Setting the Example

I have two young children.  Recently, they both were in trouble for fighting with each other (as siblings do) and I had to talk to them.  Without fail, in situations such as this, my boy says "but she..." and my daughter says "but he..." and neither of them hears what I'm saying to them because they're too focused on their sibling.  I tell them "I'm talking to you about you, not to you about your brother/sister."  They reply with "Well he/she..." and I respond that "If you do that to her will that make things better or worse?  If you hit her because she hit you, then what's she going to do back to you?"  They begin to understand where I'm going, though they don't like what they're hearing.

"I can't tell you how to guarantee that they'll be nice to you," I tell them, "but I can pretty much guarantee that if you're mean to him then he'll be mean to you.  But if you're nice to him, then he's more likely to be nice to you.  And if he's not, then he's the one getting in trouble instead of you AND him."  They don't like this, but hopefully one day they'll understand and put it into practice.  But that conversation resonated with me in a way I didn't expect.

Children learn primarily from their parents and their home life, and secondarily from school and other social situations.  I can't control what happens at school or elsewhere, and I can't control what happens at their mom's place.  The closest I can come to controlling my kids is showing them that I can control myself and to practice in my life what I preach to their lives.

For us divorced parents, our marriages are over.  But for our kids, she will forever be mommy and he will forever be daddy.  You can't control your ex, but you can control how you treat them and respond to them.  Your children see this, learn from it, and to varying degrees they will repeat it.

Our human instinct is to return harm for harm, which makes things progressively worse.  I can't guarantee that your ex will respond better when you respond with kindness and civility, but at least you won't be the one on the hook for the children learning that behavior.  They will see how you respond and they will learn from it.

It's a frustrating fact of divorced parenting that being a good parent means we also need to be a good co-parent.  As I've told my kids, "you don't have to like him/her - but you at least have to act like you do."  You need to at least be civil with your ex for the sake of your children, and it does not excuse you from that responsibility even if the other parent is hostile.  Even when the kids aren't around we need to be mindful of this, for how we treat our ex in private will influence at least in part how we treat them around the kids.  One way or another, the children will know how we treat their other parent, and it will influence them.

Be the better person.  Be the better parent.  And be as consistent in it as possible.  It's not easy, but it's worth it for the sake of our children.  They are watching, listening, and learning.