Yes, I remember those days. Three boys and baseball and I needed to be at work. The boys loved baseball and their dad’s favorite saying was, “Go school, eat lunch, play ball.” “Go Giants” was a required greeting every time we passed through a toll booth going in or out of the San Francisco Bay area. So, of course they wanted to play baseball! To this day, my adult sons still love the game and looking back, and remembering how I sometimes felt, I wonder if I wasn’t just a party pooper.
Would I have done it differently?
When we are paddling as fast as we can to stay afloat, it’s hard not to be the grump. Being a single mom and the lower wage earner with minimal child support is enough to stress anyone out. It’s a constant challenge to do it all: getting kids to school, working all day, putting meals on the table, getting homework completed, trying to keep the house in order, all in addition to shuffling kids to extracurricular activities. Sometimes, it can feel like more than you can handle. Still, in our case, we made it work the best we knew how at the time, and we even managed to find some common ground.
Perhaps the ex is signing the kids up for activities without asking you first. That might upset people even if they were still married. This would be a good time to take a moment and ask some important questions.
- Are your kids enjoying the activity?
- Is the activity helping build a better the relationship with the other parent?
- If you imagine them all grown up and looking back at this time, would they have positive, loving memories? If so, would knowing this make a difference in how you feel now?
- Is this really intruding upon you?
- Are you being selfish? Stubborn? Difficult?
- If you are truly having a hard time handling the extra load, have you explained this to your ex or asked for help?
- Is your reaction merely because it was your ex’s decision to sign them up and not yours? Or is there really something that needs to be addressed, and if so, do you have a positive option to suggest instead?
There will always be “battles” between the ex’s, it’s the nature of the beast. Just remember, it’s wise to choose which ones are worth the “war,” and do not let the “prisoners” taken be at your children’s expense.
