New Here _2

[BL42]

My daughter came down and ate breakfast so I asked her to wake up her brother to decorate the tree. She said she didn’t want to decorate the tree because she had to do it at her moms today. So I said “lucky you that you get to do it twice”. She ran up the stairs crying. I gave her some time and went to her room. She said she’s sick of doing everything twice. She’s sick of having two houses.

LH - That's a tough situation with your daughter and the holidays. My kids are young and enjoying the extra activities for now, but I can see a point in the future when they're older where they're tired of (or even resent) the double effort. One of the suggestions I've read on here is don't worry about the specific day as much as spending time with your kids (E.g., birthday or holiday observed). Similarly, I wonder in the future instead of decorating the tree twice let them do that with ExW and create a fun activity (E.g., water park) tradition with them instead. I may consider that approach in the future if I ever encounter that push back with my kids.

So we continued the discussion and the next thing you know we are both in tears and I told her I didn’t want two houses either. So she says to me “then why did you choose this?” She’s under the impression that it was a mutual decision. I still don’t have the heart to tell her.

Kudos, my friend. It’s hard to do but you did the right thing by not telling her. Loving and respecting both parents is best for the kids and as y’all vets say we need to be the larger person to compensate for any shortcomings of the WAS!

Honest question...is this the right approach? I'm not saying getting them caught in the middle or fighting or delving into the ugly details, but I've read other online resources advocating being honest at an age appropriate level about where you stand as a parent so the children can trust you to be open and honest with them, otherwise when they ultimately find out the truth down the road and find out you played along with the false narrative (or even lied about it) they don't feel like they can't trust you either.

Not sure on the age of LH's son and daughter, but (especially if they're older) is it the right thing to continue allowing them to believe it was a mutual decision? Or would it be better to be upfront and honest and say "I wanted to work on the marriage and keep the family together, but it wasn't my decision."...without getting into affairs or detailed disagreements.

I struggle myself with how to approach this with my own kids going forward.