Part Time Parent

August 25, 2015

You’ve told me before that you are a better parent now that you are single. Just because you pay child support and show up to practices and games when it’s baseball or football season? Because you get to have fun when you see them? Because you get to parent on your terms now? Hiking, fishing, projects. All things you could have done while we lived in the same house.

What I’m slowly realizing is that I’m a good parent because I never left. I’m a good parent because I’m here, doing the mundane parenting tasks.

Making lunches for school, checking homework, reading book reports, sitting with a sick kid in the middle of the night, planning birthday parties, going to parent teacher conferences and school parties, putting them on the bus, cleaning their team uniform, taking them to doctor and dentist appointments, setting up playdates, rubbing arnicare on growing pains and sports bruises, listening to their Christmas wish lists, trying to fix brakes on a new bike, and failing and trying again, deciding on house rules and trying to stick to them and doling out punishments when certain rules are broken.

This is parenting, the daily minutiae. This is what matters.

We tried to get over our communication hang ups and present a united front for the kids. We tried to apply rules to both households but communication just isn’t our thing. You don’t ask about the boys during the weeks that you don’t see them. Which is weird because I really do think you care to know, so either your pride won’t let you ask me about them or you think that asking a 5 & 9 year old how they are every 2 weeks really gives you an accurate picture.

I’m the one reading books on talking to your kids about divorce, and about raising confident children. Losing sleep night after night wondering if they are going to be ok through every stage of their lives. One day I might just feel sorry for you that you are missing out on all the little details that makes parenting great, but for now I’m angry. I’m angry that you don’t see how much work it is and how much your boys need and miss you.

No one held a gun to your head and told you to walk away from your family, you did so willingly. You have no idea what it’s like to pick up the slack on this end. All you see is how great a father you think you are now. An absent father that pats his own back.

What’s sad is I get a sense that you take pride in your parenting now. But the thing you are so proud of, is being a part time parent. And I’m not sure that’s something you should take pride in. I’m glad you feel you are now a stellar dad that you no longer have to do it all the time. I just hope your type of parenting is enough for your sons.