The Smart Stepfamily Participant's Guide: An 8-Session Guide to a Healthy Stepfamily

By Ron L Deal

Practical Solutions to the Issues Stepfamilies Face

The Smart Stepfamily Participant's Guide provides discussion questions to use before and after watching the DVD, space to take notes, and bonus reading material. Includes leader instructions and guidelines for facilitating effective groups.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: May 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781441264213

Ron L Deal

Ron L. Deal (www.rondeal.org and www.familylife.com/blended) is one of the most widely read and viewed experts on blended families in the country. He is president of Smart Stepfamilies, directs the blended family ministry at FamilyLife, and is the author of more than a dozen books and resources, including the bestselling The Smart Stepfamily and Building Love Together in Blended Families (with Dr. Gary Chapman). Ron is a licensed marriage and family therapist, popular conference speaker, and host of the podcast FamilyLife Blended with Ron Deal. He and his wife, Nan, have been married since 1986 and have three boys.

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© 2014 by Ron L. Deal

Published by Bethany House Publishers

11400 Hampshire Avenue South

Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

www.bethanyhouse.com

Bethany House Publishers is a division of

Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

Ebook edition created 2014

Ebook corrections 06.21.2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4412-6421-3

Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Reader’s Version®. NIrV®. Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1998 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Cover design by Eric Walljasper

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Welcome & Getting the Most From This Series

Session 1:  Becoming a Smart Stepfamily

Session 2:  STEP Up to Discover a Redemptive God

Session 3:  STEP Down Your Expectations

Session 4:  STEP Through the Wilderness Wanderings

Session 5:  Two-STEP: Your Marriage

Session 6:  Side STEP Common Pitfalls

Session 7:  STEP in Line With the Parenting Team

Session 8:  STEP Over Into the Promised Land

Bonus Material

Family Meetings: A Tool for Problem Solving

Smart Questions, Smart Answers

Group Leader Notes

My Action Plan

Notes

About the Author

Books by Ron L. Deal

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Back Cover

Welcome

Family life presents many challenges; stepfamilies face additional challenges unique to them, but with God’s guidance and the support of friends, facing those challenges can bring great rewards. It is my prayer that this series will help enrich your family and provide you the tools to create a healthy, Christ-centered family.

Ron L. Deal

Getting the Most From This Series

Whether you are an individual, couple, or group of couples studying this series together, this participant’s guide can be adapted for your needs. Each session walks you through discussion questions and practical advice for how to strengthen your home. Individuals and couples are welcome to complete the study by themselves (e.g., as part of a premarital counseling program), but we strongly recommend that you work through the material with a group of couples if possible (e.g., small group or Bible class). Research and my experience in stepfamily ministry suggest that fellowship and group discussion with other stepfamily couples is a vital part of applying the principles of this study. Together you will support each other and discover how to become a smart stepfamily. Pre-stepfamily couples are encouraged to attend groups with married couples to glean from their experience.

There are many different kinds of stepfamilies. Some are empty-nest with adult stepchildren and stepgrandchildren; others have young children. Some follow divorce, others the death of a spouse (or both), and others a non-marital birth. Still others have multiple homes to which children are moving back and forth, while other stepfamilies don’t send children to any other home. These differences create opportunities for you as group members to learn from the perspective of others with situations different than yours and to practice empathy. Being able to hear, validate, and appreciate the experience of someone else is a very important skill for healthy stepfamilies. Practice this skill during your group discussions and take the skill home with you.

Let me make a few other recommendations for your study.

Start your group study by agreeing to the guidelines at the end of this section. Following these will help create a safe discussion environment for everyone.

Use this guide to take notes during the video presentation; each person should have their own participant’s guide (two per couple) because experience tells me that you will take different notes depending on whether you are a parent or stepparent, male or female, an insider or outsider. It’s important that each of you be allowed to process the video presentation through the lens of your family experience and role.

Discussion questions before and after the video will help you assimilate and apply the teaching, so don’t skip them. For optimum learning, groups should structure sessions to last 90 minutes so you have plenty of time to discuss and process the video content.

To get the most from this study you should purchase a copy of my book The SmartStepfamily: Seven Steps to a Healthy Family, Revised and ExpandedEdition. Some sessions invite you to read portions of the book aloud and discuss them. Plus, to reinforce important concepts, each session concludes with recommended reading from the book. This is important because the book offers additional content and addresses specific types of stepfamilies (e.g., those following death or later-in-life stepfamilies) that the video does not. When experienced in combination, the video and book make an excellent learning system.

This guide, when referencing the book or recommended reading, corresponds best to the Revised and Expanded Edition (2014) of The SmartStepfamily. You can get by with a previous edition of the book, but it is recommended that everyone in a group use the Revised and Expanded Edition so you’re all reading off the same page.

I’d also like to recommend that you go online and take the Couple Checkup as a supplemental enrichment tool (available at www.SmartStepfamilies.com). This relationship profile is the most researched inventory of its kind and will give you great insight into the strengths of your relationship. I call it your Couple Positioning System (CPS). Like a GPS device that pinpoints your current location and