Divorce has caused separation of your family and now you are not only a single parent, but a dad who was not the children’s primary care taker. You may have been the one who was the principal bread winner and your wife was the primary care taker of your children. Now, you would like to have your children 40% or 50% of the time and you are concerned about your new role as Dad, what do you do? You love you children as much as their mother does, you know how to cook pasta and toast bread, but are you prepared for the role of a single parent?
You life has already been turned upside down and now you find yourself in a custody dispute or ongoing disagreements with your ex-spouse on how to care for your children. You find that your ex-spouse doesn’t trust you to get the children to soccer practice on time and then get their homework done. As a single father, how do you balance this juggling act so that you can have a close relationship with your children and still make sure their needs are met?
The adversarial court system may be the first problem that needs to be addressed. If you are in a court battle for custody, you have few options and less control over what you, as parents, believe to be best interests for your children. There are out of court options for divorce where you maintain control of custody decisions, and not the court system. Mediation and Collaborative Divorce are two divorce processes that allow you, the parents, to determine the best parenting plan for you and your children.
Even when these out of court alternatives are used, there are still issues that need to be resolved in order to arrive at a parenting plan that is fair and reasonable for both parents. As a father, you want to have more influence on how your children are raised or what activities in which they will be involved. Mom may view you as being the “Disneyland Dad” where you are the one that does the “fun” things while Mom is the one that does homework and chores. These are the kinds of battles that inevitably trap children in the middle and force them to choose sides between parents. This is exactly what you do not want to do.
The first step toward fostering a working parenting plan is learning how to co-parent with your ex-spouse. You are divorced, but that hasn’t ended your responsibilities as parents. Work together on a plan that shares the burden of homework and fun activities. What would it take for you to support your ex-spouse to have a fun day with the children while you trade off and share the responsibility of the homework? What can you do to become more involved helping to influence the way your children are raised? What changes do you need to make within yourself to make this happen?
The second step is being flexible. You may view your time with your children as “your time” and the time with the other parent as “her time”. In reality, it is neither, this is the time that the children are sharing with their parents. Children’s needs change with each developmental stage. You may have plans to take the children someplace special on your weekend, but the children may want to hang out with their friends. Your ex-spouse may want to take the children on a vacation with her family when it is supposed to be “your weekend” and vice versa. Your ability to work together, as co-parents and problems solve these issues will minimize the negative effects divorce can have on your children.
Finally, the biggest impact you have as a parent for your children is how you role model for them. When you show your children that you and your ex-spouse can work together and still be a united front as their parents, your children come out winners. Divorce doesn’t have to be a constant battle to be fought but can be a time for redefining family relationships.
Susie Duffy, LMFT. - Susie Duffy's clinical experience is focused on the practice of collaborative divorce, divorce mediation, co-parenting and post-divorce relationships. She uses her training in family systems to work with couples, and families as they go through the difficult transition of divorce.
To learn more, see the following FamilyIQ courses: 
Divorce: Parent Education and Family Stabilization, Divorce: Co-Parent Communication, Divorce: The Initial Hurdles, Surviving Divorce
