Q. My ex really gets on my nerves. Halloween’s coming up and I don’t want to spend the evening looking at her face. It’s supposed to be my night with the kids, but she wants them at her house to trick-or-treat and I’m thinking about letting them go just because I don’t want to deal with her. Does that make me a terrible father? What’s good ex-etiquette?
A. No, it doesn’t make you a terrible father, but it does make you a questionable co-parent. And, unfortunately, there are thousands out there who feel exactly the way you do. That means we have a lot of people just dreading the thought of each other with a bunch of kids right in the middle.
You don’t have to be buddies with your ex, but you do have to learn to cordially interact with each other if the kids are going back and forth between homes—which it sounds like they are doing from your observation that Halloween is your night with the kids. Many parents forget to put Halloween in the parenting plan. That causes all sorts of grief, so good for you for having a plan for an important day for your kids. Sadly, it sounds like navigating the plan is a problem.
In order to help you “put the kids first,” (Ex-etiquette for Parents rule No. 1) I’d like to remind you of a very important distinction—it’s not “your time” with the kids, nor is it mom’s time with the kids. It’s your child’s time with you. They are the ones who must share their time. When you start looking at it from your child’s perspective, you may stop fighting over time and give your kids a break.
So, this is how you decide about where the kids should trick-or-treat: Ask yourself, where would the kids rather be? I did not say to ask the kids. That would put them right in the middle of their parents, having to pick one over the other. But you know your children. Where will they have the most fun?
Halloween is a night your children trick-or-treat with friends—and their parents, of course—but the real fun is hanging with friends late into the evening on a school night and eating way too much sugar. So, if most of their friends live near you, making them trick-or-treat in another neighborhood they aren’t used to seems selfish to say the least. If you all can’t go together, pick the neighborhood you know the children would prefer and let them have their Halloween with the parent who lives in that neighborhood overseeing the festivities.
Since you are not ready to trick-or-treat together, one parent might have a little more time with your child this week. It will all come out in the wash. Better yet, that may be incentive to take a look at how you and mom are co-parenting. That’s good ex-etiquette.
Dr. Jann Blackstone is the author of “Ex-etiquette for Parents: Good Behavior After Divorce or Separation,” and the founder of Bonus Families, www.bonusfamilies.com.
