Help!–The Trouble with Teens

So, I have two demanding full time jobs, yet the thing that takes most of my mental energy and makes me question myself more than anything else in my life is my performance as a father. I am a college professor and a lawyer with my own practice. Despite the energy and pressure associated with both of my “jobs,” I end up late at night praying and wondering if I’m doing the right thing most often after sending my eleven-year-old sixth grade daughter to bed early yet once again. It may be the fifteenth eye roll of the night or the mumbling under her breath or me having to ask for her to put her dishes away SEVEN times that precipitated the early bedtime; but the cause of the consequence is inconsequential, it’s the aftermath that’s most important. The aftermath is my sheer frustration and confusion. It goes like this:

 

ME: Damn, did I overreact? What just happened? How did things escalate so quickly?

VOICE IN MY HEAD (since I don’t have a wife to bounce things off of):  Well, you probably didn’t need to send her to bed early just because you had to ask her to put her books away a few times.

ME: A few times???? Is seven a few?

VOICE IN MY HEAD: Well, she’s 11. This is normal. She is struggling too.

ME: Yeah, but I am not going to have a self-absorbed little girl in this house. There are too many people suffering for her to expect the world to revolve around her.

VOICE IN MY HEAD: Well, that’s understandable, but step back, take a breath and get some perspective. You have an amazing, powerful, intelligent, funny, beautiful little girl. So, she may be insolent from time to time as most girls her age are, but she is a good girl.

ME (calming down): Well, she does do excellent in school. She loves to read, does her homework without issue, plays sports with enormous heart, is very funny and has developed a feminine wisdom that has steered me in the right direction numerous times. (Guilt begins to kick in). Yeah, but she needs to be humble.

VOICE IN MY HEAD: Well, be careful about that. She is at a vulnerable age. We need our young sisters to maintain that confidence, the belief in themselves. Not only the self confidence, but also the self-esteem. So many times society will tell our young girls to quiet down, not laugh so loud, don’t always comment, don’t be so disagreeable, go along with the program, etc…

ME: Good point. So, where is the balance? What do I do?

And that is the question, I find myself asking so often. What do I do?

So, as a parent, this is my current state of struggle. Being a Dad has been the greatest joy I have experienced in my life, without question. It is my role as Dad that has given me my greatest sense of purpose and sense of belonging in this world. Up until about three months ago, it has been relatively easy and made a lot of sense. Recently, as described above, things began to get confusing.

For my inaugural blog, there were many wonderful things I could have written about to encapsulate my walk as Dad. However, I felt that expressing my confusion and challenges was most appropriate to start the conversation. As we move forward in our dialogue, you may see from me more questions than answers, but I firmly believe through these conversations, we as parents, will, and must, get better. Let’s discuss the loving moments…and the challenging ones too. Let’s learn from each other, grow together, vent, share, laugh, cry…and…grow! I look forward to the discussion, and so I say in advance…hello, nice to meet you and thank you.

Online Tools Make it Easier to Manage the Business of Co-Parenting

Managing the day-to-day logistics of parenting is a ginormous feat.  And, when those logistics have to be coordinated between two households, it can even seem insurmountable and can lead to conflict between co-parents.

Fortunately, in this age of all things 2.0, there are a variety of online services and software designed specifically to aid separated and divorced parents with managing schedules and communicating other important details of their children’s lives.  While the motivation for some of these services was minimizing the required communication between parents prone to high-levels of conflict, any two-household family can benefit tremendously from features such as:
 

• Parenting time schedule management
• Event and activity scheduling
• Contact lists
• Expense logs
• Photo sharing
• Medical information tracking
• File sharing
• Virtual visitation
• Household rules and daily routine documentation

A few online co-parenting management tools to consider strongly are:

JointParents.com—Developed by co-parents, this site is easy to navigate, simple to use and offers a full range of features, including virtual visitation capabilities.  Just plug a video camera into your computer, and you and your child(ren) can video chat from within the site.  JointParents offers a 30-day trial for interested parents.

ShareKids.com—One of the first services like this, ShareKids also offers a broad range of capabilities.  Share kids also offers a free trial, and they provide scholarships for families who are “truly strapped financially.

Parentingtime.net (OPTIMAL)–OPTIMAL is an online custody calendar that is designed both to help manage your child’s schedule but also to help monitor compliance with with your custody agreement.  In fact, it includes reports specifically designed for presentation in court.  

And, although it isn’t designed for co-parenting, good old Google Calendar is a viable option with plenty of functionality all for f-r-e-e.

In addition to the online tools, there are several other software tools that you load directly to your computer including:

SharedGround–SharedGround is a calendar creation tool that uses wizards to guide you through setting up a parenting calendar that is printable or can be synched to your PDA.  While it can help you stay on top of your child sharing logistics, it doesn’t allow for both parents to have access.

KidMate–KidMate helps parents analyze the impact of different-time sharing arrangements and their impact on quality time spent with children.  And, uniquely, once you’ve decided on a plan, KidMate will generate a text version of the arrangement that can be inserted into your parenting plan agreement.

If you’re having difficulty coordinating between two households, need to minimize live conversations to help maintain the peace, or just want to make your family life flow more smoothly, consider trying one of these tools.

