You read that right. I’m not confusing the holidays. I am encouraging divorced Dads to help their kids celebrate Mother’s Day. Here’s why I think doing this is an important part of good parenting. Helping your children celebrate their Mom is not about you celebrating or helping their Mom, though she will benefit from your efforts. You helping your children to do something they would naturally want to do and will feel good about is helping your children. Helping and supporting our children with activities that are meaningful and important to them is good parenting. The co-parenting bonus to you is that you potentially build good-will with your children’s mother, which may help you out at some future time. Especially if your children are young and there is no other relative on the scene to help them, they may feel alone and unsupported as they approach this holiday. They may not yet know how to celebrate this holiday, or they may not be able to create the celebration that they would like to have with their Mom by themselves. If you are not getting along with your children’s mother, you may privately delight in the idea of their Mom having a disappointing day. Have you thought about what that might be like for your children? How will they feel? How will you feel knowing that you sent them into that situation unprepared when you could have helped them?
One of the many losses associated with divorce is that family traditions change. You are no longer married to your children’s mother, so you will no longer be fulfilling the role of celebrating Mother’s Day with the mother of your children. Your role has changed, the way the day is celebrated may change, but your children will still be celebrating this day with their mother. Perhaps the shift is happening sooner than it would in intact families, but now your children will be assuming the role of initiating and creating the celebration. They will be taking over the role you once played. How will your children learn to do this without guidance? How will they get it done? Help them create new traditions and come up with their own ideas about how they would like to celebrate Mom. In doing so, you are handing over your old role lovingly and with support, rather than leaving it an unspoken, unacknowledged loss among the variety of divorce losses experienced by your children. In helping them build something new out of loss, you are helping them adjust well. The ideas below won’t require much of your effort, but they will mean a lot to your kids.
1. Let your kids know that you are aware Mother’s Day is coming up. Have they thought about what they would like to do to celebrate their Mom? As a parent, you are letting them know that you support them loving and honoring their Mom and that, in your family, you show appreciation to those you love. Good co-parenting supports your children’s relationship with their other parent.
2. Ask the kids if they need or would like some help and who they might want to help them? Perhaps a grandparent, aunt or uncle has already offered to help them, or a step-parent, or the teacher at school is helping them make something. It may be that your assistance isn’t needed, or they may still want your help with something. If their Mom is remarried and there is a step-parent involved, coordinate with them about who will be helping the kids and in what way. You don’t want to step on their toes, you want your children to get help where they feel comfortable, and you don’t want to assume the other person is helping your kids only to find out no one helped them. Asking our children if they need help and offering help or support in their efforts is good parenting.
3. Help them make something for Mom. Spending time like this with your kids is precious!
4. Help them buy or make a card. Ask them to think about something they appreciate about their Mom and encourage them to write that in the card, or offer to write it for them, if they can’t do it themselves. Supporting and respecting your children’s relationship to their other parent is essential for your kids and great co-parenting!
5. Help them earn money from you or offer to give them a budgeted amount so that they can purchase something special for Mom or take her out. (It doesn’t have to cost a lot to mean a lot to your child, and to their Mom).
6. Take them to the store to shop for it.
7. Teach them how to make toast, pancakes, muffins, tea, coffee, etc. so that they can surprise Mom by doing something for her. How proud your kids will feel! How much fun you could have bonding with them in this experience! Win-Win.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to be a great, loving, supportive parent to your children! You will help them adjust to the losses involved in your reconfigured family. You will give your kids the gift of modeling for them how to have loving, giving, appreciative family relationships. This will benefit them when they grow up and have families of their own. You will have helped teach them how to be loving Mothers and Fathers themselves and how to be supportive family members. I bet that you hope your children will create and live in such loving, supportive families, where they are content and know that they are loved. Help them learn how to be such a family member. Help them to feel good about how they celebrate Mom. They need you. Show up for them. They will love you for it.
