When I became a mother, I never dreamed I would be splitting my parenting duties between 4 people. My ex and I divorced in 2010, and both of us pretty quickly fell in with our new life partners. So since the relative beginning, it has been me, my husband, my ex and his wife raising our kids.
Add to that, I married a man with his own ex. So we have my husband, me, his ex and her husband.
In the mix of all that, we have new babies being born from each household, and relationships that extend and influence the decisions being made in the other two households. Holidays, school breaks, weekends...they all have to balance the schedule of three relative households. It's exhausting.
What's great is that my kids are SO loved. They have the love of their Dad's family, their step-moms family, my family and their step-dad's family. Their family tree is broad and beautiful, and full of love.
I would be remiss not to mention they get like, quadruple the presents.
Their school functions and sports events all have a bleacher full of supporters. Their school conferences have four adults squatted on tiny little chairs oohing and ahhing over their progress.
What's hard about this, is there are 6 adults involved in the raising of these kids. Christmas presents are compared, vacations impact the schedules of everyone, rules and behaviors flow from one house to another and sometimes clash family cultures. We can't have our kids when we want them. We can't just do what we want with our kids when we want to. Relationships with ex's are curt at best, and pregnant with inexpressible frustration at it's worst. Realistically, our relationships with our ex's are strained and yet, we have to have a constructive relationship for the kids. It's hard.
Sometimes I feel like I'm only 50% a parent to my older kids because I only see them half the time. I feel guilty, and grieve the mundane events I'm missing not having them every night. I feel out of the loop with their homework, or what's happening at school because they've already moved on to new things to talk about. I feel like there are pieces of them that I don't know, and important little pieces I am missing out on not seeing them every day. I've calculated that I am missing 2,372 days as their parent. THAT'S SIX YEARS. Ugh, it's so crushing. But in other news, that's 45 weeks and if I spend a 2 week vacation with them every year for 22 years after high school, I'll be all caught up. You're welcome kids! But seriously, when you only have your kids 50% of the time, it makes all the little parenting slips and mistakes seem all the more agonizing. After a tense school day morning, I sometimes have to wait a long days before I can hug my babies and tell them I love them.
This was a vent post, I've started and stopped this post many times over the years. It's not anything negative about my ex, his wife, my husband's ex or her husband. We are all doing our best, and dealing with our own life in the midst of raising these kids in this dysfunctional village scenario. I don't have any advice or insight to offer, either. Co-parenting is hard.
The end.
