FamilyLife Today®

Ron Deal: Even if you're going to say yes to an ex-spouse around a schedule change, for example, you need to check first with your spouse. Go to that marriage, confirm, check in. I want you to know this is not about me caring for her. This is about my kids and the schedule, and I feel like we're going to have to make this change and it is such a pain and I'm so sorry. I just want to let you know what this is and what it isn't. That sort of stuff matters.

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Hey, how often did our parenting disagreements lead to emotional distance or conflict in our marriage?

Ann Wilson: We never had any parenting conflict. We agreed on everything. Did we agree on anything? Here's what I would agree on: I always had to be the bad guy and you were the good guy.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, that's the way it sort of worked, and I'd redo it if I could. But now they're adults and we've got grandkids. But I think parenting conflict is part of marriage.

Ann Wilson: Oh, absolutely.

Dave Wilson: But today we're going to talk about parenting conflict in blended families. I grew up with a stepmom and I watched—I mean, it's a real deal. And speaking of deal, we've got Ron Deal, who oversees our FamilyLife Blended, the largest equipping ministry for blended families in the world. He's with FamilyLife and he's with us today. So Ron, welcome to FamilyLife Today.

Ron Deal: Hey, it's great to be with you guys. You know how much I love you and how much I love being with you on this program.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, we love having you on. But before we start talking about parenting, tell us about the upcoming Blended and Blessed livestream.

Ron Deal: The big news about Blended and Blessed 2026 is it's free. It's a free livestream, and it is free for churches to host it. You can put a group together—small group, large group, doesn't matter—it's still free for you to livestream that. We're going to be Saturday, April 18th in Oklahoma City. Yes, there's a live audience. Anybody within 100 miles of Oklahoma City, come see us. We'd love to have you there. Small cost for them to cover their lunch cost, but essentially the entire day is free.

We've got a great lineup. Cathy Lipp is back with us. She is just hilarious and fun. Gala Grace, who's on our team—you guys know how solid she is. Davey and Kristie Blackburn from the Nothing is Wasted ministry. And Sheryl Shumake, who is one of our favorites around here. I guess I'm going to be there too, and Brian Goins, another one of our favorites. He's going to be emcee as we talk about Hope for the Journey. That's our theme this year. People can check it out at blendedandblessed.com.

Dave Wilson: Hopefully that thing will be filled up and people will watching on livestream.

Ann Wilson: It's free! Who wouldn't want to do this? This is going to be some of the best talks on these topics that you're going to ever get, so sign up.

Dave Wilson: Okay, how common are parenting disagreements in blended families?

Ron Deal: Couples in first marriages tend to fight about the hot topics: sex, money, in-laws, that kind of stuff. Blended family couples tend to fight about parenting. They tend to fight about co-parenting with a former spouse and kids moving back and forth. It's the parenting stuff that really ignites conflict in their relationships.

Around here we've said it before on this program: at the intersection of Parenting Street and Marriage Avenue in blended families, there's a lot of accidents that happen right there. So everything that is a parenting conflict becomes a marital issue really fast for blended family couples.

By the way, if there's something going on in the other home that's a parenting-related thing, that ripples through the co-parenting relationship into your home. The next thing you know, you're having conflict in your marriage. So couples really have to shore up their parenting teamwork in blended families so they can protect their marriage and work on the between-home dynamics with co-parents on behalf of their kids. This is a really important subject.

As you guys know, there's a lot of people who fall into this category. The Barna report that FamilyLife helped to sponsor found that 53% of all children under age 18 are living in some sort of complex family environment: single parent home, moving between mom's house and dad's house, or a blended family home, or they will have a step-parent in their lifetime. This is a super relevant discussion for a lot of people watching.

Dave Wilson: Not long ago you were talking with Gala Grace on the FamilyLife Blended podcast about this. What was the topic that day?

Ron Deal: We were talking about the common traps that blended family couples fall into as it relates to parenting and marriage. What we're going to do today is share a portion of that conversation. If there's not a step-parent in your home, I bet you know somebody who could benefit from this. We want to ask you to share it with them and keep listening yourself to learn something that does apply to you, because there's always a takeaway somewhere.

Gala Grace is on our team here at FamilyLife Blended. She's a writer, speaker, and does a fabulous job. She's a regular contributor to our big events like Blended and Blessed, and she hosts our Women and Blended Families livestream that is a monthly on social media and available on YouTube.

Ann Wilson: This is going to be good. Let's play a portion of episode 146 of the FamilyLife Blended podcast with Ron Deal and Gala Grace.

Gala Grace: When the biological parent gets paralyzed. This is a pretty common dynamic. You become protective of your kids and so then you don't do the thing of disciplining and then the step-parent steps in. That's not a good combination.

