Child of Divorce

July 1, 2010 By 5 Comments

Since Joe’s work schedule changed recently, we have also changed our joint custody/visitation schedule.  This is the first week trying out the new pick up and drop off since the Texas trip.  Generally David will be picking Jack up from Joe’s on Thursday nights since it is on his way home from work and I don’t drive on Thursday evenings (that’s a post for another time although I’m not making any promises).  David is out of town currently so Joe was kind enough to bring Jack to my house this evening so that I wouldn’t have to drive.  This seemed like a good thing…until around bedtime.

We have a routine of tooth brushing, picking out three books, and going to bed.  I needed to tell Jack to pick out books several times and at one point Jack dissolved into tears.  He told me he was sad that his dad brought him here.  Wow, that was hard to hear!  After setting aside my own feelings on hearing that, I asked him why it made him sad.  He told me he thought his dad, stepmom, and he were visiting and then going back to his dad’s house.  I reassured him that his dad loves him and the dam broke.  I told him that it’s okay to be sad and miss his dad, that I love him too and he’ll see his dad soon.  We snuggled and talked and eventually he relaxed, smiled, laughed and was back to his goofy self.

To my knowledge, this is the first time this has happened.  Somehow we neglected to discuss the schedule change with Jack and prepare him properly, I guess.  I remember being a kid and having feelings similar to what Jack expressed tonight after getting dropped off at my mom’s or dad’s.  I think perhaps a drop-off can feel a bit like abandonment.  So heartbreaking!

There are a few ways I think we can approach this.  It might be best to avoid drop-offs.  We were doing that previously (unintentionally) but I didn’t realize how important it was until now.  Talking and hugging and reassurance seemed to help Jack a lot.  He pays a lot of attention to the messages in books, so we read The Kissing Hand tonight (it was loaned to me today – great timing!) and I recently purchased Two Homes.  I was planning on giving him Two Homes for his birthday but perhaps I need to pull it out earlier than that.

This has honestly caught me by surprise.  Perhaps due to his age, Jack has seemed mostly unaffected by the divorce until now.  I have to wonder if this incident was due to our poor preparation this once or if this will come up more as he gets older and can reason better.  Anybody know?

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Filed Under: Divorce, Growing Up Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Clashing Work Schedules

February 24, 2010 By 2 Comments

For those not in the know (because somehow I forgot to write about it before now) Jack’s dad recently took a new job that is an hour south of where he lives, which is about 1.5 hours south of where I live and Jack attends daycare.  The commute to the new job meant that he would no longer be able to participate in daycare pick up or drop off, Jack would be in daycare an extra day, and Joe’s time with Jack would be reduced to only his days off.  Since his days off were Saturday and Sunday, this also meant that Jack and I wouldn’t have weekends together until Joe’s seasonal position ends in June.  Needless to say, I was pretty bummed about that.  I’m pretty burned out after work most days of the week and don’t get a lot of quality time with Jack.

Luckily for all of us, Joe was able to rearrange his new work schedule so that he will be working Sunday through Thursday beginning in March.  We each get a weekend day with our kid to do fun stuff and we can keep Jack out of daycare an extra day (which is great for us moneywise in addition to allowing the munchkin to be with his parents that much more).  Good all around and a huge relief for me!

The only con is I won’t be able to get out of town for a weekend without the kid for a while (since Joe still won’t be able to take Jack to daycare), but that is not unusual for your typical parent anyway.  I can totally handle that.

Filed Under: Daycare, Divorce, Working Mamahood Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Separate but equal: living arrangements

January 22, 2010 By 1 Comment

Parenting in a non-nuclear family is a mix of good and bad, it seems.  It’s nice when one parent is sick and we don’t want to pass it onto our kid – Jack usually stays with the healthy parent while the other convalesces.  When all parents are sick, it gets more complicated but we usually figure something out.  On holidays when daycare is closed, we have four parental figures and chances are that at least one of us is taking the day off or working from home.  Things get sticky when each parent has different rules, but we are navigating this as we go.

