What I Learned about Coparenting at Holiday Time

 

As chocolate mini-eggs and matzahs begin showing up in grocery stores and signs of spring (slowly) start to manifest themselves, we know Passover and Easter are coming soon. For parents, that means enjoying celebrations with our kids. For divorced parents, it's also time to celebrate--and figure out how to share that celebration with co-parents who no longer live with us.

While I always admired divorced parents who were able to celebrate holidays with their kids together, that wasn't my lot for a long, long time. Instead, I had to work with my son's father to figure out where he'd go on which holiday. It wasn't always easy, which is why I started writing Crooked Lines: A Single Mom's Jewish Journey.

What I learned is that every year is different--with a different set of circumstances. One year, your kid might have a huge paper due over spring break or Christmas. That might mean it's better to spend more time with you, if writing is your specialty (ahem!) Another year, your child's paternal grandparents may be visiting from Alabama and he or she would like to spend more time with them.

The key, in my view? Be flexible. The best-laid plans won't do anyone any good if they don't work for your child. Other thoughts on making holidays work for your child and family:

1. Set up a time to discuss how to handle each holiday without your child being present. Use email, phone, or talk in person if that works for you.

2. Don't make holiday time a competition between you. The ideal solution is to give your child equal time with both of you as much as possible. That may mean spending Christmas week with you one year and New Year's week with a former spouse. Or it may mean Christmas Eve and your house and Christmas Day at the other parent's. If you're trying to divide a holiday like Passover, that's pretty easy: the first Passover seder is at one parent's house, and the second is at the other parent's house.

3. Explain to your child or children that you and the other parent are celebrating the holidays with them on different days, but make sure they know they will be seeing both parents. If a child is upset with the decision, don't ignore them. Instead, talk to them about what they want and why, and see if there are any possibilities for the future that will take the child's preferences into account.

4. Remember this is a trial and error thing. It's OK to make mistakes--and even better if you can correct them.

What if you can't come to an agreement with your former partner? If you worked with a mediator before divorcing, you might try calling that mediator to provide a suggestion or two. You might also try giving in to a request from the other parent now, with the condition that you can switch gears for the next holiday.

Whatever you do, don't give up trying to communicate with your former husband or wife. Your child's happiness is the priority--and that happiness depends on you both. For more information on how to coparent during holidays, I found the articles below:

Coparenting and the Holidays: Tips for Divorced Parents

Coparenting During the Holidays

Tips on Holiday Coparenting When Divorced or Separated

Photo by Suzi Kim on Unsplash

Start of the Story

It wasn't like Dorothy, dancing down the yellow brick road to Oz. In fact, it was anything but a fairy tale. Crooked Lines: a Single Mom's Journey began with a divorce and the overwhelming feeling of being alone.

It began with a friendship, two souls tossed overboard and trying to survive.

It began with a young son, who was depending on me to soldier through. And a raft of Jewish holidays that I'd always celebrated with family, and now had to navigate alone.

If you are divorced, you know what I'm talking about.

If you are a single parent; losing your own parents to Alzheimer's and eventually death--

You understand.

Or maybe you just know someone going through this and want to be there for a friend.

I can only say those curve balls keep coming. But friends and rituals and holidays can give us insights that help us deal with them.

I can also say that sometimes, when you least expect it, better things come your way. It could be something cool with your career; or a new relationship that brings it's own transitions to navigate.

What I discovered is what a friend told me: God paints in crooked lines to lead us to the people we are meant to meet.

You can meet that friend (and a lot of others) in this story, as of September 5.

Single Parent or Just Single: Co Housing Could Be Just What You Need

When my son was about three, his father and I split up, and I was completely at sea as to where I would move. Searching for a roommate can be hard enough, but searching for a roommate who is OK with living with a toddler or young child can be brutal.

At one point, a friend recommended the idea of co-housing. It was a fairly new idea then, and I wasn't able to find something close enough to work and child care, but it did make me stop and think about the whole notion of living in community, and how the world seems to be set up for nuclear families rather than people on their own.

What is co-housing, exactly? It's an intentional community, said to have begun in Denmark in the 1970s and introduced in the U. S. during the 1990s. It might be an apartment building or small community with 15 to 35 homes that offer common areas such as kitchens, gathering places and other amenities that residents find helpful. What I think co-housing offers is the chance to live in a supportive community that brings authentic connections and relationships into your life.

While I hoped to find a co-housing space when my son was small, I ended up renting the bottom half of a duplex with the owner couple living above, and we had a wonderful experience there. When I did get married a few years later, we moved to another duplex nearby--but I kept thinking about how things might have turned out if I'd been able to find a co-housing setting. Working with older adults these days has also shown me how isolated most people are, and how little attention we give to people who are not "coupled" -- no matter what their ages might be.

