Every step or blended family has its own visitation issues. Whether your family has supervised visits, transfers to the other household, or shared custody, learning to deal with transitions is important.
Visitation is not just a time for your children to see their other parents, family, and extended networks, its a time of transition for them. They face changes in homes, rules, expectations and possessions. We used to call the time before and after the visits “toxic time” because the children when little would get overly excited and coming home they were usually over tired. The transition time for our children to return to the guys we knew and loved would vary from 3 hours to 2 days. Our children were always glad to get home, but had wonderful times with their dad and grandparents. Likewise, there were days they simply didn’t want to go to one house or the other because something was happening at the other location, they love all of us and we try not to make our divorce continue to seperate them from their other parent(s) and extended families.
As much as possible, we try to allow our children to make it to things and events that are important to them with the other parent. When we lived in the same 100 mile area we invited all of our children’s family to events that they participated in. Now that we are 400 miles away, we plan carefully the schedules and make sure big games like homecoming and playoffs are planned for well in advance. We listen and ask about dates in Arkansas that need to be planned for so our children aren’t left out of family gatherings, whether or not its “their” weekend or time. The children’s needs must rank over the legal paperwork when it comes to co parenting. Boundaries are there for the days we cannot agree, but we work very hard to continue to try to work together to co parent our children….and there have been many many hard days.
Whether the transition be polite or hostile, the children’s needs must be handled. My ExH has gone through periods where he didn’t see, hear, or speak to me personally when we met on the 1/2 point for weekend visitation. It made me furious sometimes (which was probably the point) but you see “I” am the only one who can make me furious…so its MY boundary that has to be considered, do I really need to allow his issues to be mine? Likewise, I’ve had weeks when I had to have someone with me to prevent a strife blow up when we met to exchange the children. Even other times we had to have 3rd party folks pick up the children and drop them off at the meeting location. The point is you never stop trying to create peace, you define boundaries when you have to legally if its unsafe for the children, but you keep trying and moving forward each time you can create a new level of peace among you! Children need all of us. Their other parents are 1/2 of them…and as far as safely possible, we need to let them have all of us.
The children need all of us, as much as we’re able to allow it, allow your children emotional space to make transitions, plan a calm coming home time and careful meals so not to sugar them up when they are already tired and emotionally strung out from the weekend or visit. We like to make sure the children call to let the other parent know we arrived safely, its common courtsey…and we do travel to bring them home. Being close to their other parent doesn’t take away your closeness to them….it just allows them to have their parents.
God is good….
