If you’re thinking about buying a bouquet of flowers forMother’s Day from one of the 22,000 florists in the UnitedStates, it’s likely that the flowers you get were grown ineither California or Colombia.

Babies learn to trust their par-ents over time. When the infantcries because he is hungry and you feed him, he learns that you willbe there to address his needs. Thesame can be said for stepchildren.Over time stepchildren can learnto bond with their stepparent... itjust requires a little patience.

Bonding in blended families gen-erally depends on the age of thechildren. Younger children tend to take to new situations easier thanolder children. Therefore, ifyou’ve recently become the step-parent to a young child, throughconsistent support and care, youmay quickly find the child trustsyou and looks to you as simplyanother parent.

Older children can be more dif-ficult to win over. It could takeconsiderable time before your

stepchild is willing to develop arelationship with you. Older kidshave more intense feelings andunderstand relationships moredeeply than their younger counter-parts. Therefore they could beseeking out the “who” and the“why” of the situation. They alsomay be holding out hope that theirparents will be getting backtogether.

Older children also could beinfluenced by their other parent.If divorced couples are not suppor-tive of their exes remarrying, theirbiases could trickle down to theirchildren.

Bonding takes great patience andperseverance. It is not somethingthat will happen overnight.However, consistently makingyourself available and supportivecan help the process along.

How to Bondin Blended Families

Did You Know?

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CITIZEN’S NEWS Friday, May 7, 201018

PHOTOS BY BRENDAN COX

Last Saturday, about 150 volunteers organized by the Union City RevitalizationCommittee turned out to help beautify the area. More than 200 bags of trash werecollected, leaves were raked, weeds were cleared and annuals and flowers wereplanted at Prospect Street School, Linden Park and along streets.