Blending Families on Valentine’s Day: How to Make Love Work With Kids in the Mix

There’s no straightforward way to figure out blending families Valentine’s Day plans. After all, every blended family out there is a little different, and only you know the hard facts about yours.

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We’re writing this because it’s vital that you can balance your romantic life and your priorities for your kids. They both deserve love and attention, and blending families Valentine’s Day plans can help you make that happen. Whether you’re making the introductions over pancakes or ping pong, here’s our key guidance as well as some tips on avoiding the “too much, too soon” feeling. 

The Joy of a Blended Family

Blending families Valentine’s Day plans sound like a pipe dream to many of us. It’s something that we desperately want, but aren’t quite sure how to achieve. This leads us to endless daydreaming about it, or, alternatively, just swearing off the concept altogether.

In the course of researching for this article, I stumbled across a beautiful article from She Knows by Jennifer Mattern. In it, Mattern tells the tale of starting out wanting a tiny house in the countryside from which she could write, meeting a man out of the blue, and falling in love. They both had kids and divorces, and had no idea how to make it work.

The beauty of the story is that they still haven’t figured it out. Mattern has travelled extensively to support her kids, who are in different universities, and live with her husband and his kids. Despite this chaos, they’re all happy. By seeking out their own happiness, be it romantic, educational, or otherwise, every member of the family has found joy in this arrangement. These joys keep on coming, too, with the final words of the article encapsulating that beautifully: “This big, blended love is an origami paper valentine heart that keeps opening wider and bigger and brighter — with no end in sight”.

Planning on blending families Valentine’s Day is a beautiful thing to do. We’re taking the holiday that means so much about love to so many, and adding in our own twist on the tale. Perhaps a blended family isn’t the most traditional way to celebrate the day, but if it displays the love you hold for one another, it’s perfect.

How to Love a Blending Families Valentine’s Day, and Everything That Comes With It

• Talk about Love: This might sound like a straightforward and tame way to spend time on Valentine’s Day, and it is. However, by talking about the love in your heart and the love in your kids’ hearts, you can help them open up about these innermost feelings. Try asking your kids how they know you love them, what they love, and how they show love. As Judy Gilliam mentioned after sharing this idea in an article on Familius, “You may be astonished by what they have to share.”
• Lead by Example with Community Love: While Valentine’s Day is traditionally about romantic love, it can be about any kind of love you would prefer. If you’d like to show your kids the importance of love for your community, you could take them to help out with a community garden. By displaying how important it is that we all love and take care of one another, you can set a good example for them to follow.
• Show Love with Food: People have celebrated and shown off their love with food for a long, long time. Cooking a delicious meal for someone is a kind thing to do, both because of the time and expertise that has gone into the food, and because of the love that’s gone into it. If your blending families Valentine’s Day plans involve the mixing of two cultures, consider trying to blend food from those cultures. Taking the time to make food by hand and learn a little about another culture goes a long way and displays great compassion to your kids.
• Start a New, Blended Tradition: Traditions are often the thing that defines a festival for most of us. It could be anything from the Thanksgiving turkey to a particular ornament on the Christmas tree. By doing these traditions every year, we help to keep our family memories alive. To show the love that you feel for all the members of your big, blended family, try implementing a new tradition for you all to get involved with. This could be taking a photo in a particular place, eating a specific meal, or playing a certain game. Whatever the tradition is, the power is in repeating it, so make sure you make a note of where you put any special equipment you may need.

Combining your family with another is no easy task, especially when you want so badly for it to go well. We hope our guidance has given you a little hope for your blending families Valentine’s Day plans: you can do it!