Stepparents encourage fostering peaceful coexistence with children through perseverance

Published: Thursday, March 03, 2005

NEW YORK - It took a while - 10 years to be exact - but Lisa Cohn and William Merkel now have one big happy family.

That means Merkel and his two sweet-tooth children from a previous marriage, Cohn and her almost-vegetarian son, and Allison, Merkel and Cohn's daughter together, all fit in one house in suburban Portland, Ore. - and they all get along.

There have been some compromises, some unique solutions such as two refrigerators, and some prickly moments, and the couple have chronicled them in the book "One Family, Two Family, New Family" (RiverWood Books).

"One really important thing in step-bonds is that the biological parent has to give permission for the child and the stepparent to connect. I don't think I did that at first," says Cohn in a telephone interview.

Even after allowing Travis, then 6, to drive away her first serious boyfriend after her divorce from his father, Cohn says she was reluctant for Travis and Merkel to become pals because she was afraid it would lessen the value of the close mother-son relationship. So, if Travis wanted to sit between them, he did.

"Bill did not compete with Travis in any way. He always let him win when there was a tug of war over me. Bill never disciplined him. If there was an issue Bill always went through me," Cohn says. "Then he (Bill) focused on Travis' interest. Travis was a big sports fan so Bill took up basketball. More than anything that's what won Travis over."

Merkel remembers things only slightly differently: "When we first moved in together, I'd see Travis reading the sports pages in the paper every morning and I'd say 'good morning.' I was greeted with stone cold silence. I was determined that I was going to say hello to him until I died or I heard something back. It took several years. But then he started to say 'good morning' on his own.

"By the fourth year, I'd come down and say 'good morning, Travis' and he'd start reading the stats from the sports page about the Portland Trail Blazers. Then it got to the point where he'd follow me downstairs from the kitchen so I could change into my clothes and he'd keep reading to me. ... Maybe he realized, 'Bill isn't going away, so I might as well find some use for him,'" Merkel says with a laugh.

Merkel, a clinical psychologist, says studies show stepfathers usually are the ones to become discouraged about relationships with their new wives and stepkids. He notes that most stepfamilies include the biological mother and the stepfather.

"It can be very hard to get in. The previous alliance with mom had served them well. The kids ask, 'Why rock the boat?'" he says.

One opportunity for stepparents is that as an outsider they often can be more objective when assessing a situation and look at the bigger picture. A stepparent usually isn't as emotionally wrapped up in what's going on with the child on a particular day, Cohn says.

Cohn had an easier time forging a cordial relationship with Merkel's kids, Emily and Chris, now 16 and 13 respectively, but they faced a different challenge.

"My stepkids have very different personalities than Travis. They are very polite. Travis speaks from the heart and is very creative. My stepkids were always very nice to me, but I also understood behind the hugs and kisses that they weren't always comfortable with me," she recalls.

Of course, mothers and fathers in non-stepfamilies might not always agree on child-rearing philosophies too, but the issues are highlighted in a stepfamilies because the kids are already used to something else, Merkel says.

But, he adds, he has noticed his own stepson's resolve weakening a bit lately. Travis does "occasionally" cast an envious eye on the Merkel refrigerator - the one with chocolate, ice cream and hot dogs.