By Ellery Johannessen
You’ve just gotten home from work and you trip over one of your kids’ toys as you walk through your front door. On your way to the floor, you take a moment to reflect on the fact that, while your partner was home with the kids all day, the toy is still there. Why didn’t your partner pick up the toy? Surely they know what time you usually arrive home and are accustomed to your ordinary practice of walking in through the front door. Perhaps your partner forgot? Then, as your knees, elbows, and hands make contact with the floor almost simultaneously to break your fall, you catch a glimpse out of the corner of your eye of your partner, sitting on the couch with a vacant expression, looking at their phone while your children throw things at each other.
“Hmm,” you think to yourself with a modicum of frustration. “Looks like my partner had time to pick up this toy, but they’re playing on their phone instead.”
But how wrong you would be. Your partner didn’t have time to pick up the toy. The propensity of small children to find new and creative ways to off themselves is, in itself, a full-time job, and your partner was doing that and much more from the moment your walked out the door until the moment you tripped over that toy. They have picked up toys as best they can; they have prepared and served multiple meals; they have facilitated potty trips and changed diapers. While you were at work, your partner has done nothing but feed, change, burp, wipe, entertain, chase after, and generally keep these little humans alive, largely while listening to the strains of shrieking at volumes and frequencies that can shatter glass. When you walk through the door and see your partner on their phone, they are claiming a moment for themselves because, well, kids are overwhelming.
Parenting is hard. We love our kids and they are exactly the miracles we tell our friends and family they are. But they’re also a challenge. They’re loud, obnoxious, messy, smelly little tyrants whose mere existence encapsulates the vast majority of our own. They gleefully pull out every toy you just spent 30 minutes putting away. They intentionally upend the basket of carefully folded laundry you just set down on the couch. They carelessly drag their snacks and drinks through the house, ruining the floor you spent the weekend vacuuming and mopping. They ruin pictures with sticky fingers and throw their dinner on the floor while demanding dessert. They spill water on your tablet while they’re watching videos online. They throw fists at you during the bedtime routine, then demand hugs, songs, or stories as if nothing happened. They talk at one another at ear-splitting frequencies and decibels, which only increase the more tired they get. The older ones treat you like an innkeeper, eating you out of house and home while expecting you to act as their personal valet.
These traits don’t mean your kids are bad, or even trying to push your buttons. They are merely inherent to childhood. Obviously there are volumes of literature about this, peer-reviewed nuggets of pediatric psychology gold which carefully explain that, at bottom, it’s just kids being kids. They’re pure id, operating exclusively on the basis of what they want or need in a given moment. But despite it simply being in their nature, parents struggle mightily with their children’s quirks. We get worn out, frustrated, even angry at our children. We struggle to understand why they won’t listen, or follow a simple routine, or insist on shrieking and throwing things instead of just talking…even though, consciously, we do actually know. And, like your partner sitting on the couch looking at their phone, sometimes we just need a break.
For all the fighting parents do in divorce cases about parenting plans, most forget how much work it is to manage kids. If you’re in the process of separating from your partner, you’re going to end up facing these challenges solo. If you share residential time with the other parent, then no longer do you have the luxury of knowing the little ones are in the hands of a competent parent during the day while you’re at work. You have to arrange nannies, daycare, school pickups, homework, meals, and a litany of other obligations just to keep them on their regular schedule. If you thought coming home and tripping over a toy was a hassle, just wait. That, of course, isn’t to say it’s impossible – indeed, single parents are bestowed with superpowers. But if you haven’t experienced that responsibility, don’t take it lightly. Unless you’ve planned for this, there’s nobody coming to relieve you.
Bear all of this in mind when crafting a parenting plan. Do you really want that week-on, week-off schedule? Are you prepared, mentally, emotionally, and logistically to do nothing but take care of kids for a week by yourself? Can you afford that much childcare? What kinds of time will you have to devote to homework, baths, and other activities that impact what would otherwise be time to yourself? Think about your schedule, how much you can handle, and what sort of resources are available to you to help manage those responsibilities. Remember, going into court and asking to change a parenting plan because you didn’t adequately prepare for the reality of the schedule you’ve been awarded isn’t going to constitute grounds to modify it, and you’re likely stuck with what’s written for a long time. Plan for the long-term and be honest with yourself about what you can manage.
And always check the floor when you walk in the front door.