>A Good Blend

I’m lucky to be part of a blended family in which things are going well.

I say this because my girls come home from high school with stories about kids they know from blended families in which things aren’t going so well. In fact, they’re not going well at all.

One girl has a stepfather who physically abuses her. Another boy has a stepmother who doesn’t speak to him. I hear stories about blended families in which a father is alcoholic, a mother is suicidal, or a stepparent has a palpable dislike for his or her stepchild.

And I feel so very lucky that that’s not us. Things are pretty normal around my house. At times, I wish I had made different decisions for my family or done things a different way, but in general, I’m pretty happy with how we’re all, well, blending.

And I think that there are two things behind our success- a genuine affection for each other and that old standby, communication.

Seriously, we talk and we talk and we talk. And then we talk some more. Growing up, I always envied families that seemed to have a central meeting point around the kitchen table. You know what I’m talking about, right? I’d go to homes where inevitably, everyone would end up gathering around the table to chat and snack and laugh and tell jokes. And I wanted that for myself so badly.

Well now, I have just such a table and it is, indeed, wonderful. The girls sit at it when they get home from school and tell tales of what happened during the day. Later, they often do their homework there. Punky and Bruiser join them, snacking or spending time eye-to-eye with their older sisters. Hubs sits down to relax or chat. I’m usually a few feet away, behind the kitchen counter (which I like to refer to as my office!), talking and cooking or working on something.

Due in part to our central meeting point, we are tuned in to each other’s lives. We know each other’s stories. We share many of our tales of the day, both happy and sad. In othere words, we bond. We communicate. And life is good.

When I look back at the rough times in our family’s life together, inevitably it has been a time when communication has been at a low. I want to remember that it’s worth it to take time every day to stop and listen to my kids and their stories, even when I’m incredibly busy and even when I have a thousand other things I need to do. In the end, it is time well spent, for so many reasons.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.