divorced families
Common holiday conundrums By Trip Woodard WNC Parent columnist
I can always tell when the holidays have officially arrived. It is usually the first of October when department stores put their Christmas trees up. I have sometimes wondered why they ever bother to take them down. I know that the first thing I tend to think about when I am on a hot beach somewhere in July is Christmas and how many shopping days I have left. Apart from my particular fantasies, holidays — particularly if they involve the possibility of presents — weigh even heavier on the minds of children. And for divorcing parents, this may pose several
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emotional obstacles. Here are some of the more popular questions I am asked as a family therapist this time of year: » Is there a preferred way to set up custody and visitation around the holidays? The answer is “it depends.” If you former partner has a spirit of goodwill and collaboration, many types of arrangement can work. When children are young, parents can rotate which house they are staying at the day before a holiday (or after) and the day of the holiday. As children get older, they may be allowed a voice in their preference of where to stay. Over the balance of the year, there simply may be holidays that are important to one parent, but not the other, like Memorial Day and July Fourth. In those cases, parents can negotiate and trade the whole time with their children based on the emo-
tional importance of that particular holiday. Flexibility is the key if in a given year something unique comes up, like a family reunion during the holiday. As long as this is not a yearly pattern, parents can choose to differ from their usual holiday celebration to give their children unique opportunities to be with relatives they don’t often see. The same could be said of special vacation trips and unique outings. If parents are hostile to each other, their attorneys will probably advise some arbitrary plan of rotation between households where one parent gets most or all of a holiday and the other one doesn’t. As always, stressed relationships between parents, especially about the holidays, will rarely benefit a child’s emotional state about the holiday event. » I operate as a single parent for the
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