Putting Your Spouse in the Front Seat - Ron Deal

Blended Families

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Putting Your Spouse in the Front Seat

Guest: Ron Deal

From the series: Putting Your Spouse in the Front Seat

Bob: In a single parent family, it’s not uncommon for a child to sit in the passenger seat while mom or dad are driving. When mom or dad get remarried, and now there’s someone new in the family, that child may not like the idea that their seat in the car has been taken over. Ron Deal says we need to be aware of that and help those kids adjust to the new normal.

Ron: Why would they react harshly to this idea of putting your spouse in the front seat? What’s going on for a kid? Well, sometimes they just want to ride in the front and they want what they want, but also there is: “I’ve been through some really rough stuff. I’ve lost connection with somebody. My family has gone through major transitions,”—a tragedy of some sort: a death or a divorce—“I don’t want to go through another one of those things.” They are hypersensitive to the idea of being pushed aside, because they’ve seen it happen already in their home.

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Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, August 27th. Our host is Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We’re going to talk today about strategies to help step-parents help their children adjust to the new normal of a stepfamily. Stay with us.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. One of the key principles that we try to drive home in FamilyLife’s Art of Parenting™ video series, and something that you and Barbara wrote about in your book, The Art of Parenting, is that, in a family, the marriage relationship has got to be the priority relationship. For the sake of the kids—

Dennis: Right.

Bob: —it’s got to be the priority relationship. That’s true in an intact family. That has some unique challenges that come along with it if you’re dealing with a blended family.

Dennis: Yes. One of the biggest arguments we used to have with our kids, on our way to school, was who sat in the front seat—[Laughter]—

2:00

—who got the front seat with daddy. You know, when mom is in the car with me—

Ron: Is there any debate at that point?

Dennis: —there is—there was never a debate; because they knew that next to daddy’s heart was mama. [Laughter]

Bob: And by the way, that is our friend, Ron Deal, who joins us today on FamilyLife Today. Ron gives leadership to FamilyLife Blended® and appears here, from time to time, when we’re talking about blended family relationships. Glad to have you here.

Ron: Thank you.

Dennis: And it’s different in blended families.

Bob: Yes.

Ron: Think about your scenario—when mom gets in the car, there’s no question—mom’s in the front seat; everybody knows it. Now, one of your kids may go, “Ah, it’s my turn; but okay, I kind of understand mom rightly belongs in the front seat.”

Dennis: There is no discussion!

Ron: There’s no discussion; there’s no debate.

But what if the storyline had been—they take their turns riding in the front seat, and there is no mother in the picture; you’re a single dad. The kids ride in the front; everybody has their turn—they belong there.

3:00

Then you go and marry somebody, and now it’s her that rides in the front seat. How do your kids react to that?

Bob: What had been their territory/their spot—they’ve just been displaced. We may think, “Well, that’s not a big deal”; but that represents something. I mean, we’re using it as a big deal about where mom sits in the car. This represents something about the order of the family that can be very threatening to stepkids.

Ron: I have to say—one of our most popular articles on FamilyLife.com, in the blended family section, is an article that is exactly about riding in the front seat. In fact, it’s called “Putting Your Spouse in the Front Seat.” I write about this, at length, in two of my books: The Smart Stepfamily and The Smart Stepfamily Marriage. Why?—because we have learned this is such a critical dynamic to get right for your blended family to do well.

Bob: Ron, I was just recently at a Weekend to Remember® marriage getaway, talking to a couple in crisis. They weren’t sure they could make their marriage work—blended situation.

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She brought kids into the marriage; he didn’t have any kids from any previous relationships. We were having this conversation.

I said to her: “I understand that you feel guilt and shame. You feel responsible for the loss you’re kids have experienced. You want to do anything you can to try to make sure you’re making up for what you brought into your children’s lives. So, at times, you prioritize them ahead of your husband just because, emotionally, you’re thinking, ‘I’ve put them through so much. I’ve got to sacrifice him for their sake.’”

That’s the impulse a parent feels. Explain why that’s a wrong impulse—not a wrong impulse—but why giving into it is a wrong response.

Ron: That’s a very well-worded question, and it’s important to the answer. The impulse is understandable.

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Of course, you’re concerned about your children—as I would say to this woman: “Your mom heart is very deeply concerned about their well-being. They have been through a lot. You do see the pain in their eyes from the past. You don’t want to see more pain in the present, so you want to take care of them and diminish that; so that means putting them in the front seat and asking your husband to ride in the back seat, in which he feels, in that moment, like he’s in the trunk.”

That is a marital issue, immediately, for the new spouse. That’s why you can’t put him in the back seat, because you are risking the stability of your marriage. Even though your marriage followed the children, you still have to have it in the front seat, so to speak, in order for your relationship to lead the home.

If you’re going to lead from a position of unity, this is both a parenting issue and a marriage issue all at the same moment. If you’re going to position the new stepdad, in this case, beside you so that...