On Parenting Time

There will be a point after a separation or divorce when both parents find themselves in a novel and eerie parenting time scenario.  For the first time for many parents, when they get home from work or school or wherever the day takes them that they come home to silence.  For some, this is comforting.  For others this silence can be crushing.

Imagine you spend nearly your entire life with a child or children constantly under foot.  Playing, throwing, singing, asking never-ending questions.  Fighting, bathing, giggling.  And then all-at-once (or so it feels) deafening silence where that cacophony of sound used to be.  An oppressive silence, overwhelming, bottomless.  An abyss.

This is what we talk about when we talk about parenting time.

This is why you know at least one person who is “fighting the good fight” in Family Court, spending money and time and sanity that they do not have to claw back every moment with their child that he or she can.

Think of the memories lost while the children are absent.  What moments will you miss?  Worse, what moments will you miss that the children may subconsciously never forgive you for missing.

For some it is a toddler’s first steps.  A Little League home run.  But the small things speak loudest.  For some it is not being there in the evening to try to help with Algebra homework.  Or to listen at bedtime when your child ruminates on being bullied on the playground that afternoon.  Or because that boy or girl rejected them.  A teacher or coach was snide.  To not be there for our children when they need us most is the most horrifying and unnatural experience any parent can have.  It is a heartbreaking abyss.

But, of course, the Family Court can’t possibly schedule parenting time this way.  A careful parent can, I suppose, schedule his or her parenting time to ensure she has the child on her prom night, but not necessarily the day she finds a dress, or the day she gets back from school having been asked to prom.  We don’t know when our children will need us most, thus parents are faced with an unanswerable question.

Choosing your parenting time is to agree to absent yourself from the child when she may need you most.  And no parent can prepare for that.

While this is bleak, it presents an opportunity. 

Unless there was abuse in the relationship, your child almost certainly wants three things from your separation of divorce.

1.  They want you to be happy.  (Really!).
2.  They want to continue loving both of you in their way.
3.  They do not want to hear you disparage the other parent.

With maturity, healing, and coparenting counseling, healthy exes can learn in time to create space for the child and the other parent in his or her life.  Sometimes even on his or her own hard-fought parenting time.  Your parenting time is for you to preserve the bond you have with your children, but it is also your children’s time, and maintaining a focus on what your children need, schedule be damned, can help create an infrastructure wherein the child feels that both parents are there for her at all times. 

But only if the parents are willing and able.

Getting along is not easy.  But the alternative is silence.