Mental Whiplash

Do all divorced parents who have some sort of joint custody arrangement feel like they have split personalities? I swear there are times that my life gives me mental whiplash.

Dh and I have our children every other weekend and half of the week during the school year (we’ve had them more during the summer because I work from home and can provide cheap childcare. ;-). So we may have three or four days in a row (or as is the recent case a week and a half) when we are all kids, all the time. Our lives are completely consumed by parenting and family activities. The only way dh and I have an uninterrupted conversation is if I manage to stay awake past ten p.m., which is a rare occurrence after a full day of domestic management activities.

And then suddenly it ends. All four kids disappear, off to their other lives in other places with other family. The change is abrupt and sometimes quite jarring. Now I’m not going to say it isn’t quite often a welcome change because it is. But no matter how challenging the children have made our lives in the days, hours, minutes leading up to their departure, it is also a bittersweet change. We miss them but that’s not always such a bad thing. Mainly because we know they miss us too and are looking forward to being back with us when the time comes. And there are also the benefits such as suddenly dh and I can sit across from each other in a restaurant and focus on just each other rather than on making sure the crayons are evenly distributed and no one spills a drink. We can hold hands in a movie theater and watch something that isn’t animated. My house becomes a “clothing optional” zone and suddenly I’m more inspired to drink a glass of wine and stay up late rather than drink a glass of wine and pass out as soon as the kids are in bed ;-). The changes in our life, our daily (and nightly) routine are quite striking.

But it can be tough knowing that when our children aren’t under our roof, they are in houses where the rules, the values and priorities aren’t quite the same as ours. We do the best we can with that, and thank heavens dh and I can vent and empathize with each other, but we do worry that in some ways that will only get worse as our children get older. Heaven help us when the teen years hit. Then the varying levels of parental controls in the various homes becomes a much more serious issue than the major annoyance it is now. I try not to think about it too often. And it’s not that we feel like we have all the answers and the other parents in our children’s lives are complete screw-ups and are going to ruin our children’s lives. But we do feel like we spend an awful lot of time having to compensate for things that our children are allowed to do (or by the same token not encouraged to do) when they aren’t with us. It’s a type of parenting pressure I could do without in all honesty.

Actually I think I’ll go curl up on the bed, eat something totally unhealthy and watch the Olympic opening ceremony with my dh…and enjoy not having to remind anyone to brush their teeth, or tell anyone they can’t sleep in the dirty t-shirt they’ve been wearing for two days straight, or order someone to get *back* in bed and go to sleep for the fifth time…at least not for a few more days. I hope the kids are watching the ceremony too; I can almost hear the comments and exclamations that each one would make, knowing who would like the drummers most or the flashing lights in the stadium the best or who would love the pyrotechnics. Of course dh is trying to figure out where we could put a 500 ft LED screen.