by Renee leNobel | Jan 19, 2016 | Parenting
When I think back on my life when my first born was in his first year, I recall thinking that I was soooo glad that I wasn’t a single parent. I was in awe of people that were living as single parents.
Fast forward a number of years and I find myself living as a single parent of two spirited boys for half of my life. The other half I am footloose and fancy free (well, not really, for the other half I’m catching up on work that I didn’t get done when the kids were with me).
So I don’t think of myself as a true single parent…except on the days that I am. Fortunately, I don’t have much time to self-reflect on those days but occasionally some thoughts creep in such as “single parenting really sucks.”
On those days I wake up at my usual 5:30am (as my body just won’t stay asleep – darn morning person genes) and I sneak to my work nook and start working to maximize my time. That is, if I manage to sneak quietly enough so my morning child doesn’t hear me get up. He has instant mommy sense and knows when I’m awake. He will follow me down and start pestering me with “can I watch TV?” So if I do manage it, then I work. If I don’t manage to dodge the kid then I get sucked into entertaining him until his late-sleeping brother wakes up. I make their breakfast and lunch and hustle them out the door for school. I come back, work, work, work and then get them from school, make dinner, clean up mounds of detritus that they haul home from school with them, get them to bed and then try to work some more only to pass out and wake up to do it all over again. Was that a run-on-sentence? I think it mirrors well what my days are like when I have the kids.
Occasionally my kids’ dad goes away on work trips and I have the kids for two week or more stretches. It is during those stretches that I realize how well and truly being a single parent sucks and I thank my lucky stars that I will get a break in the near future to recover when my co-parent comes back.
Of course, having a co-parent isn’t all rosy. After all, my co-parent and I could not live together for many reasons and so it is still quite challenging to parent together. Some days when we are having significant differences of opinion I start to think to myself that I would love to be a single parent and be in control of the situation and not have to deal with my unreasonable co-parent.
Then I get the kids back and try to figure out a way to deal with my co-parent again.
My experience is leading me to some pretty set ideas about how to make my life run more smoothly.
The first idea is that single parents need a lot of support. A lot. I have been working at building myself that support.
What kind of support do I need? I need breaks to recharge. These breaks don’t have to be everyday but I need to know that they are coming so I can continue to get myself up everyday to power through when I do have the kids. I also need people who are in a similar situation that I can talk to. It also helps to know that if I do crater, I have a backup plan (i.e. my co-parent).
I have been working at implementing this system for the past few years and it is getting there. Society is beginning to recognize that being a single parent is hard and there is support out there if you look for it. I also build my own and I started to do this because my friends, family and society understand that single parenting is hard and so pester me to find support.
The other idea that has been flitting around in my head is that society tends to talk about single moms but not so much about single dads. They are out there too and they also need support. My brain has been wondering if dads have had this idea planted into their brains enough. We all hear about single moms, but what about single dads? Is there support for them?
The reason I’m wondering about this is because I’m relying on my co-parent to be there when I need that break. I’m also wondering if dads have been hearing the message that they need support. If they are not hearing this message, then they are not going out to get it. I’ve done a brief survey on the internet of support for single dads and the closest support group I could find was in Toronto on the other side of the country. Perhaps this is why dads often seem to jump into new relationships more frequently than women. They need to get another “mom” involved to help because there aren’t societal structures in place for dads.
My last thought on this subject is that for me to rely on my co-parent, I have to get along with him and him with me. I’m not going to ask him for help if I’m not speaking to him.
I have gone through stages where I’ve been fairly angry with my co-parent. I was at my angriest when we first separated. I held myself back from going in for the kill during our divorce process and chose the Collaborative approach to divorce where both parties agree to stay out of the court system. I chose this based on my understanding that it is conflict between parents that affects kids most. I chose the path of least conflict and convinced my co-parent to do the same. It is only now that I realize that this path has benefited me and my lifestyle as a parent going forward. I can talk with my co-parent and through this process we have developed systems and strategies for getting along. What would we have done if we had both gone for the jugular and dragged the other through the court process? One major support system would be gone for both of us. Who suffers? Kids who have burnt out parents and of course parents.
If you are embarking on a life as a single parent, understand it is hard. Try to build in systems that will support and sustain you to live as a single parent.
by Renee leNobel | Sep 15, 2015 | Divorce, Finances, Parenting
When I was growing up, I was always told that I was responsible for paying for my own university education. My parents wanted me to go to university, but they also wanted me to start learning how to be financially independent. Actually, I’m not sure if it was a conscious decision on their part to make me financially independent or just how they did things. Both my parents had to pay for their own postsecondary education (and my dad had to sell his beloved 57 Chevrolet Belair to finance his education). There could have been a touch of martyrdom – “I had to sacrifice certain things – i.e. my beloved car, so so do you.”
I lived at home with my parents when I went to the local university and I paid my tuition out of the summer jobs I held. My parents did help me out. They paid for half a car and the related car insurance every year I went to school and of course I saved considerably by living at home.
So when I tend to think about my kids going to university, I don’t feel like it is my obligation to pay for them. That said, things are considerably more expensive these days. My tuition was $2,000 per year at the local university and these days it is $10,000 per year. I know that the minimum wage that my 17 year old self earned during the summer has not kept pace with this increase in tuition. Also, I always felt like I missed out on some valuable life experience by living at home. So I’m wavering on the idea of making my kids fund their own education and have started to think I would try to support my kids if I could. However, I did think it was my choice to support them at the postsecondary level.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that a friend was still paying child support for a stepdaughter who was 28 years old. I was amazed to learn that parents are financially responsible for children that are pursuing their first university degree and are unmarried – regardless of how old they are!
