When Families Change: All About Stepfamilies
by
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When families change, adults and children may feel sad, mad, scared and confused. This is called grief. Grief Is a name for all the different feelings that you have when you’ve lost something that you care about.
Sometimes adults and kids take a long time to grieve. Sometimes they don’t realize that they are just grieving when they are mad all the time, or blame others for the change in the family.
To have a happy, healthy,
Stepfamily….
It’s important to know if you
are still grieving or not.
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About the Book
Unresolved grief, experienced by a child, teenager, parent, or even an ex-spouse, is the number one reason why stepfamilies are failing more than half the time today. Unfortunately, children are often the ones left most confused by their feelings, and a lack of honest information and communication often exacerbates this.
For this reason, this book was written by a clinical social worker and stepmother, along with her own child and three stepchildren, ages 4-11. "When Families Change: All About Stepfamilies!" is a book for kids and their parents to help both understand and navigate their way through their family's changes and open the door to healthy communication. Best used by parents, social workers, counselors or therapists with children ages 12 and under, the educational information presented focuses on types of families, why families change, and the grieving process that every member needs to experience and complete before they can move on to be part of a new, happy and healthy stepfamily.
This is the first work in the "When Families Change" series of children's psychoeducational books, centered around helping children understand different types of families and the grief and loss issues they experience when their family goes through a significant change. Other topics forthcoming in the series include Divorce & Boundaries, Foster Care and Adoption.
About the Author
Pamela Heard-Martin is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who began her career with children and families as a nanny at age 19. She studied behavioral psychology at Western Illinois University, and after graduating Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology, she went on to study social work at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Pamela earned her Master of Social Work degree with extensive training in child welfare from UH in May 2000, and her clinical license in social work from the Florida Board of Health in 2005.
Pamela has worked with children and families in the areas of abuse/neglect investigation, child sexual abuse, parenting issues, domestic violence, education, clinical psychiatric diagnosis, grief and loss, and has served families as a foster parent case manager, child protective investigator and case manager, hospice social worker and child and adolescent therapist. Pamela is considered an expert witness in Family Court on issues of child welfare, and currently serves as the Student Advocate for the Volusia County Take Stock In Children program in Florida.
In July 2005, Pamela and her daughter Kalei became part of a stepfamily with Leon Martin, and Joshua, James and Alyssa Martin. The family currently resides in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.