The holidays are coming and to be honest I have absolutely no clue if this is the year I have my daughter for Thanksgiving or not and as I started thinking about that it stirred up a few thoughts inside of my head; mainly thoughts surrounding my witness of other co-parents being so territorial about their child.
Whenever I see co-parents; two parents no longer residing together in a personal relationship but raising child(ren) together, they are not usually super friendly with each other. If these co-parents have moved on to have children with other people it seems those children are not super close to their half siblings parent either. This makes me sad.
I admit, my daughter’s father and I don’t always see eye to eye on life, heck sometimes we don’t see eye to eye on raising our daughter, but doesn’t every mom/dad combo have their moments of “oh my gosh you did WHAT?” whether you are living together or not? It’s part of parenting and part of co-parenting, accepting the other parents ways of mothering or fathering your child you created together.
Just because you and your ex were not able to create a long lasting, personal relationship together as a couple does not mean you can’t have some big, happy blended family. My sons sometimes call my daughters father “Daddy Ryan” and you know what? That is okay with me, why? Because my sons know who their daddy is, and they also know who their sister’s father is, which means occasionally Daddy with his name comes out, it’s just a matter of my sons hearing this man be referred to as both Daddy and Ryan, depending upon who is speaking to him. I am okay with them saying Daddy Ryan because it doesn’t hurt anyone. Just like I was okay when my daughter started saying “Daddy Justin” for her stepdad shortly after her brother AJ was born, however, other people were not happy about that so she stopped so as to avoid hurt feelings of others not in our household.
What I try to say, mostly in writing, to others who co-parent is this: You both want your child(ren) to grow up healthy & happy, right? You both want the best possible future for your child(ren), right? Well then, forget about what caused you two to split up because that is irrelevant in present day, move on from the past and focus on the present & future well being of your child(ren). Sure it’s hard, believe me, it took me about two years to get to a solid point where I was “ok” with co-parenting and not trying to lash out at my ex, and some days I still lash out at him privately but never, ever would I put my child in the middle of my personal disagreements with her father, that is not fair to her at all.
There will be bad days, there will be good days but please when you are co-parenting remember that you both created this child, you both have rights to this child & you both love this child, do not make this child go into some big war that he/she doesn’t belong being a part of.
I guess I’m lucky because the kids were college-aged when we split up, so most of the tough decisions were already over. It would be harder to co-parent younger ones, I would think. But I do find it easy to be one big family in spite of not being together. I can relate to your sentiments there.