flowmom | need to commit to myself

[flowmom]

I agree that sometimes children need to be pushed outside their comfort zone, but the home base is where they recharge their batteries and cope with the demands of the outside world.

I challenge separated parents to ask themselves: what if I had to start sleeping at someone else's house 2 or 3 nights a week, on their schedule? So often we expect children to adjust to things that we wouldn't expect of ourselves.

I do have concerns about H taking on more and more parenting. He had anger management issues all fall and a lot of the anger was directed at the children. It never got into physical abuse, but it did cross boundaries that H and I have as parents (we choose not to hit our children). And there are two punched-in doors in our home from his rages (angry at me). I am not seeing that anger now, but I don't know if that's because H now has the space and sleep in his apartment. He always blamed his problems on sleep problems with the kids when he lived here. I took on more and more parenting to protect the children from his horrible moods. Maybe him moving out is a magic wand for all that, but I doubt it, esp if H is taking on a huge parenting role in addition to his full time job, his business, his sport, wanting to start new sports, wanting to date or already being in a R, etc.

Yes, the transition of more overnights would be brutal for me. That's why I wish that there was more guidance on what IS right for the children in a situation like this.

I guess the feedback that I'm getting here is to mostly let H have as much overnight visitation as he wants, then to insist on scaling back if there are negative impacts. I will have to seriously think on this. I agree that it would be good "DB strategy", but I don't know if it's good strategy for advocating for my children as all current arrangements are likely to become cast in stone legally. I don't think that I can trust H to acknowledge negative impacts on the kids.