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Author: George S. Glass with David Tabatsky

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-62914-431-3

Blending Families Successfully, by George S. Glass, published in 2014, deserves much more attention than it is getting for all the wisdom brimming between its covers. Dr. Glass is a board-certified psychologist with years of experience in counseling parents and individual clients. In Blending Families, he gets out from behind the desk very quickly and speaks to his readers directly in an authentic conversational tone. The result is a genuinely warm, caring guide through the stormy passages following the collapse of a marriage and all the goes into starting over again from scratch.

The rate at which first marriages fail has dropped over the recent decade, but the percentage ending in divorce is still very high when measured against historical norms. Worse yet, as Dr. Glass points out, second marriages fail at a greater rate than first marriages. One major contributing reason is that remarried couples clash over how the children of the new family are to be guided and raised. Glass begins his examination of the reasons behind these failures by focusing first on the difficulties the newly divorced parents face.

Any reader who has lived through divorce will feel right at home with a chapter entitled “How Did I Get Here?” Most will recognize that awful feeling of having lost direction in life and contact with the true self. Glass knows. He shares of his own experience, from the many years he continued as a single parent through to his own remarriage and the blending of the family to include his children and his wife’s, and (yeah, get this) their own new baby. Within a few pages, most readers will very much in touch with the author and sense his presence.

The story isn’t entirely the author’s, however. The selected episodes and the words Glass shares from his work with clients are especially poignant. Readers draw comfort from the realization that others have lived through the same painful, confusing passages. Non-judgmental and compassionate, Dr. Glass gives direct advice. No psycho-babble here. Readers are not left guessing as to what the author meant. The advice is laced with understanding. Go slowly. Be patient with yourself. Glass knows current trends and fads.

He offers advice about dating, sleeping over, when to introduce children to a special other, how to manage expenses after the marriage, relations with former spouses. This twice divorced reviewer, thirty years into his current marriage and blended family, found the book full of insight and good useful advice. No matter where you may find yourself on the continuum that begins with trying to save a failing marriage, extents through starting over and from there on to the end of one’s days, Blending Families Successfully belongs on your bookshelf.

To be read, certainly, but also to be retained as a reference, as a guide, as a comfort. Glass is a name that should become synonymous with blending families as Dr. Spock is with raising children. Blending Families Successfully is destined to become a classic. Counselors everywhere should make it available to the clientele.