I remember all of the times that I was stressed out about sending our good clothes with the kids to their mom’s house. Would we get them back, would we have to wash them, are they going to wear our clothes the whole time they are there and wear them out? I don’t want them coming back in their clothes from the other house leaving ours behind. Ours. Interesting how you think about it. The ours and hers or the ‘other’ house or ‘other stuff’ was always how my mind organized things. In reality the clothes were the kids’ clothes. Yes we bought them but they belonged to the kids. Doesn’t that suck. Not having any clothes of your own, only mom’s or dad’s. That simple way that we phrased a set of clothing affected how the kids felt about themselves and it was one less thing they didn’t have control of or that was their own.
We as adults unintentionally put pressure on those kids that never should have been there. I remember always saying ‘make sure you bring all our clothes back’ or ‘did you bring your stuff back’? We would even make them change into their ‘mom’s’ clothes before they went back to her house so we didn’t have to fight that battle later. It never occurred to me at the time how much unnecessary pressure I was putting on the kids. I was so stuck in the thought pattern about having our stuff separate from their mom’s house, and how I wanted to have control of ‘our’ things, that I never once thought about how that was affecting the kids until much later on. They already had all the pressure of having to go back and forth to very different houses and leave one of their parents to do that. They also knew there was tension even though we tried our best to hide it from them. We put a responsibility on them to make sure those clothes came back and in turn asked them to ‘keep the peace’ without saying it. Then they had to put on a different ‘uniform’ to go to the other place they lived. It was like we were telling them to make sure they changed (and not just their clothes) in order to go to the other home. Looking back I feel horrible about it now. We made something as simple as an outfit cause unease, anxiety and turmoil in these kids that never deserved that.
Now I know what some of you are thinking because I was thinking it at the time too. We had certain clothes, we liked the clothes we got for the kids and they liked them, some were event specific and really nice and we spent certain amounts of money, we give her money already, why should we have to… and on and on. I do get it that’s where I was. However, years later thinking about what was actually important and how we could have done things differently this would have been one of those things. If we could have taken that burden off of their shoulders it is one more thing we could have done to make it easier on them. The problem is it was ‘our house’ and ‘ourselves’ that we had to get over to do that. This is why it is so important to follow that gut feeling. Why am I worked up about this? What is it that is making me upset, angry and needing to control this situation? If you can ask yourself those questions you may be able to figure out how to navigate this in a way that works better than what I went through. You might be able to come up with something that allows you to feel okay about the situation, keep the kids out of the middle or just plain let go. In the long run it will be healthier for you too!
