Based on personal experience and expert insight, this book can help your new family learn to work and play together and to love and respect each other.

Create a Loving and Safe Environment for Your Blended Family Blended families face unique challenges, and sadly, good intentions aren’t always enough. With so many complex relationships involved, all the normal rules for family life change, even how you apply something as simple as the five love languages. That’s why Gary Chapman, the bestselling author of The 5 Love Languages® andnational expert on stepfamilies, Ron Deal, join together in this book to teach you how the five love languages can help your blended family. They’ll teach you: About the unique dynamics of stepfamilies How to overcome fear and trust issues in marriage How to develop healthy parenting and step-parenting practices How the love languages should—and should not—be applied You’re going to face many challenges, but with the right strategies and smart work, your family can be stronger and healthier together.

Families blend together for a variety of reasons. Widowed or divorced parents choose to remarry. An ailing or elderly relative can no longer live alone and moves in with his son’s family. A family chooses to adopt a child. Economic circumstances force family members to combine households. Regardless of why it happens, creating a blended family is a process of transition that takes time, patience, humor, compassion, and a whole lot of conversation. In Growing Into a Family, author Cynthia Geisen guides children and the caring adults in their lives through the many questions and mixed feelings that blended families face. In the end, it is love, compassion, persistence, and a large dollop of humor that are really the tools that will help young readers find peace and joy in their family’s new realities.

From Good Morning America anchor Amy Robach and her husband, actor Andrew Shue comes a sweet tale about finding common ground and accepting and appreciating each others' differences. When a big thunderstorm shakes their woodland home, the Squirrelly family must flee their nest for a hollow in an oak tree. To their surprise, the McMunk family had the exact same idea. This family of squirrels and a family of chipmunks must find ways to live together--which isn't always easy since they come from different backgrounds. But after some important lessons in compromise, the Squirrellys and the McMunks realize that life is better together as the McSquirrelies.

In Better Together, each spread starts with a single animal, all alone. Then a gatefold opens to reveal that the single animal is actually one of many animals working together to comfort, feed, and protect one another. At the end, we see how human families come together in similar ways to care for their little ones. Careful readers will be delighted to see that every animal mentioned in the book is hidden somewhere in the last image. The final spread offers interesting facts about the animals in the book, including the collective nouns for each. Jared Andrew Schorr’s bright, lively cut-paper illustrations and an unexpected freshness round out a very satisfying package.

Bringing two families together to create a new one can be a daunting task. Drawing on wisdom garnered from decades of helping remarried couples, Jim Smoke offers time-proven principles and wisdom from God's Word to help you lay a solid foundation for your family. Whether your blended family has been around for a while or is just starting up, you'll discover practical ideas and solid insights. With insights from parents and children in blended families, Seven Keys to a Healthy Blended Family offers down-to-earth advice and encouragement for building a positive, uplifting family life. Book jacket.

Many blended families today consist of step parents, step children or half siblings. It is a big adjustment for children when their family dynamics change. Children tend to struggle with separation anxiety when their other siblings are away from home. This book can help young readers identify with other children who feel the same way.