H4HK FAQs are designed to answer questions kids and teens ask when facing difficult situations and circumstances in their lives.

When it comes to step and blended families, this question gets asked a lot.  It is difficult living in the same house as someone you don’t really like. In order to answer this question though, we need to think about WHY you don’t like your stepparent.

In my experience, people who don’t like their stepparent fall into one of four categories:

#1: You don’t like your stepparent because they are a genuinely mean or unkind person. This is the category most kids who don’t like their stepparent would likely say they fall into, but in actuality it is the rarest of category and generally not the reason for the friction in the relationship. However, If this is genuinely the case (that your stepparent is mean or unkind), there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it. Unfortunately, you can’t change people overnight. Instead, be respectful and aim for peaceful coexistence (meaning that you may not like him/her but you will at least choose to seek after peace rather than arguing or fighting). Remember that, as your stepmother or stepfather, this person is important to your biological parent even if he/she is not all that important to you. Remember to be respectful in your dealings with your stepparent even when it is hard.  Choose to be respectful because it is the right thing for you to do even if the other person doesn’t necessarily deserve it. Try your best to be loving and kind to them. You never know – you’re actions may impact how they choose to live their life and that act of love or kindness may come back to you and lead to a more healthy relationship.

With that out of the way, we can talk about the other, more likely, reasons that kids don’t get along with their stepparents. Even if you think you into the first group, you need to try to step back and evaluate the situation unemotionally to figure out if it is actually something else driving your dislike for your stepparent. This can be hard, and it might help to ask some people you trust (friends, aunts and uncles, grandparents, etc.) to be honest with you about why they think the conflict exists.