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Home › Articles › Parenting Strategies › When Santa's Suddenly Single

When Santa's Suddenly Single

By Rebecca Valentine

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In the case of divorce or separation, do just the opposite. Take the opportunity to establish new traditions and rituals. Include the children, and let them decide what to do and when to do it. These don't have to be elaborate activities.You can bake and decorate cookies or string lights on the house. It isn't what you do, but that you're doing something together. Make it your holiday. "Men tend to hold on to tradition and rituals because they're a concrete way to maintain memories," Huxley says.

Christmas Without the Kids
Visitation arrangements following divorce can wreak havoc with holidays. You may have to settle for an alternate celebration your first year as a single dad. "Rethink Christmas," Huxley says. "It's not about a day or a certain present. It's about relationships. If you don't have the kids on the 25th, celebrate on a different day. Ask yourself, 'How else can I celebrate with my kids?'"

Mark Davis* of Lake Oswega, Ore. negotiated a visitation schedule with his wife that allowed their two girls to spend time with both parents. "We scheduled the holiday so they spent Christmas Eve until 10 a.m. Christmas day with one of us, then 10 a.m. Christmas day until the next day with the other. The next year it was the opposite."

This worked for Davis because he and his wife live relatively close to one another. The trick is to find what works best for each individual situation, Huxley says.

Helping Your Kids Cope
It's easy to forget that the children are also experiencing a great sense of loss. They just express it differently.

Flying a model plane."Parents can expect their children to regress to old habits during divorce, such as bed-wetting and thumb-sucking for little ones, angry outbursts or sullen moods for older children, and a range of moods and behaviors in teens," Schott says. "For most children, adjustment comes in spurts, with most kids returning to some kind of normal behavior in about six months, depending on the amount of conflict in the divorce."

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