Colds lead to sore throats. These bring on coughing, which ushers in sleeplessness until finally everyone ends up a tired, weepy mess.
My little ones respond to extreme tiredness by falling asleep approximately three seconds after the lights go out. In contrast, my eldest fights it. “I’m not tired!” she’ll protest, her snarl blending into a yawn before the words are even spoken. “Can’t I stay up and read for a little bit?”
I don’t have a problem telling her no. If need be, I leave instructions with her father to put her to bed early on the nights he’s at the house. But she struggles against sleep so hard that even our best efforts can’t force her to get the rest she needs.
After a full week of sleeping struggles, she was wrung out. Her father had left for the evening. I’d settled in to work, thinking everyone was down for the night. But before long she appeared in the living room with some small issue. I curtly helped her resolve it, then pointed her back toward bed. Within moments she returned, another seemingly minor conundrum on her mind. I was more curt this time. I instructed her not to come back again unless she was bleeding, barfing or on fire.
She didn’t come back. But five minutes later I heard her whispering from the top of the stairs. “Are you bleeding?” I asked.
No, she wasn’t bleeding.
“Are you barfing?”
Negative.
“Are you on fire?”
She began wailing. No she wasn’t on fire, but she neeeeeded me, she sobbed. As I put her back in bed, she sobbed out grief that daddy didn’t live with us anymore. She missed him, she cried. Why couldn’t he live with us?
Lord, I thought. Not tonight. Not any night. “Way after your bedtime when you’re sick isn’t a good time for us to talk about this,” I told her. “But daddy and I were fighting too much.”
“Then why didn’t you just stop fighting?” she whimpered.
Oh if only we could have. “I wish we could have,” I told her.
“What were you fighting about?”
Intimacy, my brain said. Sex. Demonstrating love. Time. Money. Taking care of each other. “Grown up things, baby. Not you, and not your siblings.”
“Grown up things like the economy?” She perked up a little. Her class has been discussing “the economy” lately.
“Yes, I guess we did fight about the economy,” I told her. “Money is something that lots of grown ups fight about.”
“But why didn’t you just stop? You don’t fight now!”
A sudden and unnatural exhaustion hit me. “We don’t fight now because we live in different houses.”
Her sobbing began afresh. “But I miss him so much. I miss him all the time.”
As I tried without much success to soothe her tears, I cursed myself for being so selfish that I could not stay married to her daddy. How much have I hurt these small people, in how many ways, some of which I’ll probably never know? How I wished that I could have held out, held on, put my needs behind those of my children.
Perhaps I should have, to spare them this pain.
*Please, don’t comment just to tell me I’m wrong. Thank you.*
Kids benefit from being around adults who can model the ways to be a successful adult. If that can’t happen in a marriage, but can happen after a divorce, then it’s better for the kids in the long run. I was a child of divorce and despite the fractured family, I was more safe and secure because my mother (with whom I lived) was safe and secure afterward.
Lots of difficult choices have to be made in life and we can teach our children more by how we deal with the difficulties than by making their lives smooth and easy.
Best wishes to you in navigating the difficult choices. You seem to be doing a fine job.
Oh, aag, I’m so sorry that your kiddies are sick and you guys are having a rough time.
I know nothing about divorce, so I’m not even going to offer an opinion on that, but I do know about being sick. Try giving her benadryl before bed. It’ll help with congestion and knock her out wether she wants to or not.
And no, you aren’t being a bad parent if you drug your children during bouts of insomnia and airplane rides, you’re just making life easier for everybody. God, that makes me sound like a needle-happy kid-hater, but I don’t care. I hate seeing or hearing about kids suffering.
We have benadryl on tap here.
:)
Just a couple of days ago, I was in a funk about the same thing. Beating myself about why I couldn’t hold out. We haven’t filed yet and I would be a liar if I said I didn’t think about reuniting just to spare my child some pain. Just to make things better.
I just hold onto the hope that I HAVE made things better by leaving an unhappy marriage.
::hugs::
Not gonna tell you you’re wrong, not at all. I can’t tell you how many times I leveled the same sorts of rebukes upon myself when the ex and I split. No matter what your head and that part of your heart that thanks all that is holy that you got the hell out of there tells you, the rest of your heart is spanking yourself upside the head for how selfish you’re being.
