Co-parenting during the Holidays
Holidays can be both an exciting and a complex time for many, filled with grief and sadness. When we think about a successful and a joyful holiday season, we often have an image of a happy family sitting around the fireplace, enjoying a nice conversation, delicious food, surrounded by lots of gifts and many times that’s not the case for many families. And this is particularly true for families going through or having gone through a separation process.
A separation changes the family, but that does not necessarily mean the family no longer exists. It’s simply a different variation of the family. If you have gone through the process of separation and if you have children you know you still need to maintain some level of communication with your co-parent as you negotiate day-to-day and long-term plans. This task can be challenging particularly around the holidays as your family navigates the new changes around these momentous occasions.
Here are some co-parenting tips to help you through the holidays:
Coordinate and collaborate with your co-parent
Make your scheduling arrangement ahead of time and communicate your plans. Know that in making these plans you will be sacrificing time with your children, so they can spend meaningful time with their other parent and in that you’re helping foster healthy relationships between your children and their parent.
2. Speak to the children about the holidays and ask for their opinions
Especially depending on the age of the children, their opinions about how they want to spend their time becomes more crucial as they gain more independence with age. Explain to them how the holidays are going to be different. If possible, present your holiday plans in a united front with your co-parent: “your mom and I decided that it would be nice for you to spend Christmas eve and morning with me, and then she’ll come to pick you up for Christmas lunch and you’ll stay with her overnight and during boxing day. What do you think about this plan?”
In asking your children for their opinion, you don’t have to do everything they tell you but it’s important to know their wishes and desires because that gives you a good base-line of knowledge about what they would like and you can then try to incorporate some of their desires into your plan.
3. Be Flexible around scheduling
Consider this: if your children had a plan to have a sleep-over at their cousin’s and if they got sick or the weather was bad, you’d probably call that family member and either cancel or reschedule their sleep-over until a more appropriate time. This situation might happen with your co-parent. Allow flexibility around illness, weather emergencies, etc. as it will help you navigate these times easier by planning for these potentials in advance.
4. Split your time as equally as possible
Try to be fair to each other when coming up with solutions around splitting your time with the children. Same as you, the other parent will be also be missing the children during the times that they aren’t with them. With that in mind try to come up with a schedule that gives both of you meaningful time with the children.
5. Make space for grief
Especially if this is your first holiday post-separation, many feelings, thoughts, and memories of last year might come up for you. Make space for them, for both yourself and your children. The children might remember last year and how the family was and that might make them upset. Your grief and your children’s grief is very normal and real. And we can’t bypass grief by pretending to be happy or make it go away through a lot of gifts. Grief needs to be felt and worked through and in fact one way to a closer and meaningful relationship is to allow space to connect with your children through their grief.
6. Start new traditions
Separation is not the end of your family, it is a start of a new one where you redefine your boundaries and your roles. And with this new family, you can create new traditions by making new experiences for yourself and the children.
7. Discuss gifts together
Whether you want to give gifts together or separately, it is nice to have these discussions together so if the gift is substantial, such as a cellphone, you might agree that it would be a joint gift. Try not to out-do each other in gifts. Remember for children time spent with them is more important than expensive gifts. These will help with your wallet too!
8. Don’t neglect yourself
Holidays can be stressful at the best of times, and navigating them while also going through a separation can be particularly challenging. Make sure you take care of yourself and your mental health. Children can pick up on their parents' stress, so remember taking care of yourself is taking care of your children, because you will be less stressed and more present with them.
9. Consider counseling or mediation
When communications become challenging and if you need extra support, know that you can reach out to professionals to help you untangle a situation or help you work towards resolving your disputes.
10. Consider using a parenting app
There are many good apps out there for co-parents. Cozi and FamCal are two free apps that can help make communications around scheduling easier through shared calendar apps.
11. Look at your holiday as an experiment in scheduling
New holiday scheduling is trial and error. You might not have done this before and therefore you might come across some snags in the process. That’s very normal and in fact it will be helpful if you view your first holiday schedule not as the be-all and end-all, rather as an experiment that you get to revisit after the holidays and see how it can be changed or made better for next year.
The most important issue around the holidays is to not pretend that nothing has happened. A change in the family can be talked about, acknowledged, and then worked around so that you and your family have the best holiday season you can have.
