On the 8th Day of Christmas: Holidays and Non-custodial Dads
December 19, 2007
Filed under Activities & Holidays, Parenting & Family Posts
Holidays.
Is there a more emotive word for families? It can surface feelings of excitement and longing, or of anxiety and dread.
For some men - those who don’t live with their kids - it can also bring up some very sad or frustrated feelings.
An article I came across recently looked like a very helpful foray into that territory with tips (the author says) gleaned from a group of therapists. Here’s a sample:
The holidays tend to be an emotional time for non-custodial dads. There is just something about the holiday season that puts us in a nostalgic mood, remembering the good times for the most part. Our holiday memories are often romanticized, and many of the traditions families create become negative or impossible after an estrangement, separation or divorce.
So, given all the emotion and the nostalgia, what is a non-custodial father to do during the holidays? How do you make new memories and new traditions? What should you do to make the holidays as positive as possible for your children, who are possibly hurting far worse than their non-custodial dad?
So. Go check out Handling the Christmas Holidays as a Non-Custodial Dad …
And if you have the time, the inclination and you’re a Non-Custodial Dad (there has to be a better term!), you might like to leave a comment here and tell us what helps you not just handle them but enjoy and enhance them…
Non-custodial Dad…better term…hmmm…positive words… Vacation Home Dad? It is a hard word to spin.
On a different note, I don’t know if I have any tips, but I can offer some perspective to fathers, from one that was once a child with a non-custodial father. When we went to my father’s during the Christmas season ( I was the oldest of the kids) we didn’t really have many traditions established yet, that we could remember, so new ones kind of grew on their own. But, the thing that I remembered as a kid was all the extra Christmas celebrations. One with my mom, one with my mom’s parents, one with my dad and step mom, one with my dad’s father and wife, one with my dad’s mother, and one with my step-mother’s parents.
As a child I never felt I was missing out, instead I felt like I was getting extra. So, I guess what I’m saying is that if you are a non-custodial father, take heart in the fact that your child might actually see the visit to your house as a holiday bonus.
It’s tough, especially those first couple years after the seperation. I made sure to include my son with decorating the house. We started building ginger bread houses every year, something new for a new tradition. I also made sure not to step on traditions made by the ex-. They are important to him, and me saying no if I had him on that specific night, wouldn’t help.
I call myself a part time dad…always with tounge in cheek.
Gentlemen thanks for those helpful comments. Some great ideas, Bryan, you seem to take a really positive approach. We have a cricket term in Australia about playing off the front foot or the back foot. When the batter hits a shot leaning forward (front foot), he’s attacking, he’s taking control. Generally off the back foot or on the back foot means he’s defensive, letting the guy bowling (pitching) push him around.
Sounds like you’re on the front foot all the way.
And Jonathan, I too was child of (let’s use Bryan’s term) part-time Dad (though I know he thought of us daily). Because he saw so little of us, he put a lot into the week we would spend with him around Christmas (never on the Day itself). He was a school teacher and had been a pastor, so he’d do stuff like a little kids talk (5 minutes’ worth) where he might tell the Christmas story from one of the incidental characters or get us to do some kind of tactile activity and then bring a quick message from it for us). I can’t remember ever really engaging deeply with those things BUT they certainly ADDED something to Christmas and shaped my understanding of Christmas to this day.
I guess my point is I’m with you on the “extra”. There were things he’d never have done if he were still “at home” with us.
Good conversation fellas!