How to Love Your Kids ………...More Than You Hate Your Ex

Isn’t that just one of the best book titles ever? If you are divorced or divorcing and you have kids that title will give you a sense of relief or it will make you cringe. 

Because it is true that at some point in a divorce you did or are doing the very opposite—you are hating your ex at the expense of the kids. No, you are not that bad—not as bad as that other mother—the one who makes her kids say, “I hate you Daddy” or the Dad who tell the kid’s that their mother is a bitch. But still, there was a time when you made faces at or about the other parent or you said awful things about his/her new partner, or maybe you dumped old pictures of the two of you on the doorstep of ex’s new love nest. Really? 

(Jealous Woman mask from Noh theater)

In all of those scenarios you later realize that you crushed your own dignity and decency and that none—not one—not even the most supportive of your friends—thinks you are a good parent for doing that stuff. But the worst is that it hurts the kids. The kids!

Most divorced people with kids had a day or a month or some years of trying to stay together for the kids. So why, when that doesn’t work, do we fall into “Torpedoes full steam ahead” and take down her/him/them—with the kids being the biggest “them?” My god, we know better, but we have all fallen into the pit, and we feel like crap after. And the kids—whether 6 or 26—are the victims.

But it is really hard to climb out of that slough and to say “I will not bash or wish harm on my ex” and mean it. So here is this fabulous little book to help us. Helen Fried wrote, “How to Love Your Kids More Than You Hate Your Ex.” The title itself tells us that she speaks from experience and the stories will confirm that.

Her story: Remarried in 2006, Helen found the intricacy (brutal pain) of dealing with a “blended family” (war zone) to be quite trying (almost divorce number two.) She founded a support group to help others keep the focus on the kids and make choices based on the kids rather than revenge, retribution and trying to win what can never be won—victimhood.

It’s a book for all of us who are divorced, who married someone who is divorced or divorcing, and especially for the stalwart, longstanding friends of anyone caught in the hate stage of divorce. Just hand over this book and step back. It might take a really long time for the thanks to come—but it will. 

When Stepfamilies Face Caregiving

This week I taught a caregiving workshop and had the opportunity to talk about another layer of caregiving challenges that families face. It’s one that folks bring up one-to-one after a workshop because there is still shame and discomfort. But the truth is that the Boomer Bump that brings us so much caregiving and huge changes in our medical system also produce more stepfamilies. There are simply more of us in the 50 to 65 group. So we have more marriages, divorces, remarriages, second families, and therefore more stepparents and step kids. 

What do you do when the patient is a stepparent or the caregiving involves stepchildren? It can be that the natural parent needs extra help with their spouse but the kids are stepchildren who feel disloyal or angry, or maybe the ill parent has kids who don’t want to share caregiving duties with a “new” husband or wife.

John and I faced that and it was painful. His adult children –angry about their parents divorce --would not participate in any caregiving. And even refused to visit John in the hospital. We had so many friends who did pitch in, and that caregiving team bonded so well, that we were not hurt logistically, but emotionally the hurt was huge.

That is the tricky part of step family caregiving: there is enough old and new pain to affect everyone: parent, stepparent, the exes and even the new spouses on both sides.

Every issue that stirs the pot in family caregiving: time, money, travel, decision making, fear and facing death gets an extra jab and extra level of pain in a step family. The standard advice about having a family meeting to make a caregiving team may not work if exes are refusing to work with a new partner, or still tugging at the kid’s loyalties.

While family therapy may be the best call for stepfamilies in non-crisis time, when cancer caregiving hits there is not time or energy for that luxury. That’s when good friends and the couple themselves have to make a conscious decision to make a new family of choice.