While you and your new fiancé may view a home free from dirty clothes on the floor and cereal bowls in the living room as a high priority, using her to be the herald of this edict is a recipe for disaster.  Teens can barely tolerate their parents’ authority.  When you bring someone from outside their perception of what the family is, they tend to bristle a bit.  Add to that, a new step-mom who is now trying to call the shots, and you’ve magically created a scenario where your fiancé becomes an easy target for all the unspoken sadness and frustration about Mommy and Daddy not being together anymore.

What little respect your kid has for your own authority comes from a lifetime of built up rapport and trust.  If you just introduced your teenagers to their future step-dad, remember that they don’t have the luxury of the same connection with this new person, so expecting them to buy into leadership from this intruder is unrealistic. Unfortunately, this might put you square in the middle between your significant other’s needs and your teenagers’ needs.  So hopefully, your new partner understands and supports you the way you thought he did.  With any luck, he is working with you to find the best way to help your kids adjust to this major change in their lives.

What about my kids’ responsibility to accept my new soul mate as part of the family and show her the respect she deserves?

Just because she’s an adult, doesn’t necessarily mean that your new girlfriend has earned their respect.  Similar to how you want your teens to earn your trust before you give them more autonomy, you and your beloved must be patient and earn your kids’ trust in the new family dynamic.  Remember how long it took you to trust your teen to go to the mall with his friends without an adult?  Most likely it took him a while to prove to you that he would make the right choices and not disappoint you.  Expecting your child to trust you to have a new relationship and safely involve your true love into your family life is even more terrifying for your kid than it was for you to have faith in your teenager not to shoplift and smoke pot at the mall.

Ideally, if you can take time to slowly involve your new love into their lives, your kids will eventually understand how cool she is and will accept her with open arms… but again this takes time, sometimes years.  If you try to fast forward through this delicate getting to know you phase, you could inadvertently set up an overwhelming power struggle between you and your kids.

Pressuring your teenagers to like and accept this new person will more than likely bring about a harsh backlash from your teenagers and they will hate your new girlfriend just because you want them to like her.  They are teenagers after all.  Since you are making changes to the only life that they have known, then it is your responsibility to be patient and acknowledge that the concept of this new relationship is very frightening.

Another cause of ickiness for teens is that they know what boyfriends and girlfriends do together.  So do you.  How awkward is it to think of your mom or dad gettin’ their grove on with some stranger?  What ever weirdness that image conjures up for you, it is ten times worse for your kids. Make sure that you respect that discomfort and handle it with kid gloves.