My kids are surrounded by divorce this year. A number of students in their classrooms and extracurricular activities have families dealing with divorce, a sensitive issue for those involved and a confusing one for those who are not.
The kids have had a lot of questions, all of which Greg and I are happy to answer to the best of our abilities based on our own experience which is…..zero.
They’ve decided if our family is ever faced with this very difficult situation, there are some strategies they can implement to help them cope.
- When you win two copies of the same Scooby-Doo movie from your school Read-A-Thon, don’t offer the duplicate too hastily to someone you think might enjoy it. Keep one for Mommy’s house and one for Daddy’s house. You may not have doubles of everything, but you’ll always have Scooby Doo.
- Use divorce as an opportunity to redecorate your existing room and choose the paint colour of your new room. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “Jack got to pick the new wall colour for his bedroom. Can you guys get a divorce already?”
- Wrap your body in a full cast.
This one threw me until the girls showed me the taped t.v. show that depicted a girl having a full body cast put on so she could distract her parents from fighting. The focus would be on her health and they would forget about what they were arguing about.
I found it comical when I called Greg bitching sweetly suggesting he might consider pre-heating the oven next time instead of just throwing the pizza in as the food and appliance warm up simultaneously and I saw Hanna and Ellie reach for the paper towel and paste to begin their homegrown cast factory.
Chloe dragged the DVD player, the spare copy of Scooby Doo and some purple paint samples to the door.