It’s just a bitch. But you keep plugging, and you keep doing that mental point/counterpoint game. If it’s any consolation, you won’t ever do things perfectly. You’re gonna fuck ‘em up somehow no matter what. :)
My kiddo and I have a better relationship now. It might be because I’m not the stressed out mess that I was when her dad and I were together. It could be because she lives with him and I’m the mom she doesn’t see as often and therefore appreciates more. But it could also just be that our two personalities — generally worlds apart — are finally meshing into a very comfortable amalgam. Whatever it is, it’s really good.
I’ve thought and thought about it and I’ve come to this conclusion: I’ll just do my damnedest to answer her questions when she asks them as honestly as I can, allow her to be angry when she must, and be there for her whenever she needs me. All the rest will come out in the wash. A lot of it is also up to her.
Good luck, and I hope your kiddos will find their own ways to make peace. I hope you do too.
Love you, honey. You are the most caring and loving Mom I know. You are doing right by your kids.
When my mom told me she was divorcing my dad (for the first time, yea long story) my very first response was “about time.”
Based on everything else you’ve said about you and your children on this here blog, I bet you can help your children through their grief… for lack of a better word.
That being said, I’m glad I had no kids with my first husband otherwise that divorce would have been hellish.
Children have a way of saying the right (or exactly wrong) thing when they’re overly tired. My niece becomes the queen of hyperbole.
I’m guessing that since you had just told her to get back to bed a few times, this was at least a bit of a manipulative (maybe not on purpose) emotional breakdown. She knew you would talk about it…and that she wouldn’t have to go back to bed for a bit.
Divorce hurts, sure, but in the more rational light of a well-rested day, I’m guessing it wouldn’t have been such a dramatic moment.
My heart goes out to you, and to your little ones. Hang in there.
The fact that you and your daughter had that conversation, even though you spoke to her curtly, is an indication that you made the right decision.
In a home where the resentment between two parents is almost palpable, a child would not be able to get attention for aches and pains, or the emotional hurt that comes to the surface as physical hurt. Maybe a child in such a home would have found an outlet for that hurt by bullying her younger siblings or making up stories about fights at school that never occurred.
You’re doing fine, aag, and so are your kids.
It’s nights like these that really test your strength. Hang in there, you know we love you.
My mother put our alleged needs above her own, and stayed in a loveless, argumentative, mismatched marriage for 20+ years. I HATE that she did that to herself – she deserved so much better. I used to lay awake at night, listening to my parents fighting, and WISH that they would get divorced. My father wasn’t abusive or horrible – they had just been pressured into an unwise marriage by family and friends and the times. The day that she finally left him was one of the happiest days of my life – I was SO proud of her, and very grateful that my youngest sibling wouldn’t have to lay awake nights listening to the same thing!
It isn’t selfish to end an unhappy marriage. Children learn about relationships by watching their parents, for better or for worse. Better for them to see two happy individuals than one miserable couple.
Let her talk to you about it, even if it’s past her bedtime (although maybe encourage her to do it earlier in the day by creating a half-hour of Just Mommy and Me Time after the little ones have gone to bed). She’s been thinking about it all day – it’s just more real and potent at night without all the other distractions of the day.
I know nothing about divorce, marriage or raising children, so I’d have absolutely no footing to tell you you’re wrong, even if I felt that way. But it does seem that, just when you’ve begun to settle yourself into a decision, something comes along to crack that perfectly smooth coating of buttercream you’ve just applied (sorry, I’m a pastry chef, these are my metaphors). I’m sorry that you had to face doubts and worry in a moment of exhaustion. And seconds on the Benadryl!, it always makes me a happier person in the morning.
If I had a nickel for every time during my divorce I thought about how easy it would be if we just got back together…well, I’d be a very rich woman.
My youngest was three and put me through so much hell, he doesn’t remember it but it will stick with me forever.
Part of being a good mom though is feeling bad about these things, there is no way around it. What hurts our children, hurts us. It’s the parents who don’t feel bad that worry me.
In some cases, as much as it’s painful, the divorce is better for the whole family. How much more would you have hurt your family if you had stayed together and kept fighting?
I don’t have my own children, but I do have two step kids in a different state, who live with their mom all the time right now, and I have gone through a divorce. As much as it’s painful for everyone through the divorce process, and the adjustment, it truly can be better for everyone.
Everything will be okay, and someday they will understand.
