In this episode of the Parent Whisperer podcast, host Richard R. Ramos opens with a vivid scenario: a child ignores a parent’s instruction to come straight home for a dentist appointment, later claiming he "forgot," while the parent discovers the appointment was actually scheduled for the previous day. Ramos uses this anecdote to explore the broader, contentious issue of discipline within blended families. He references research from the American Association for Blended Family Research, highlighting three key challenges: adjustment to new family roles, role ambiguity for stepparents, and discipline discrepancies between biological parents and stepparents. Ramos argues that these challenges are interlinked and that emotional maturity of the adults is the foundational solution. He emphasizes the need for clear role definition, consistent rules, and a united front, warning that unclear roles and inconsistent discipline can lead to conflict, triangulation, and long‑term harm to children. The episode outlines common conflict scenarios (e.g., one parent refusing to discipline, differing views on spanking) and stresses that the root issue lies in adult emotional immaturity rather than child behavior. Ramos concludes by directing listeners to his books—Parents on a Mission and The Art of Stepparenting—and his online course, encouraging personal growth, responsibility, and professional help when needed. He ends with a call to subscribe, review, and engage with the Parent Whisperer community.
If you're a parent looking for sound, solid advice on how to raise your child in an ever-increasing dangerous world, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Richard Ramos.
You gave your child specific instructions not to stay after school to play. And to come straight home so you can pick him up for a dentist appointment. Upon arriving home, your child is not there. You proceed to the school and there he is playing. You ask why he did not go straight home as instructed, to which he replies, I just forgot. You tell him he is grounded and proceed to the dentist. When you arrive, the The receptionist tells you that your appointment was yesterday. Your child looks at you and says, I guess you just forgot, Mom, and then wants to know if he is still grounded. How would you handle this situation? What is your answer to your child's question? Hola everybody, I'm Richard Ramos and welcome Back to the Parent Whisperer podcast. What I read to you is one of the scenarios I give to parents in my Parents on a Mission training as something to discuss in their small group. We break up the class into small groups so they can discuss these things, and I ask them to come up with an agreed-upon solution. This particular scenario is one of three that I give three different groups for them to discuss, but this one usually gets the most disagreement because of the issue of well, mom, you forgot. I forgot. You grounded me. Am I still grounded since you forgot? You know, and so they discuss that back and forth. But this lesson. An issue is about discipline. What should the discipline be, or should there be discipline since you told him to come home, he didn't, and when you ask him why he didn't, he said he forgot, and so you discipline him, and so the conversation goes back and forth. But what I want to point out here is that discipline is a controversial topic, probably more so than it ever was when I was a kid, and for many reasons rightfully so. But I want to add one more element to the mix here and put this in the context of stepparenting and blended family. Because as I've been saying, and the reason I wrote my book, that in America this has become the norm. And in stepfamilies and blended families, discipline, or the lack thereof, and/or abuse of discipline has been, is, and remains an issue that we need to talk about. According to the American Association for Blended Family Research, they put together a long list of the top issues blended families face. I think there was like 30 issues that they put together. Now, I'm not going to try to address all of them, but what I want to speak to are the following 3 that they mentioned. The first one was the adjustment, adjustment to new family roles, defined as both children and adults may struggle to adjust to new family roles and dynamics. This adjustment period can be stressful and requires time, patience, and flexibility. The second one they called role ambiguity. The roles of stepparents can be unclear and vary greatly between families. This ambiguity can lead to confusion and conflict regarding expectations and responsibilities And then the third one, they talked about discipline and discipline discrepancies. Differences in parenting styles and discipline methods between biological parents and stepparents can cause conflicts. It's important for parents to present a united front and agree on consistent rules and consequences with Right there is what I want to talk about. It's easy to say that what parents should do is that they should agree on a united front and the way they're going to be consistent on the rules and consequences. But I got to tell you, it just doesn't often happen that way. It's a difficult subject for families to talk about and agree on how stepdad and stepmom are going to discipline whose kids and all of those things. Now there's one more thing that they suggest in here. As always, they suggest, you know, if you come up against these hard issues, that you should seek out professional help such as family counseling. And that's why I hope that you listen to this podcast, because that's what I'm trying to provide for you here. In, in speaking to the many issues that we talk about here, I hope to be a resource to you of encouragement, of inspiration, strategy, principles And just helping you to navigate your way through these difficult issues, whether biological family or stepfamily or blended family. So in focusing on these 3 that I mentioned, this is one of the toughest issues for blended families, this issue of discipline discrepancies. And what adds to the difficulty of that is the first 2 issues of new roles that need to be learned and the unclear roles, or the ambiguity as they called it, of roles. And if those things do not get worked out, that just adds to the problem of trying to talk about discipline. I mean, if I'm not clear on my role as a stepdad and my wife's not clear on her role as a stepmom, it's If our roles just as a family and as a married couple are not clear, and then in our role of how we're going to discipline our kids, that just causes so many problems. And that's what I want to talk about because it needs to be worked out. We have to be clear about our roles in the family, new role for the son and daughter, New role for the stepkids, new role for the stepmom, new role for the stepdad, bringing families together. We have to be clear about these things. And then, you know, we could talk about money. We could talk about, you know, allowing kids to go here and go there, the ages and all these different things. But one of the main things is what about discipline? Who's gonna be the disciplinarian? And if these things are not worked out, it just causes all kinds of arguments and battles and other problems. So let me just get to the answer right away, and then we can just talk more about this. But right from the start, the answer is emotional maturity. I