Picking Your Parenting Battles in Divorce

People have often asked me: "how can I practically help my friend or neighbor who is going through a divorce?"

My first response without hesitation is always—you can help with carpools. One of the biggest difficulties of living as a single parent was working out driving logistics. As much as I tried to organize our activities to be harmonious, there were always a few times when I had to be in two places at once. Solving this problem took some creative energy.

First, it is always helpful to get to know a few parents at each of the activities that your child participates in. This would always be my first line of defense in driving challenges. Secondly, I would reach out to my parents and my brother to see if they were in a position to help. I would also consider any friends of mine that I knew lived near whatever activity was in the works. Lastly, I would reach out to the girls’ father.  

It may seem strange that I would wait to ask their father as a last resort, but I didn’t want to use up my capital with him asking for what he would view as a “favor”. I know that doesn’t seem to make sense to most people, but that was my reality and in divorce, I found it helps things go more smoothly when you acknowledge and deal with the reality that presents itself. 

You need to learn to pick your battles.

Early on, I decided not to use my capital on things like driving difficulties and save it for when I really needed it—scheduling trips out of town or other situations when things needed to change suddenly, for whatever reason.

In fact, there were instances when I would drive my girls to activities which started and ended at their Dad’s house. You could say that driving was a point of contention between us. In any case, it used to drive my family and friends crazy that I would often drive the girls to events, even on his weekends.

One thing became clear to me—it would help my girls have greater peace in his home if these kinds of details were worked out on my side. And I never felt they should suffer by my trying to “force” their father to live up to his responsibilities. If he intended to do such a thing, he never would have left. At the start of my divorce, I made a commitment before God that I would work hard to try to keep my girls out of any animosity between their father and me. 

And if he made a point to try to bring them in, I would try harder to keep them out. 

This was the situation that developed with driving. He tended to cause them particular angst because he just didn’t want to drive and that was something I could remedy without much difficulty. I tried to remember the days when he was in the military and would be TDY (training on another base). There would be no one else to do things like drive them, so why would I allow this circumstance to be molded into an argument when it really didn’t need to?

Perhaps I was overly accommodating, but unless I had some real plans of my own, I was just sitting home doing nothing that couldn’t wait. This was one way I could contribute to a continued peace in my daughters’ lives and this was one way I chose to do so.

I pray that your situation is different and you have a parenting partner who takes on these kinds of responsibilities. In my previous post, I spoke about how their father was great to work with for the overall schedule, and this driving dilemma doesn’t take away from that truth. People just have their foibles, and I believe that as Christians, we are called to look past these things as best we can and strive to create peace—in our lives and especially in the lives of our children.