Who's in my family?

This may seem like a very easy question for families where both parents are together, raising their children under the one roof. For everyone else, though - families headed by a single and/or widowed parent, separated parents, and families where each partner has children from a previous relationship - the answer can be quite complex.

Challenging kids don't behave badly on purpose -- they are simply struggling to "catch up" in key areas of psychological and cognitive development. If your child or teen's emotional or behavioral difficulties are getting in the way of success at home, at school, or in social situations, this is the book for you. Dr. Michael Bloomquist has spent decades helping parents to understand acting-out kids and support their healthy development. In these pages, he presents tried-and-true ways you can build your 5- to 17-year-old's skills to:

When you and your partner deal with conflicts between you, what are your ideas about how you should work it through? If you have kids, what beliefs do you have about whether they should be around when you're fighting?

You may think:-

It may have taken you a long time already - to get to the point where you (and/or your partner) have decided that it's not longer possible to stay in your relationship. It's time to end things.

But how can we move through a separation well? And where there are children involved, how can we end our relationship in a way that still ensures our kids are in no doubt that their relationships with each of us, and with our extended families, are well and truly intact and will be secure into the future?