Stress Reduction for the Holiday Season

Listen: Stress Reduction

The Holiday Season is fast approaching and for many, it's a mixed blessing. There are high expectations and multiple pressures to ensure happy Holiday celebrations. Everyone is run ragged and spread too thin, planning, cooking, working around conflicting family schedules, and organizing transitioning kids. The blended-family experts recommend several strategies to help reduce holiday stress around any of the above issues or helping you prioritize and implement useful strategies to make this holiday season your happiest ever.

Listen: Stress Reduction

The Wizard of Oz is in You!

Listen now: The Wizard of Oz is in You!

The Wizard of Oz is in You! is a fully interactive and enlightening way to learn and develop communication skills with a child and to learn the often hidden thoughts and emotions that motivate the behavior of a child.

The Wizard of Oz is in You! can reveal why your child THINKS the way they do, why they ACT the way they do, and can help uncover the reason they make critical choices that wind up defining their life.

Listen now: The Wizard of Oz is in You!

Award Winning Children's Books

Listen now: Award Winning Children's Books

At Blended-Families.com, we are continually looking for great resources to make a positive difference in the lives of blended families. We recently came across two award-winning children's books by David Michael Slater that we are thrilled to feature and share with you. "The Ring Bear" is about a son and mother, while "Flour Girl" is about a daughter and dad. The illustrations are delightful and make the stories come alive.

With humor and creativity these books capture the confused emotions that come up for children when they find out their father or mother plans to remarry. Parents and children alike will relate to the messages in both these stories, as well as gain some clues about ways to navigate those inevitable bumps that occur when blending families.

We highly recommend these books to anyone looking for ways to integrate a new partner into your family system.

Listen now: Award Winning Children's Books

Maintain A Healthy Relationship With Your Child

Michelle Farias' book 25 WAYS TO KEEP YOUR CHILD HEALTHY AND SUCCESSFUL - Lessons from a School Counselor, helps parents nurture healthy relationships with their kids in order to promote their well-being and success in school.

Listen to Maintain A Healthy Relationship With Your Child.

Summer Vacation is Here! Are You Ready?

Summer vacation is fast approaching and as every kid is salivating about being out of school, sleeping late and watching TV and mindless movies, parents are stressing about how to maintain a healthy balance of relaxation and productive use of free time so that the kids don't go back to school in the Fall saying they did "nothing" all summer. Blended families have the additional stress of organizing summer visitation, coordinating parent schedules and making sure the kids have structure as well as fun.

Michele Farias, a teacher and school counselor for over 25 years, addresses this very issue in her best selling book, 25 Ways to Keep Your Child Safe, Healthy and Successful: Lessons from a School Counselor. Ms Farias believes it is beneficial for kids to balance summer vacation time with productive activities because it prepares them for a successful school year ahead.

This Summer Vacation podcast contains several useful pointers for step-parents to encourage a well-balanced summer schedule.

Famous Step-Parents Kris & Bruce Jenner to Be Interviewed

In spite of what you may think of the antics of their children, Kris Kardashian and Bruce Jenner have succeeded in doing what most "normal" people struggle with -- successfully blending two step-families.

This podcast announces the interview of Kris & Bruce Jenner by Emily Bouchard, founder of Blended-Families.com.

Listen here: Bruce Jenner interview