You are wrong.. and.. your girls will understand how brave and wonderful you are when they get older….
you haven’t been selfish at all.. you’ve been very wise and brave..
I hope she gets some sleep
The truth is, behind the comforting words that your other readers have given, that you can’t be sure whether you have done the right thing. Nor can they.
You cannot take the pain away from your kids, fracturing their family permanently is an awesome and momentous thing to do… and will continue to have consequences long after you are dead. That is not a comfortable, or a fashionable, point of view, but it is true.
Nonetheless, what you can be sure of is that everything you have done you have done for the best reasons, from the best intentions, and out of love. Whether that is enough to compensate for the divorce is open to question, but it is a great deal more than many children get and the most that any of us can give.
So don’t beat yourself up, but also don’t deny (to your kids or yourself) what an absolute and unmitigable tragedy a divorce is for them, even if it is a liberation and indeed a necessity, for you.
You’re not wrong, and you are not right – that’s because there is no right or wrong answer. There is only what you did, based on the information and feelings you had at the time.
When my parents split up we had both positive and negative reactions. If you have not split up your children would also have had positive and negative reactions – they just would have been different to the ones they are having now.
There is no answer. There is only now, and how you handle it.
I was nearly divorced in the summer, and now spend a lot of time working on my marriage. I wanted to mainly for my kids-I didn’t want them to be just another stat, right?
Somedays, I wonder if I was wrong. But I know there’s no yes or no answer-it’s in flux.
You do what you can. As it sounds like you are.
Life is what happens when you deal with each moment and move on to the next.
Moment to moment is often the way I live.
I live in a glass house…….
I’m staying for the kids because they are 2.5 and 3 months old. I think about divorce almost every day. I don’t know if I have the strength to do it…..
Your daughter is very young and in a vulnerable state by being sick and tired. Children somehow know which buttons to push to make you feel guilty, wrong, stupid, etc. Stay strong, all your children will come to understand the, “Why?” of your divorce eventually. They will know that you weren’t selfish.
My parents divorced when I was little, it was the best thing that could have happened for me and my sibs… But it was a long hard road, and frankly we had many of those conversations with my mom… I appreciated being able to see this from her perspective today, and I think I’ll call her and let her know how much I appreciate her willingness to stick it out through the tough times… Good Luck aag, your children will understand some day…
My parents divorced very young, and I won’t lie – there’s still a part of me that wonders what *I* did that caused my father to ignore me and to enjoy the three boys from his subsequent marriage. Your children are lucky in that they have both of you, even if it’s only part time for each, and that they know you both love them to pieces.
It seems like a lot of people are trending back toward staying together for the kids. I honestly don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.
I think the same thing, most days, and i haven’t had any really tricky questions from the children yet.
My only salve (for myself) is .. they are not hungry, cold, scared or unloved. There are many kids who are all those things, yet they have mummy and daddy under the same roof.
The hardest thing for a mother to do is to do what’s best for her and her children, even when it hurts. Watching your offspring suffer is agony.
I know these things not because I’m a parent, but because I was that child. My mother leaving my father is easily the best thing she could have possibly done. He wasn’t a bad person, but he was inattentive and unmindful of her needs and mine. I was too young to remember it, but we’d have both been far worse off if she hadn’t done what hurt and was right.
Be PROUD that you will have this discussion (and more like it) with your children, rather than having to listen to them explain your bitterness and burned-out soul to your grandchildren.
Wow. I have had these very same thoughts. Not anymore though… because I know that I would have caused myself cancer or some flesh eating disease from the very stress caused by staying in my marriage.
My oldest daughter does this exact same thing when she’s tired. Its been nearly 3 years since we lived with their daddy so I don’t hear about him so much as whatever other little thing she feels like crying about. It could be anything from her dad to why we live in a different house than we did last year to why don’t we have more Christmas lights in the yard like our neighbors do… *sigh* As a single mom, you do what you have to do, ya know?
I think both their dad and I are happier and get along better now that we are apart. Thankfully we have a great co-parenting relationship too!
Point that out to her, the next time. “Mommy and Daddy are happier now. And when we’re happy, we’re able to be better parents and give you all the love you need.”
And send her off to her slumbers with a nice warm embrace.
