Another great way to get to know your stepkids is to write letters. One year, my father insisted that we all write Christmas letters to our family members that described the past year of our lives. We were asked to include our achievements and disappointments and our dreams for the coming year. Then on Christmas, when we all gathered, we read the letters out loud to one another. For the first several years that we did this, it was a torture session as we all worked through old pain.
There were always several tissue boxes on hand. And though it certainly wasn’t fun all the time, eventually it became clear that those letters helped us to know one another and bond as a family. Cheryl, who became a stepmother to three grown children with children of their own, made her stepgrandchildren feel included in her busy life by sending them postcards every time she traveled anywhere.
Allison was a successful entrepreneur with her own interior design business who met her husband, Charles, when she was in her mid–forties. He was in the process of getting a divorce after twenty-seven years of marriage and had three kids ages 12, 18, and 19. At first, Allison’s relationship with her stepchildren was turbulent.
“When we got married, I sat down and wrote each one of the kids a letter,” she says. “And I think that letter paved the way for our strong relationships today. I wrote each one a letter based on each child’s needs and personality.
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