Ron Deal: Exactly. So being paralyzed, what's at the heart of that? I think guilt for some people and fear. Let's unpack both of those. Guilt would be, "My kids have been through a lot." Sometimes it's, "I did something in my first marriage that led to a lot of pain for my children and it's made life difficult for them, and I can't get away from my own guilt of what I did." Sometimes it's just general guilt that life has not brought them good things. You weren't necessarily personally responsible for causing the end of your first marriage, for example, but you still feel responsible in some general way.

Gala Grace: We never want our kids to go through hard things. They've gone through something hard if you've ended up in a remarriage. There's something that's happened back here.

Ron Deal: That's right. You just feel bad about it. That guilt ends up paralyzing you today because you think they've been through enough.

Gala Grace: Right. I'm just going to slide on this whole parenting thing.

Ron Deal: I'll let them decide what time they go to bed rather than tell them what time they're going to go to bed. That's the guilt thing. What about the fear?

Gala Grace: I think you're just fearful of what is this parenting thing going to look like as you try to parent with someone who's a step-parent to them. Are they going to do it the same way? How's the child going to react to it?

Ron Deal: I just thought of another one. People who have another home—most do. Children are going to the other home and there's fear about what they're being taught or what's the character example that's being set for them over there.

Gala Grace: Or if I'm the bad guy here, are they just going to go live over there?

Ron Deal: Right, losing contact and connection with your kids. So the influence of the other home and so I feel like I have to parent opposite of what the other home is doing and that paralyzes my ability to take initiative and do things here.

Gala Grace: Then there's an ex-spouse in this other home, so how are they going to react to it? Are they going to give us pushback and just create more stress on the kids?

Ron Deal: The reason we're putting words on them for you, the listener, is you just need to know this about yourself so that you can say, "That's what it is." This is where you then have agency. You get to make a choice about what you're going to do about that guilt or that fear.

You're going to decide whether you let that dominate your parenting or not. I think the temptation is still there even though you know what it is, but if you can't put words on it, you don't even realize how much it's paralyzing you.

Gala Grace: I always tried to look at the long-term effect. Is this going to serve my child well in the long run? It's not, if you're becoming paralyzed in your parenting.

Ron Deal: So good. Okay, so that's the first one. The second one, this is for step-parents: acting like you're trying to erase and replace the other biological parent. Let's say you're a stepfather and the kids have a biological dad. You jump in there and say, "I'm the new sheriff in town. This is the way it's going to work."

Gala Grace: You're going to call me Dad.

Ron Deal: All of those high-demand sort of things. Essentially you're acting like you are erasing and replacing their biological father. What that does is it sends a very strong message to the children. You may not intend to send this, but you are saying to them, "I'm better than your dad. Your relationship with your dad is intimidating to me and therefore a threat to me, and therefore I'm going to try and diminish your relationship to your father."

Wow. Just think about that for a minute. Imagine actually saying to one of your stepchildren, "Your relationship with your dad is really unimportant and you should not be loyal to him and listen to him. I should be the guy in your life who takes that spot in your heart." Can you imagine saying that out loud?

Gala Grace: No, and the alarms that will go up with that stepchild.

Ron Deal: Exactly. That kid's going to look at you as unsafe and untrustworthy. You are now a threat to me and my relationship with my dad and so guess who gets erased and replaced? You do. This totally backfires.

That's just the child's reaction. Imagine your spouse's reaction when they pick up on all of that. Then they're against you, too. Now you've got a marital problem. None of this is helpful. You can't say that. And you certainly can't say erase and replace to the biological dad directly, whether to the child or to the bio-dad. That is not your place. The good news is, you don't have to erase anybody.

The one thing we like around here about the word "bonus," and just this week I heard somebody in Denmark use the word "extra"—you're an extra parent. That sort of works for them there. The idea of that is really great because if I have to erase you, there's only one spot where I can stand or you can stand and one of us has got to go.

"Bonus" or "extra" says there are multiple spots. There's room for all of us here. Dad's going to stand in his spot and be Dad as it should be. I'm going to come along and stand in my own place, be my own person, have my own influence, and find my own relationship with you, child. We're going to be okay, separate and apart from whatever is going on with your relationship with your dad.

Gala Grace: Right. But what about when the biological dad does feel threatened by the step-parent? We talk sometimes about this "no-threat message" that we might need to send to the biological parent.

Ron Deal: Do you mind unpacking that?

Gala Grace: We actually did this with my husband and my former husband because he was feeling very threatened by Randy in regards to his relationship with my girls. We had a meeting with him and Randy just said, "Listen, I want to be an additional person that loves and encourages and is there for these girls. I'm not trying to replace you." It was very helpful.

