Q: I'm going to be marrying a guy who has three children, and I'm afraid they won't accept me. I'm also scared I won't know how to handle them, because I don't have any kids of my own. Does anyone have any advice?
-- Crystal Boyles of Fredericksburg, Va.
A: First, don't try to be these children's mother. Second, remember that love takes time.
"Have [the children] accept you as a person first," says Ron Polland of Tallahassee, Fla. "This means get to know them and what they are like before you ever mention the word parent to them."
"His kids are probably always going to want their own mom and dad back together," adds Chary Murphy of Hillsborough, Calif. "That's tough to handle, but they will probably love you in time."
Almost always, blended families take time to adjust -- usually at least three years and often as long as seven, says Kevin Leman, author of "Living in a Stepfamily without Getting Stepped On" (Thomas Nelson, $19.95).
"A blended family comes together out of a sense of loss," says Dr. Leman, a marriage and family counselor in private practice in Phoenix, Ariz. "Everybody has lost something, so it's not a piece of cake."
Although new stepparents should not expect instant love, they should require respect, says Carly Lund, a private marriage and family therapist in Boston, Mass.
"A new stepfamily can make its own guidelines and its own rules," says Dr. Lund, who served as the consulting psychotherapist to the book "When You Marry A Man with Children" by Barbara Keenan (Pocket Books, $9).
"If the rules are not the same as at the other house, that's OK. You may not agree on everything, but what you can agree on is that everyone is treated with courtesy and respect."
It's also common for negative feelings about the divorce to cloud the new marriage.
"The new couple has to value their marriage, and the new family has to value itself," Dr. Lund says. "You can't look at this as second best. If you go into it feeling that it's not OK, that feeling gets transmitted to the kids."
Because the problems in blended families can be intense, Dr. Lund urges couples not to hesitate to seek professional help. One reader from Santa Rosa, Calif., recommends starting family counseling even before the marriage.
"The counselor was able to bring up issues that most blended families go through," Mary Armstrong says. "The things our counselor told us to expect pretty much happened." For more information and a free resource guide, call the Stepfamily Association of America in Lincoln, Neb., at (800) 735-0329. The association also has 60 chapters around the country and publishes a quarterly newsletter. Yearly subscriptions cost $14.
While a reporter at the Miami Herald, Beverly Mills developed this column after the birth of her son, now 5. Ms. Mills and her husband currently live in Raleigh, N.C., and also have a 3-year-old daughter.