Up until now, you have celebrated every one of your child’s birthdays with them. Now that you have divorced, you need to face the reality that this may change.
Birthdays are one of those special occasions which can go from being a time of family joy to one of difficulties when your family splits in two. However hard it may be for you, you need to remember it will be even harder for your child.
How could you make birthdays work from now on?
Much will depend on how close you and your co-parent live to each other and how well you can get on. Or at least, how well you can put aside your differences for your child’s benefit. Here are some possible solutions:
- Take turns: Your child spends this year’s birthday with you and the following year with your ex.
- Split the day: This will be easier if the birthday falls on a weekend than a school day. Your child could wake in one house, and go to sleep in the other. So one of you does a birthday breakfast or lunch, the other a birthday tea.
- You both attend the birthday party: This may be difficult, as you might not want your ex in your house or vice versa. Yet, even if you hire a neutral venue, it will still require coordination, or one person organizing it how they see fit and the other party promising not to make disruptive comments about how they would have done it differently.
One final thing. Avoid using your child’s birthday to try and outdo each other. While one of you may be able to afford a more expensive gift or a more lavish party than the other, do not need to flaunt that.
It’s delicate, so the better you are able to discuss things, the better you can make your child’s birthdays. Even the hint of parental problems over the birthday may be enough to ruin their day. If you can handle your divorce amicably, it lays the groundwork for solving these kinds of matters amicably.