Ron Deal: We have got a video that unpacks the no-threat message and how you can lay it out and say it and what form it will take. We're going to get that up on YouTube so we'd love for you to look that up and I think it'll be really helpful.

Gala Grace: That doesn't have to be done in person. You can even just do it through an email if it feels better, but just sending the message that I'm not trying to replace you as the bio-parent.

Ron Deal: One more story about this because you just sparked a memory. We had a woman contact us one time who said, "I read about the no-threat message." She had read it in the *Smart Stepmom* book and she said, "I knew that my relationship with my husband's ex-wife was so poor that I couldn't communicate the no-threat message directly. Not even through an email."

Obviously there's a lot of water under that bridge. She said, "I just resolved in my heart to send the no-threat message to my husband's ex through her children. I said kind things about her to her children when they were at our home. I told positive stories and I asked about her and their relationship with her and I celebrated their relationship with her."

She said her hope was her kids would leave her house and go to her house and sort of somehow convey those messages. Four years later she sends me a picture of her and this other woman standing side by side. She said, "We have a very cordial relationship today. When she brings the kids over, she usually comes in and we visit for a little bit. Here she's drinking tea and we're having a conversation. When I go and pick them up, we usually say hi and we meet at the soccer field."

She said, "As a matter of fact, you'll see in this picture this woman's holding a child, an infant." She said, "That's my baby. We just had a baby, my husband and I, and she's holding my baby. I trust her that much." What a transformation. But it's because she resolved to not be a threat.

Gala Grace: Well, and it started with her heart. So what's in her heart spilled over and it was contagious all the way around. That's beautiful.

Ron Deal: And it just goes to show you you can communicate the right message or the wrong message through the children, even without words.

Ann Wilson: You're listening to FamilyLife Today and we're listening to a portion of the FamilyLife Blended podcast with Ron Deal. To learn more about this ministry, visit familylife.com/blended. All right, let's get back to the conversation.

Ron Deal: Let's do another one. Unilaterally trying to right the wrongs in a child's life of bio-parent's parenting or the parent-child relationship. You give an example here and I've heard Laura Petherbridge talk about this. She really had issue with the diet of her stepsons and was determined she was going to fix it. It backfired in a huge way.

Gala Grace: Yes, you can make enemies real fast.

Ron Deal: It comes from a good heart. So many people want to do something that's helpful for the children. But the keyword here is unilateral. It's not that you see something and you want to try to speak into it. You should be cautious about even in the beginning of your blended family journey. Try to go through your spouse, their biological parent, rather than directly to the children.

Unilateral means you haven't even talked to your spouse. You're just making a decision. "I'm changing the food you eat whether you like it or not and whether husband, you care about it or not." That was Laura's situation. That's just really dangerous. Even though you have good intentions, it probably will backfire on you because people don't always understand your intentions. They don't know you well enough to trust you that much and it just feels like you're invading their territory.

Gala Grace: So you have at least start by talking to your spouse about that, the parent of those children. That's the starting point. And then if they're saying no-go, then you don't.

Ron Deal: Then you don't. Here's another one: the biological parent is easily defensive or dismissive of the step-parent's observations or suggestions.

Gala Grace: That is so dangerous because Randy had an objective opinion about my girls that sometimes I couldn't see because I was entangled emotionally in a way that he wasn't. He could see some things. If I was just defensive about it all the time, then I wasn't going to want to change what he was saying needed to change, and he really brought some things to the table that I needed to recognize.

Ron Deal: Let's unpack that because I think the hard part about all of this is you're saying something's wrong with my children? You're sort of saying I've been a bad parent or there wouldn't be something wrong with them. So it feels like a double whammy here, and that's the defensive part.

Gala Grace: Right. But if it comes from a place of love and they tell you that to start, then that's what makes a difference. So when he presented it, it would be, "Gala, you know I love your girls. You know I want what is best for your girls. But here's some things that I'm seeing that I think we need to talk about."

Ron Deal: You got to slow down the defensiveness. You got to open up and try to be more objective. And then I always tell people make sure your heart gets communicated. "My desire is to help your girls. I really want to see them learn more responsibility. And I want to be a blessing to them so I'm just wondering if we can talk about this."

That gets the positive intent out on the table rather than "Oh man, we got some problems in this house we got to deal with." That's harsh.

Gala Grace: It's not to say that we did it all perfectly in the beginning because we didn't. Sometimes he did start harsher or I did get defensive. But we learned from it and eventually I could hear what he was trying to tell me. The truth is, my oldest daughter has struggled with anxiety. And that's what he was seeing. I was blaming it all on the new marriage, the divorce, she just can't cope, but there was a deeper issue there that needed to be addressed.