((hugs to you too!))
even though i’m thirty and even though my parents have both been dead for more than 5 years, i still cry like that little girl when i think about my folks’ splitting up. but i totally realize that their eventual divorce was a blessing for our family. you’ve expressed deep sadness about your own divorce, aag, but understand the necessity and joy in it. continue relating to your child as you did on that teary night and in time she too will come to know these things.
Lala,they’re young enough that if you get divorced they won’t even notice. They’ll grow up with two parents so thats what they’ll know and it won’t earthquake them.
And I’m sorry about your situation, that sounds terrible.
There’s nothing worse than seeing your kids in pain. I’m sorry you both have to go through this.
I am always of the mind that happy parents make happy kids. It’ll take her awhile, but she will adjust. And someday she’ll realize it was the best you could both do under the circumstances.
Until then, just love her.
My older son is much like your eldest. He’ll fight sleep to the point where he’s a pale raccoon the next day. His dad and I are still together (though there were moments when I seriously considered leaving) but he finds plenty of other things to get wound up about in the late evenings. Lately, it’s been his fears that people he loves will die. Nothing has happened in our lives to provoke this; he just can’t turn off his mind. I’m guessing that your eldest also has a very busy mind. If it weren’t your divorce, something else would trouble her.
None of that is to minimize the importance of the divorce in her life. As the child of divorced parents, I know it’s wrenching – and like others have commented, I also know it was necessary for my parents. But if both you and your ex can be present in the kids’ lives, they’ll be fine. The harm comes when one parent repeatedly shows the kids that they’re very low on his or her list of priorities. My dad – who’s way richer than my mom – once took my sister to McDonald’s and asked if her mom had sent lunch money with her. It doesn’t sound like that’s your ex – fortunately.
Beatings, blood and broken dishes. That was my parents marriage. The day my mother stumbled out of the house carrying a small suitcase, with no money and no place to go was the hardest but best day of my life. I shudder to think who I would be today had she not done so. Of course, not anything like your situation, but what I’m trying to say is kids survive horrendous situations. My mom left her marriage, but never, for the rest of her life did she leave me. She was my anchor.
I’m sure she IS sad with the split and DOES miss her daddy at times, but how convenient that she only brings up these topics at bedtime. Kids are sooo smart, the fact that she brought this up at bedtime, it was a just a ploy to try and stay awake. Kids do this… “make up” stuff just to push time. I did the same thing, and my kids do it too. A better answer would have been, “I’m sorry you are sad…It’s bedtime, we’ll discuss it tomorrow when I’m not so tired”. That way you are not disregarding her feelings, but letting her think that YOU are too tired to discuss it with her…
Unfortunately, your tired cranky daughter probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind to hear the old addage “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” As usual, you did your best to diffuse a difficult situation. She may feel miserable and tortured now, but she’ll see the light one day and know you did what was best for all of you, including her daddy.
If it helps, my parents are divorced and I know I have a much better relationship with each of them than I would if they’d tried to “stay together for the kids.” I was lucky enough that it happened when I was very young, so it was simple for me — daddy went to live in another house. I stayed with him every other week.
Kids know when something isn’t right between their parents, and it does serious damage. It’s better to be apart and have a healthy friend-relationship than together and at war, as far as I’m concerned — I’m very grateful to my parents for making the choice they did.
It’s totally understandable to feel the way you do, though. My mom definitely did, and it took her years to get over.
You’re wrong.
I am not going to tell you that you are wrong or that your choices were wrong. Those were your decisions to make and unless one is in your body dealing with it fromt hat perspective, one cannot really have a valid argument one way or the other.
One thin I WiLL tell you…..make sure your ex knows about that conversation….unless you really hate him beyond all conception, share that with him because it will help him with his relationship with his daughter.
Just my 2cents.
Maaaaaaan that sucks. (Probably not the most constructive comment on the face of the earth, but seriously….)
Actually, I’ll tell you you’re right – you’re right to consider the impact the divorce has had on your children, and you’re right to consider staying with/getting together with/never leaving their father. You’re absolutely right to put their needs – always – ahead of yours. What you need to decide is whether or not you served their needs by divorcing. Is it better for them to see their parents arguing, bitter, resentful? Or better for them to not have their father in the house? I don’t know, and maybe even you don’t know. But in the end, what’s done is done. You’re divorced. You can spend your time looking backward, wondering if you did the right thing, or you can look forward and always resolve to do the right thing in the future.
