notions about discipline are a little bit dated as up-to-date evidence shows that reward is far better at changing behavior than punishment. it is also very heteronormative and it assumes that the parents have been married and divorced and are choosing to get married again versus having a long-term relationship without the institution of marriage. ultimately, it was not a very good fit for me as a psychiatric practitioner who was looking for some deeper level advice about the emotions of blending families, concerns over how I will bond with my stepchild, etc.

Another “yes divorce is bad, but . . . “ book

Obviously we are listening to these books because we are already in the process or been through it. I don’t need the whole first half of the book to talk about how bad it is and to make sure you have e exhausted all measures before divorcing. So tired of authors preaching about how you shouldn’t get divorced. If that worked, do you think the divorce rate would be so high?