Getting through the Holidays with Children of Divorce

Written by Mary Huntsman, Esq. 

Though Thanksgiving and Christmas can often bring memories of joy and family it can also be a time of stress. Getting through the Holidays with Children of Divorce can be difficult.   Often my own father starts joking that he begins to feel a knot in his stomach due to all the stress of planning what the family is going to do for the holidays.  Though planning causes distress for my father, in reality planning is the key for someone recently divorced or going through a divorce to manage the holidays, especially if there are children involved.

The first step to planning for the holidays is to look at your Parenting Plan Agreement if you have one, saying specialists at the law offices of Paul J. Duron. If there is no plan you need to discuss with your soon to be ex on how you want to handle it.  Often it is advisable to try and stick to a plan that will be similar to the one that will be adopted as your Parenting Plan Agreement.  Your attorney will be able to help you with this and tell you what one usually looks like.  In that plan it will state which parent has which holiday days and the times for pick up and drop off.

The holiday break is usually discussed in terms of the last day of school for the child to when the child returns to school.  It should be all laid out for you so there is no added stress or fighting.

The next step is to plan around that time frame.  This may seem to be stating the obvious but in reality you may not have really thought about it at the time of getting divorced or working out your timesharing schedule.  No worries, now is the time to think about it and plan so as to prevent stress or hard feelings during the holidays.  Remember the child is unlikely to complain about having two celebrations but a child will remember if their holiday is marred by unhappy or disgruntled parents.

Everyone has special traditions during this time of the year and of course you want to keep them and there is no reason to not to.  Try to be as flexible as you can be.  Sure some of the traditions may change slightly but that is why planning is so important.  For example, if your family always does Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve to listen to the carols but this year your child has to leave before then don’t freak out now is the time to think about this and plan accordingly.  Often there are earlier services and now you can start a new tradition that is just for you and your child.  Same with opening gifts sure you may have used to open gifts Christmas morning but why not open them Christmas Eve.  The key is to plan so as to make your time special and stress free with your child and to work on creating new meaningful traditions for just you guys.  This is the year to have fun and not stress.

Getting through the Holidays with Children of Divorce.

Happy Holidays!!!!!

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