Frankly it’s a waste of time and energy at this point to worry about whether your decision was right or wrong. The time to worry about that was before the divorce went through. Now, you can only make the best of the situation and provide your children with the love and support they need, ( which you obviously already do! ). So stop worrying!
Being the child of parents who were divorced multiple times, I can say that it definitely sucks, but as you grow older and you see your parents with people who make them happy, you come to realize that it’s better that they divorced. It takes a long time, though, to realize that, so in the meantime, the best you can do is reassure your children that both their parents love them, and never, ever, ever, ever make them feel like they have to choose between their parents or that acts of love towards one parent are an act of disloyalty to the other parent.
AAG, I’m the child of divorced parents, and I remember the fights and the tense feeling in my stomach a lot more than I remember any happy times my family had together. When I was little, I wondered why Mommy and Daddy couldn’t just get along and stay together, but as an adult I’m grateful that I was taught the lesson of picking my mate with more care than my parents chose theirs, and grateful for the knowledge that an unhappy marriage is not one I am expected to stay in. What would you be teaching your children about what a happy relationship looks like by staying in a miserable marriage?
Talk with her again once she’s rested and not sick–I know when I was a kid, if I was overtired and sick and cranky, I used to freak the hell out about absolutely everything, and how horrible my life was and how unhappy I was, etc, so forth.
Things never looked quite as bad in the morning–at the very least, by the time morning came around and I was feeling better, I could have an actual discussion about it instead of just being upset.
I was young-ish when my parents split, ten or twelve. At first, I was hurt. My life, as I knew it, went thru a radical change. We moved, I had to get to know new friends. Over the next few years, as the angst of teen development settled, I saw how much happier my mum and my dad were apart.
Then I understood, and was happy for them both.
This actually brought tears to my eyes! I think it is such a painful subject for adults, that for children it must be overwhelming! I split up with my children’s dad 7 years ago. I am still not divorced (damn lawyers are expensive!) but it is still painful for them after all this time. I feel I made the right decision-for me. I would have died if I had stayed in my marriage. But it may not have been the right decision for them. They would have never chosen to be separated from their dad. And I did not give them a choice. That is still awful for all of us. However, I do not know what kind of mother I could have possibly been if I had stayed. I am able to give them explanations as they get older. I hope that being able to explain some of what was happening will help ease their mind. I do not expect their blessing. We will just need to build a new life and a new family that is based on love and respect. It is a daily battle, but one that I think is worth it.
My parents have been divorced for about five years now… they were married for twenty-five years and I cannot remember my mom being happy when my father was around. You did the right thing. If you’re happy then life will be happier for your family. I understand where your daughter is coming from, though I never remember liking my father, but she will one day understand that love has many different manifestation and she’ll be better because of that knowledge.
My mom stayed with my father because of us, because she needed to get things settled, take care of dying parents, and sick and learning disabled children. There is guilt that we all live with, if there hadn’t been so many of us and we didn’t need so much of her time maybe she could have been happy instead of married to my father. This is how we grow. We learn and take the scars of our lives with us and build our consciousness. You have given you daughter the greatest gift a mom can give her child and that is the gift of strength and respecting yourself. She will understand this some day.
And anyway what type of child would she be if she didn’t make you feel guilty about something. :)
I cursed myself for being so selfish that I could not stay married to her daddy. [...] Perhaps I should have, to spare them this pain.
It’s called a false dichotomy. The choice isn’t between your pain and their pain. The choice is between their pain with divorced parents and their pain with unhappily married parents. You are focused on the first, because you see it before your eyes. But there is no reason to think the second would have been any less. Different, but no less.
You’re wrong to not be perfect. When they ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin you should just be able to look around you and count.
Seriously, it’s natural to regret that things couldn’t turn out perfect. It’s natural to regret, when you look at things from some perspectives, that you’d made a different choice. But the reasons you had to choose what you did aren’t necessarily visible from your daughter’s perspective, and she doesn’t understand what the consequences of staying together would have been. Especially if you did a good job of shielding your kids from the conflict between you two.
The best you can manage for your kids is a healthy cooperative relationship with your ex, and to live close enough together that they see both parents often but not so close that they can run from one house to the other and play you off against each other.
You weren’t wrong.
Demonstrate love and share intimacies with your children. They’ll understand eventually.