Ron Deal: So it turned out to be a good thing.

Gala Grace: It did, because we got her into counseling and she really thrived when she got the help that she needed.

Ron Deal: To that end, step-parents do have something to offer. Sometimes that outsider can just pinpoint something or see it because they're not so wrapped up in it like you are. Doesn't mean you're right all the time.

Gala Grace: That's a good point because we do know our kids.

Ron Deal: Exactly. But there's something there. What if you disagree? Let's say another occasion Randy brought something to you and you're holding your defensiveness, you're listening objectively, you hear it out, and you just at the end of it don't agree.

Gala Grace: I think that needs to be expressed. Because the truth is, my girls are my girls. They are different than his kids. He's used to kids behaving a certain way and they don't always behave the same way that you think they should.

Ron Deal: So there it is. It's a both-and. Everybody's going to have something to share and on any given occasion you might be spot on and you might not be. It's a conversation. You as parent and step-parent have to talk, listen, negotiate, try to figure out what you're going to do and pursue oneness and unity as you then walk out whatever decisions you make.

Gala Grace: Right. And neither one of you insist that you're right. Listen to both sides and then decide.

Dave Wilson: Before we keep going, let me just say this: every single day families around the world are facing real struggles and FamilyLife is here with gospel-centered help and hope. When you become a FamilyLife partner, your monthly support fuels this work.

Ann Wilson: And with your monthly gift, you'll become a part of a community that receives insider updates, which is pretty amazing. Who doesn't want to be a part of an insider community? You also get invitations to special events and more. Together we're helping families really grow stronger in Christ. So join us.

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Number five: letting your co-parent, a former spouse, dictate your home schedule and autonomy more than your spouse. This is so dangerous because this is going to create so much conflict in marriage if one feels that all you're doing is letting that ex-spouse over there dictate everything that goes on in our life.

I've had a lot of conversations with couples where the step-parent speaks up and says, "I suggest something and maybe, or we go round and round, but his ex calls and he hops to it." He's trying to keep peace. Whatever the motivation is, just a keep-the-peace motivation means the other household has more say on your schedule, your life, your finances, whatever. That just feels like they're more important than you.

Gala Grace: The reality is, especially in the case of a dad who has a mom in the other home, she carries a lot of power. The biological mom carries a lot of power. The dad knows that, and so he caters a lot of times.

Ron Deal: There has to be this understanding. Between the married couple, a lot of conversation needs to take place so that the step-parent gets what the fears and concerns are of the biological parent as it relates to the co-parent. That doesn't excuse you never saying no. There still need to be boundaries.

Even if you're going to say yes to an ex-spouse around a schedule change, you need to check first with your spouse. Go to that marriage, confirm, check in. I want you to know this is not about me caring for her. This is about my kids and the schedule, and I feel like we're going to have to make this change and it is such a pain and I'm so sorry. I just want to let you know what this is and what it isn't. That sort of stuff matters.

Gala Grace: It does. I've heard people say, "If they had just talked to me about it, I would have been okay with it." But instead they just made the decision and I was disregarded. That's what hurt.

Ron Deal: Everybody's going to be unhappy with the change that has to take place, but you can at least check in with one another and make sure you're on the same page.

Dave Wilson: We've been listening to a portion of the FamilyLife Blended podcast and Ron Deal is with us. Ron, that last comment seems to have come sort of full circle.

Ron Deal: Absolutely. We started the conversation talking about how important it is for couples to get on the same page about parenting in order to protect their marriage, and we came full circle back to that. All couples need parental unity. Blended family couples really need it because there's some upside-down dynamics that work against them. Because those conflicts are somewhat normal or predictable, we just need to try to work on it and find that unity so they don't become toxic to your family and to your future.

Dave Wilson: Okay Ron, we talked about Blended and Blessed, the conference. When is that?

Ron Deal: Saturday, April 18th, 2026. Live in Oklahoma City, livestreamed around the world for any couple or any church that wants to share with others.

Ann Wilson: And as you might have heard before, it's free. It doesn't cost any money, so we really want to encourage couples to attend and we encourage churches to livestream the event to a group of couples in your church. Ron's team will provide you with everything you need to promote it.

Dave Wilson: And you can get the link in the show notes at familylifetoday.com. Click on that link and you can get all signed up.

Ron Deal: We know most churches just really don't have the expertise to put on a blended family event. That's why we do all the work. That's why we make this available to you for nothing. Just partner with us and let's make a difference in a family's life.

Dave Wilson: Thanks, Ron. Always great to be with you. FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.