Custody and visitation have been fairly easy for us to work out up to now.  We try to maximize Jack’s time with each parent based on work schedules.  We get as close to 50/50 as we can; it usually ends up closer to 60/40, though.  A potential challenge we’ve run into recently is the prospect that we might not all continue to live in the Bay Area.  The economy has been a crapshoot for quite some time and all of Jack’s parents work in different markets and areas (public & private sectors).  Some areas of business are doing okay, while others continue to struggle.  It’s quite possible that this geographic area can’t sustain all at the same time.

We pondered this question earlier this week when the subject of one of the family segments moving to southern California came up.  The implications are mind boggling.  None of us wants to see less of Jack; each home is open to being a primary residence.  A drive between the Bay Area and SoCal is 6-8 hours…that kind of commute for visitation exchanges would no doubt suck for all of us.  A flight is quick but would grow expensive over the year(s).  The 50/50 arrangement would definitely not work (especially once kindergarten is in the picture); we’d all be missing Jack for weeks or months at a time.

I have to say, this is the most difficult issue I’ve faced since the separation.  With effort, we can generally make most things more comfortable and harmonious than when we were married…I don’t think that this is one one of those things.  I can’t help but worry about the impact on all of us.


Filed Under: Divorce, Family, Parenting 101 Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Visitation and missing pieces

October 23, 2009 By 1 Comment

One of the hardest parts about divorce with a child involved comes from custody and visitation arrangements. Joe and I manage pretty well with figuring this stuff out, but there are always issues somewhere!

For some reason the judge is requiring that I fill out forms (an ORDER, as verbiage in the settlement agreement just won’t do!) about which holidays belong to each parent, how many days a week each parent has, and how much support is owed. The bizarre demand for these forms is the main reason why the divorce is not yet finalized. It is frustrating because filling out the extra forms is repetitive. Also, apparently they are not required of everyone so the company I paid to draw up the papers was surprised to have to generate these forms on top of the settlement agreement! Arg! Leave it to the government to make a fairly straight-forward divorce waaaaay more complicated.

I’m not entirely sure how others arrange visitation with their exes. When I was a kid, we went to see my dad every other weekend. That seems like a ridiculously small amount of time to me now. I don’t know how my parents chose that arrangement or why anyone would really. Perhaps it was just a different time, or maybe it’s just that my dad’s lifestyle was less kid-friendly. As a child I disliked this arrangement for a couple of reasons. The first was that I wanted to see my dad more than once every two weeks. In addition, it was difficult to get into a routine when we went so long between visits. By the time the visitation weekend came around, I just wanted to stay home because I felt unused to my dad’s house again. Of course, after the weekend was over I didn’t want to leave.

In any case, the visitation arrangement between Joe and me is mostly based on our work schedules. Unfortunately equal custody was not possible at that point in time as Joe moved an hour away and we wanted to keep Jack’s daycare stable. Joe is a park ranger and his job changes seasonally, as does his schedule. He usually gets one weekday and one weekend day off. I work a typical Monday through Friday 9-5 week with Saturdays and Sundays off. Last summer when we split up, it just seemed to make sense that Joe would take Jack on his days off since they were different than mine and I’d have Jack with me more. This precedent has continued and Jack generally goes to see his dad for 2 days each week – Joe picks Jack up from daycare on Thursday and brings him to my place on his way to work Sunday morning.

We’ve tossed around other arrangement ideas, such as switching every other week, but so far we’ve stuck with what we have. It seems to work well for Jack, so I’m afraid of changing things up. Even so, I always wonder if there is a better way, especially with how things have been going lately. I have Jack five days a week, and four of those days he goes to daycare. I effectively have one day each week where I get to focus on my kid and four days where I’m carting him to and fro and splitting my attention a million different ways. I fully admit that I envy Joe’s two workless days with Jack each week. Not only does Joe get more quality time with Jack, but he also doesn’t have the daily daycare drop-off to deal with or the struggle between needing to rest after work and wanting to enjoy time with his child.

I am not writing this to say “woe is me” with regard to how things have worked out. I know that it is incredibly lucky to have things running so smoothly in a divorce situation. This is just an area that was difficult to imagine prior to the separation and I feel the need to put it into words. At any given time one of us is losing out on time with an individual we love and need desperately. We are happier and healthier than we were a year ago, but one of us is always missing something.

Filed Under: Divorce, Family, Working Mamahood Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,