This information got reinforced when I was going through my own divorce and my lawyer explained that the obligation to pay child support ceases in respect of a child who:
(a) marries,
(b) becomes self-supporting, or
(c) becomes 19 years old, unless the child remains a “child of the marriage” within the meaning of the Divorce Act because of inability to become self-supporting due to illness, disability, the pursuit of education, or other cause.
I find this interesting. By divorcing your partner, you in fact have a greater financial obligation to your children than if you stayed married. If your child decides he or she is going to university, then both parents are obliged to pay under the Child Support Provisions of the Divorce Act.
If parents stay together, they can simply band together to tell their child: “sorry – you’re an adult, fend for yourself.” This is no longer a choice if parents are divorced.
I can see why this law is in place. I have a friend who has two university aged children. Her ex-spouse encouraged her children to go to a university far from their home town and then he refused to pay for it. She has financed her daughter’s (who is in her final year at university) entire education and the only financial help my friend received is help from her daughter. She has been working with the justice system that is in place since her daughter first embarked on her university degree three years ago and so far despite getting decisions in her favour (the judge has repeatedly stated that her children’s father must help fund the children’s education), my friend has not received any money. She is hopeful that by the time her son is ready to graduate university (in three more years), she will get some money from their father.
So despite the fact that the law states both parents are on the hook to support their children during their postsecondary years, it is often a battle to implement this and it has taken considerable work and time on my friend’s part. She is extremely frustrated with the entire process.
To prevent getting into this type of situation, I recommend communication. Communication with your spouse, with your children and with yourself. Discuss what you envision with your spouse regarding your children’s future education. If you are getting divorced, then ensure that there are clear guidelines about financing your children’s postsecondary education in your separation agreement. Ensure the wording is clear and the arrangement for determining amounts to be financed are clear. Much of the time and energy my friend has spent has been in determining what amounts are to be split by the parents and how to track and account for those amounts. If there is nothing regarding postsecondary education in your separation agreement, start thinking about how you can bring this topic up with your ex before your children have their hearts set on going to a university far from home.
If it seems like your co-parent is not on board with sharing costs of a postsecondary education then you need to have a good long talk with yourself about whether you can fund it on your own or whether you need to start helping your children adjust their expectations about what postsecondary education is going to look like for them.
If you decide you are going to fund your children’s education because it is important to you, then you need to look at your financial situation to see if this is a possibility and if it is not, how you can make it one.
by Renee leNobel | Sep 10, 2015 | Divorce, Parenting
I keep a file with half started blog posts and today I was searching around for a post to finalize and I opened this one: “Working From Home with Kids” and surprise surprise, it was blank.
I think that says it all.
It is challenging to work from home when your kids are home with you. I keep thinking I should be able to be more productive as my kids generally have nothing to do with me anymore, they go for long stretches doing their own thing, so why do I not have long productive work stretches?
I realize that I’m on constant alert when the kids are with me and I’m the sole caregiver. When I became a mother, biology kicked in and it suddenly seemed as if danger was everywhere. As my kids got older, some dangers disappeared but others surfaced to take their place. The danger these days is that my kids will kill each other when they get into a fight. Logically, I don’t think this will really happen, but my mom biology will just not let me get immersed in my work.
So even though the kids are up in their room, my mind is focussed half on my immediate circumstances and half on being “on guard.” My eyes in the back of my head are in the switched on position. In fact, there is also a touch of anxiety in my stomach that makes me even less productive than normal.
What I have discovered is that I can do low level mental acuity work. I can do things that I’ve done before and could do with my eyes closed. Bookkeeping, bank reconciliations, data entry, yup – can do that.
Talking to a new client about what I do and what they need? I tried that, it was like texting while driving.
Writing a new blog post from scratch? My brain needs more time and space to be creative.
But hey wait a minute. I seem to have just done it.
Where are the kids? It’s awfully quiet in here.
Time to go check on them.
—
The kids were fine – and I’m finally finishing this post two weeks later when I have time on my own (the kids are back in school). It’s true that I have to have uninterrupted time to do anything new and challenging. Unfortunately, this was driven home to me this past few weeks while the kids were on summer holidays.
So how do I get that uninterrupted time? I could stick them in front of the TV and I could lock them in their respective rooms, but those solutions are less than ideal and seem to lead to increased anxiety in the pit of my stomach. They got a lot of screen time this past week and I still got low level work done.
What I need to do is plan better and adjust my expectations. At the beginning of the summer, I was concerned that I would only have the kids for half a summer because they were spending the other half with their dad. I thought I would have so much time without them to get work done and I wanted to hoard the time I did have with them by not committing to day camps for the kids that would take them away from me. What I do need to realise is that I cannot truly work effectively while the kids are at home with me and if I try do so, it just leads to anxiety for me (and my kids).
The added bonus of my new understanding is that it will now be much easier for me to be grateful when the kids are with their dad. I never thought it would happen, I thought I would be sad forever, but I am slowly adjusting to having the kids with me for half their lives.