mean, for every topic that they gave on this list, the American Association for Blended Families, I could say the answer to almost every one of those things is the emotional maturity of parents, because that's what it takes to deal with these tough issues blending families. At least that's been my experience. I know that every time I've blown it, lost my temper, and sometimes I still blow it, said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing. I know that it all goes back to my inability due to my immaturity to properly handle the difficult situation. Now, to be fair, nobody gets it right all the time. I know that. I'm not condemning myself or parents who, you know, we blow it. But that said, as parents and stepparents, especially in building a blended family, we have to keep growing, keep learning from our mistakes, and get it right more often than we get it wrong. And this is vital when it comes to discipline. Now, I want to be clear that I'm thinking more right now in this scenario, I'm thinking more about smaller children and the discipline of small children, you know, anywhere from 3, 4, all up to maybe 12 years old. So I'm not talking about teens because if you marry into a family or both woman and man bring teens into the blended family, That's a whole different dynamic. It has other issues. And when it comes to discipline, I think it's a lot tougher, but I'm not so much addressing that. I'm talking more about the smaller children. And also, I'm not going to so much talk about how, like the, how do I grow myself, Richard? How do I grow in emotional maturity? I've spoken about that a lot already in this podcast. So I'll get back to that later. But what I really want to talk about is the unclear roles. And the inconsistent discipline. So that's the first thing we have to do is agree on the new roles. This has to be clear and it has to be dealt with because if you don't, you're not going to get it right on so many other areas. And as I keep saying, discipline is one of those areas. And if we don't get that right, good luck, mom and dad, because then there's just so many other things that happen. And oftentimes, Sometimes families break up because of this issue of discipline. I mean, there's all kinds of scenarios that go on. For example, scenario 1 is, I don't want you to tell my kids anything or try to discipline them at all. Scenario 2, I don't want to deal with your kids. They're your problem. Discipline them— Or scenario number 3, Neither parent disciplines the kids. Or scenario number 4, I believe in spanking. I don't believe in spanking. And so now you have big conflict there. And let me just tell you, it will not help the kids in their new role and them trying to figure out and accept the new role of the new stepdad, the new stepmom, if the parents aren't in agreement. It just adds to the confusion. It adds to the division. The kids pit you against each other. It causes arguments, triangulating, taking sides. And who ends up suffering more? A lot of times, yes, we as adults suffer. But you know what? Those little kids, they suffer through all of that confusion, anger, arguing, yelling, etc. So again, what's the answer? What do we do? Well, as I already said, if parents, we aren't willing to do the work on ourselves, then it's not going to change. It's not our job to change our spouse. It's not our job to change the kids. It's our job to work on ourselves. And if I'm not willing to take responsibility for my attitudes, for my resentment, for my unforgiveness, for my selfish and childish ways, it will be very hard for my blended family to survive and be successful, happy, and healthy. And if it does survive all of that that I've described, The casualties of all that yelling and anger and arguing usually show up later on in the children. You see, this issue of emotional maturity is a root problem. It is at the root of so many areas in life. I mean, I could talk about immature policemen, immature teachers, immature principals, counselors, psychiatrists, politicians, on and on and on. But especially the emotional immaturity is a problem in the parent-child, stepparent-stepchild relationship, let alone dealing with the immaturity of the ex-spouse or the ex-in-laws And the problems they can add to the mix if there's been divorce or whatever the situation was. So what am I saying here? The main point I want to make is that it's not an issue about the kids. Of course, they're struggling. Of course, they're giving you a bad time. Of course, they're not responding or they don't want to go here or go there or be part of this or part of that. Of course. But the issue is not about them, it's about us. And even biological families have these kinds of issues, but what I'm saying today is that in a blended family situation, it's even harder. So let me end by saying, rather than me trying to get into how to grow As a parent, as a stepparent, if you said to me, Richard, okay, you convinced me, you know, I am dealing with these things, you know, and I want to grow, how do I grow? Well, I'm not going to try to get into all that right now in this episode because I have spoken about that a lot in many of the newer episodes. If you go back and look On the podcast, the first few lessons, you'll see in the title that I spoke about parent personal growth and how and the principles that we teach in Parents on a Mission. And so that's one thing you could do, and you can listen to it at your own leisure. Another thing, you can go to my website and you can buy my books. That's why I wrote the books. Parents on a Mission: How Parents Can Win the Competition for the Heart, Mind, and Loyalty of Their Children. It's all in there, everything. And my other book, The Art of Stepparenting: How to Blend Families Without Tearing Them Apart. Again, all the principles, scenarios, stories are all in there. My story, my mistakes, what I learned. And finally, on my website, you can join the Parents on a Mission online course, video course. All the videos I put on there, you can join that, enroll in that, and at your own leisure, you can watch those videos. Take your time. You can invite people over there that you— who you might feel could benefit from that. So that's what I would suggest to you right now if you're feeling like, man, you know what, I really want to begin to focus on myself. And I promise you this, as you begin to focus on yourself and take responsibility for yourself and you're consistent, and it's not overnight, but I want to tell you, you will see a change in your children, in your spouse, and in your family. All right, that's all I got for you today. You've been listening to the Parent Whisperer podcast. I'm Richard Ramos, and I want to thank you for your time, ask you to subscribe, leave me a review, send me an email if you have questions about even other subjects on step-parenting and blended families. And remember this, mom and dad: parents on a mission is not for bad parents. It's not for bad stepparents. It's for good parents, good stepparents who want to get better. See you next time.
So that's it for today's episode of the Parent Whisperer podcast. Head on over to Spotify, Apple, wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a $10,000 private VIP day with Richard himself. Be sure to head on over to parentwhispererpodcast.com and pick up a free copy of Richard's gift and join us on the next episode.
