What helped Elise get through her divorce were her children and her friends. With two elementary school-aged children, Elise made sure she got them up every morning and made sure they came first.
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I always made them a priority through it all. I didn’t have time to do everything so I said OK, I’m not going to be able to do all the housework that I need to do but they are my priority. I signed them up for all the same extra-curricular activities they would normally have been in and we still went on a really nice vacation, not an expensive one but something nice.
I think keeping as much the same as possible helped them. They have a tendency to work up that divorce word in their heads too. It’s, ‘My world is ending.’ I talked to them the same as I talked to myself – ‘Hey, there’s a lot worse things happening to people and if I can’t make it through this, then …’ My son was 8 then and I told him, ‘This isn’t going to break you.’
They see their father regularly. He lives about 15 minutes away. They probably have a better relationship with him than before. We don’t have near 50/50 custody but he was not dealing very well with 365 days-a-year parenting. He wasn’t really a Type A organized individual when I met him and for most of the time we were together but I think he tended in that direction and having the kids around just made him really stressed. Now he doesn’t have to be a parent every day, he’s not as stressed and he’s a better father.
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Like Elise, I tried to keep as much as possible about the lives of my children the same – they were at the same schools, did the same activities, kept the same friends. Our day-to-day routine was pretty much unchanged. My husband and I had always shared the driving them to and from activities and we continued that after we separated which meant they still got to see him even when it wasn’t his parenting time. That made my life easier because, honestly, I don’t think I could have done all the driving by myself. Then, gradually I managed their schedules so it was feasible for me to do all the driving – it was simpler to do that than constantly remind him where he had to be and when.
Putting the kids first has another benefit and Elise talked about it in an earlier post – knowing that she had to get her children up in the morning meant she also had to. She knew she had to get through the divorce for them and herself.