How to Handle Your Child's Activities and Big Events

Your Child's Activities Are Their Highlights

Lucia celebrations (the Swedish festival of light), dance recitals, and basketball games matter enormously to children. They are the highlights of a child's life, moments when family and relatives gather and memories are made. To keep these highlights just that, we parents sometimes need to set aside our own wishes and needs. There is no room for surprises, conflict, or anything else that gets in the way of a relaxed, pleasant atmosphere at your child's events.

Should Both Parents Attend School Events?

If things are tense between you, taking turns is better than both showing up. Parents who sit stony-faced in separate parts of the auditorium at graduation force their child to choose whom to run to first. That choice can puncture the child's pride in their big day, leaving memories where the parents' conflict — not the school play's lovely performances — takes center stage.

Parent-teacher meetings also call for some adapting for your child's sake. The rule of thumb: attend together only if you can interact in a relaxed, neutral way with the focus on your child. If you're comfortable seeing each other, there's no problem at all — in fact, it's valuable for both your child and you when you can share the love and pride as a parenting team.

If You Work on It, Things Will Get Better

Relationships are alive and dynamic. A relationship is something you do, not something you have. If you're not there yet, keep working toward it. Nothing is set in stone — it becomes what you make it, each of you and together.

• Taking turns doesn't have to mean alternating graduation ceremonies year by year. One of you can attend the ceremony itself while the other takes the child out for ice cream afterwards.
• Even for holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah, Passover, Eid, and Midsummer, the every-other-year rule isn't a law of nature. Look at the holidays from your child's perspective. Maybe the parent who celebrates with the cousins and the jolly Santa hosts Christmas every year, while the other builds the best New Year's traditions?
• Remember that children can worry about the parent who isn't there. Reach out and reassure them that your celebration is a good one too!
• Many children who live in two homes say the double birthdays and double holidays are the best part of their family life.
• And a special punishment awaits the parent who shows up to the preschool's parent fika (coffee get-together) with a new romantic partner as "a surprise".