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Once a year, we have the opportunity to honour our fathers and show our appreciation for everything that they mean to us. It is also an opportunity to teach our children to consider the nature of the relationships they have with the men in their lives.
This year, Father’s Day is on Sunday 18 June.
Being divorced does not relieve you of the responsibility to teach your children the importance of special occasions. It also offers you the chance to show them how to receive love and appreciation gracefully, as they honour you. You do not necessarily have to rely on your ex-spouse to initiate celebrations. Here are some valuable tips:
- If you have or had a father, set an example for your children and involve them in the way you celebrate him, even if he is no longer around.
- Ask relatives or friends to guide and assist your kids with the task of planning and purchasing something special for you on father’s day.
- Inspire and support your children with a yearly celebration of their mother, on mother’s day. Whatever your beliefs are about these special occasions, she is bound to appreciate your effort and learn something from your example, to reciprocate next year.
- Ensure that your children are able to spend father’s day with you and mother’s day with their mother – it’s simply the right thing to do – good karma and all that…
- Don’t wait until father’s day and end up feeling isolated, alone and sorry for yourself if nothing magical happens. Make plans well in advance that you and your kids can look forward to.
- Have a multi-generational father’s day – make wonderful memories with great-grandpa, grandpa, dad and sons (father’s to be) all together in the same place.
- Regard the day as a celebration of all your achievements as a father and realise how important you are to your children. Reflect on your experiences and share tales that they were too young to remember. Children love to hear those stories and enjoy relating them to others.
- Marital status has nothing to do with this special day. You deserve to be celebrated without feeling guilty and don’t need an ex-spouse to validate that.
- In the event that you have remarried after your divorce, enlist the help of your new partner to arrange a memorable father’s day with your children.
- Get rid of your old expectations and create new rituals for your family to prepare and celebrate your fatherhood. Don’t feel self-conscious about making a fuss over yourself, because you are teaching your children valuable life skills.
- If you cannot be with your children on father’s day, focus on happy memories – look at their pictures or videos of when they were little, take out the gifts or cards they made for you or wear the tie or scarf they gave you. Communicate and share pictures of the souvenirs as you rediscover them.
- Plan something fun you can do with your children the next time you do see them. Make up a special day of your own when you can celebrate missed birthdays, father’s day, Easter, Christmas etc.
- Honour yourself! Realise that you are an amazing gift to your children and compliment yourself on having come this far.
Have a glorious Father’s Day!
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This article originally appeared on Fair Divorce and is republished here with the author’s permission.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
There’s some valuable tips in this list — but unhappily, the 2nd into-paragraph spewed a very negative impression of dads, that they need to be advised to ‘be responsible’ and ‘stop relying on your ex’s for family events’. That is pretty outrageous, given that nearly any study of today’s divorced dad show’s most of them to be very competent about ‘single parenting’ — but sometimes lacking support from others for key family events — not just from their ex’s, but in some cases from their own sisters and mothers too.
A friend sent me this, complaining of the misandry. In the author’s defense, the source site has four similar articles (this being one) covering both parents and both days, in an equal-handed way.
I agree with the other poster that his article, taken on its own, comes across as condescending, and insulting to actual good dads / good men. I was going to say that the editors need to make better selections, but given the fascist-left control of much of the media, I’m not sure how easy it is to find truly dad-positive and man-positive articles out there.
Yikes- as a custodial mother and educator I think this article is quite demoralizing to fathers. Actually, if you want to “ensure” time with your children on Father’s Day, in a non “magical” way in the year 2017—–you should by now have a solid enforceable parenting agreement that presumes, protects and ensures shared parenting roles for both mothers and fathers and is signed off by a judge. This will then be one of many celebrations of your equal parenting rights and critical contributions to the day-to-day parenting of your children. You won’t have to wait for mom to “reciprocate” your… Read more »