And, if you do, please be sure to come back here to share your experience with the rest of us!

The Golden Rule of Co-Parenting: Keep Kids Out of the Middle

The fact is:  Every relationship experiences conflict.  Co-parenting relationships are no exception.  But, the other fact, supported by research, is that how we manage that conflict may be the most significant determinant in our children’s ability to cope, heal and enjoy the experience of just being children.  Experts suggest that while the ideal scenario may be building a co-parenting partnership that is collaborative and consistent, more important is developing one in which conflict is managed effectively and children are kept out of the middle.

Easier said than done.  As parents, we bump heads over lots of things–schedules, parenting schedules, money, and more.  Couple that with the pain of a relationship that has ended and the conflict can become intensified…full-on drama even.

But, it is critical to remember that it is our conflict, not our children’s.  We made these decisions to be together and to not be together, and only we are responsible.  Putting our children in the center–whether it is by speaking negatively, even on the sly, about the other parent; undermining the other parent’s decisions or consequences; or worse outright battling–sets our kids up to have to choose between two people they love unconditionally.  Not fair.

In his book, “The Truth about Children and Divorce,” Dr. Robert Emery suggests that much of the intensity of our conflict comes from grief and anger that often masks that grief.  He offers these tips, with some added WeParent commentary, for harnessing that anger, so we can spare our children the worst of our separation and give them the best of their parents:

•    Resolve not to get sucked into his or her games. You know it when you see it, and you have a choice not to play.  Better to not engage than to end up kicking yourself for being suckered once again.
•    Refuse to fight with your ex. It takes two.  And, if you can hold out, eventually the other parent will get weary and give up.  Maybe that will open the window to a new and better strategy for communicating.
•    Keep your distance physically and emotionally. Co-parenting is the business of raising your children together.  Keep your communication business-like and brief.  And, if necessary, keep it virtual.
•    Pick your battles…and still refuse to fight. Is everything worth falling on sword?  Probably not, if it’s important, then discuss it, work it out, but don’t fight.
•    Around the kids, say nothing if you can’t say anything positive. Bottom line, for the sake of your kids, fake it.  Grin and bear it.  This too shall pass.
•    Face—and embrace—your hurt, your fears, your grief. Don’t let your anger “protect” you from really facing the sadness and grief you may be feeling about your relationship.  Deal with all the emotions, and allow yourself to truly heal.
•    Spend some time looking inward at how you can learn from all this pain, not just at how you have been wronged. It’s easy to place the blame elsewhere, but challenges like this allow us to see things we may need to face in ourselves.  And, although putting puppet strings on the other parent might be a fantasy, the only person we can truly control is us.  Take this opportunity to grow.
•    Try to find or make a place in your heart for the good stuff, happy memories, including the children you made together—and also for the sadness over what you have lost, what might have been but isn’t. If the only good thing you can think of is the kids, focus on your gratitude for that.  And, don’t be afraid to mourn your vision of what the relationship could have been.  Dealing with this will allow you to move on.

Ultimately, the goal is to allow ourselves to heal.  But, while we do that, these suggestions can help us shield our children from the grown folks’ business of sorting out their personal and parenting relationships.

My Journey to WeParent

I can’t begin to articulate how excited I am to finally share WeParent with you.  For most of my life, I’ve found myself passionate about one idea or another only to let it flicker out because of my inaction.

That hasn’t happened with WeParent, though.  Perhaps because, like many of you, I recognize the importance of sorting this thing out with my son’s father.  As a mother, I want to do right by my child, and I know that finding my way to the best parenting partnership we can manage is part of that.  And, as a woman, I know that finding myself and finally unleashing her onto the world in her most magnificent form requires some healing.  Maybe this light hasn’t fizzled, because more than anything right now, navigating my way along this journey as a parent is key to my growth and happiness.  For the first time in my life, I truly feel called to build something and to make sure this fire in me does not become extinguished.

So, that’s part of the story that has brought me to WeParent.  The rest of the story is that almost eight years ago, I got pregnant by a man I had only known for three months.  Yes, we were digging each other, but no, we didn’t have an official, exclusive commitment to one another…and we definitely didn’t have any plans to go half on a baby.  It certainly wasn’t my most responsible moment.  His either.  But, we made lemonade, and for more than three years, we lived together creating some really wonderful memories and facing some challenges.  Ultimately, forever didn’t meet us in that relationship, and we transitioned into a co-parenting partnership and friendship.

Yes.  We are friends…most of the time.  But, all of the time, we are family.  And, that has been key to our being able to co-parent through the hot and critical times.  We decided early on that no matter what, our son made us family and that failure in this co-parenting endeavor was not an option.

It’s been a bumpy road at times.  That’s for sure.  But we are proud of what we have built, and we continue to get better.  Still, we need support.  I needed support, and I wasn’t finding what I thought I needed; so I decided to build it and to share the process with you.

And, here we are, mothers, fathers, experts and amateurs, co-creating the support we need…Tapping into that thing called hope, acting on some glimmer of faith that we can heal ourselves, our families and create the change our kids need to be happy, healthy children who grow into happy, healthy adults.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.  I look forward to growing with you.

P.S.  That’s me on the home page!

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