In this article, you will learn:
- Why calling your kids everyday may not work in every situation
- How to introduce a new relationship to your children
- Why not to pray for information about the other parent
Not every kid is going to want a call every day, and it is important to tailor what you do to your child. Some kids don’t have huge attention span. So, when we think about calling a two-year-old every day, it’s not going to be a long call. That may be a five-minute call. I think what it really is about having consistent interaction with your kid. Sometimes, for example, people end up in long distance parenting time plans. Well, if you only see your kid in summer because you’re on a long-distance plan and you live in another state, yes, you probably should call them every day, because otherwise, they’re going to forget about you over the nine-months they don’t see you.
If you see your kid every two days because you’re on a 2-2-3 plan, it’s probably okay calling them every other day. But if you think about consistency of contact, good dad is consistent, and is involved in their kid’s life. If you are a good dad, your kid knows that you’re going to call them, and they know that they can call you and that you’re going to talk to them. Whereas bad dad is not going to be involved at all, and they’re only going to see their kid on the court ordered time. If you are a bad dad, what it really boils down to is they’re not going to rely on you and feel like they can communicate with you. They’re going to feel like they can rely on and communicate with mom because she’s the one who’s consistently there. So, you have to decide what level of consistency you want.
Introducing New Relationships To Children In Your Life
A lot of cases run into trouble when somebody new gets involved in your life, and they’ve got their own opinions about what you should be doing with your kid. So, you’ve got to approach this with caution because this can be the quickest way to get into conflict about your kid with your former significant other. Good dad’s going to be careful about it. He’s going to talk to the former significant other about it. He’s going to make sure that he talks to kid about it, and he’s going to make sure he talks to new significant other about it and tells them, at the end of the day, I’m this kid’s dad, I’m the parent, I make the choices, and I have another person I co-parent with.
Bad dad is just going to spring it on everyone one day, “Hey, here’s your new stepmother. I’m going to work more now that I’ve got stepmother here to watch you so you better get used to her.” Then she’s going to get into conflict with mom, they’re going to have different parenting styles, and because the dad’s not in there doing his part to parent, it’s going to be a problem. There are going to be all kinds of problems that you may need to consider. Obviously, if you have joint decision-making, you may need to talk with mom about that because she may have her new significant other too, and a little counseling that doesn’t directly address an emergency may still prevent an emergency.
Praying For Your Children For Information About The Other Parent
Courts get really uncomfortable when someone comes in and says, “I have all these recordings of me talking to my kid about how much they hate the other parent.” It’s almost textbook alienation. Good dad is going to tell their kid, “You can always talk to me about what happened to mom’s house if you think it’s something I need to know, but otherwise I’m going to ask you general questions about your life.” Good dad doesn’t pry into who’s at mom’s house, what were they doing, and that’s where bad dad comes in. Instead of just like a general checkup like you would with anyone else about how they were doing, they turned it into an interrogation session.
So good dad, if your kid knows they can trust you and they can talk to you about things that happened and that you’re always a receptive ear, they’ll tell you if something is significant or an emergency that you need to know about happened in mom’s house. Bad dad is honestly going to start these interrogations, and they’re going to sometimes create a conflict because the kid will notice that maybe they get attention from bad dad when they say bad stuff about mom. Sometimes they’ll start making up bad stuff, and then they’ll wonder if they say bad things about dad, will mom give them more attention? And the next thing you know, you’re in family court and your kid’s made all these weird allegations about both parents just to get attention, and it turns out none of them are true.
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