This week, my view was validated by an article by New York Times Reporter David Brooks in The Atlantic. Brooks writes astutely about how the nuclear family was a mistake and  shows the consequences we all pay for it. He believes it tends to work better if you are affluent and I agree -- it can be a big fail for everyone else, economically, mentally and socially. As social beings, we need community support and friendships. We also need more generational interaction for resilience and strength.

Brooks talks about how older generations, single people and/or parents and children suffer most when the nuclear family ideal is held up as the ideal. Co-housing can change that and level the playing field in ways nuclear families cannot. The article lists a few different options in The Atlantic article that I wish I had known about in the early years of single parenting.

Brooks mentions CoAbode, a website that helps single parents find homes to share with each other all across the country. He also says a group called Common offers 25 co-housing sites to young people and is teaming up with another developer to start Kin, which caters to single parents. While each family would have its own living space, shared commons spaces will include play spaces, child care services and family-oriented gatherings.

If you are looking for housing that offers community support, I highly recommend the Brooks article and other articles about the co-housing option. The most important thing to know is that you don't have to fit in to some ideal of the perfect family to find like-minded people. A new kind of family life is out there -- and it may be exactly what you need.

Other articles about co-housing may be found here:

What the Heck is Co-housing?

4 Reasons Why I Spent 14 Years in Co-housing and Why I Plan to Stay


There's Community and Consensus - but it's No Commune


Gardening photo: d-olwen-dee

Hard but You Can Do It: Co-Parenting on the Holidays

“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” Jane Austen wrote, “that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Except nobody expects that wife to walk out the door three years later, or a husband to call it quits after twenty years, and then have to work out custody issues or holiday time or God knows what else.

But divorce they do, and by they I mean many of us, and at that point we have to figure out how to make the relationship work well enough so that it works best for our children.

And by “we” I mean me. And you.

As a one-time single divorced mother, I went through my share of ups and downs. Those downs can be pretty tough at holiday time, which is why I went searching for resources online before I wrote this post, and found VProud TV’s Guide to Coparenting During the Holidays.

If you are a divorced parent and are looking for a kind but no-nonsense friend to get you through the holiday-parenting blues, VProud is your ticket: real people sharing real experiences and ideas to make divorce easier on you and your child.

When narrator Karen Cahn admitted that the first year “sucks,” I couldn’t help but laugh. My former spouse and I fought like children sometimes—over the most childish things. Fortunately, we were usually able to laugh after cooling off for a few days and compromise—which is exactly what the people in this co-parenting video hope all of us will do.

"Your goal should always be that the happiness and well being of your kids comes first, no matter what,” Cahn says. “Your kids just want their parents to get along and for there to be good vibes…so make that your goal. It's hard as hell but you can do it. Be Bruce and Demi."

You may not be able to laugh about much of anything with your ex—or even have the luxury of cooling off when you’re trying to work out where and with whom your child should spend the holidays. That’s why the VProud tips are so helpful and why I loved seeing parents chime in with ideas that worked for them:

·     You are the adult: don’t make your kid make decisions about who to spend time with on the holidays

Don’t worry about the date because the time you spend together is more important than any actual day

Take advantage of alone time (which can be really fun to figure out)

Be open to transforming traditions (like teaching your Christian cousins how to play dreidel after a Christmas dinner if your family is Jewish)

Something else that hit home for me came from Shannan Younger, who said, "Coparenting is like raising children. Just when you think you have it figured out, it changes. Be flexible and most of all, put your kid first."

I was also struck by Cahn’s comment that “you’re divorcing yourself from your own anger and bitterness.” That is, perhaps, the hardest but most crucial part of every divorced parent’s journey, because if you don’t do it, you can’t move on; you can’t give your kids what they need and you most certainly can’t give much of anything to yourself.

So whether or not you anticipated getting divorced, if you are now and you’re facing the holidays alone, I would encourage you to check out VProud’s video. I would also encourage you to write about your feelings, either disguised as fiction (as I did in The Beat on Ruby’s Street) or in your own journal.

Most importantly I would encourage you to believe that, as Cahn promises, the pain of a new divorce will get better and better times are coming, even on this very first holiday, if you and your spouse are able to put your child’s needs first. If nothing else comforts you, at least listening to other parents who had similar experiences will show you that you’re not alone.

Because all of us parents who went before are standing with you, and we believe in you. And in your kids.

Parent Photo Montage: Courtesy of VProud TV

Young girl: Christina Welsh