Many children with separated or divorced parents experience visitation. Sometimes the visitation is set up as a a visit paid to the child's house by the non-custodial parent, and other times the children will visit the other parent's household for a set period of time. The latter's the one this article is designed to get you thinking about. Forgive the slightly scattered format.
1. How your character feels about the situation will depend on, like everything else, the characters and situation. Do they like the secondary parent? More than the primary? Or do they hate them? Do they hate both parents? Is there anyone living with their secondary or primary parent that they might want to spend more/less time with? Spend some time figuring out how your characters feel about everyone involved. Write it down and keep it in mind as you go forward.
2. How frequent is the visitation? If they only see their secondary parent a few times a year, then they might be excited to get away/spend time with Parent Number 2, or they may dread the Christmas visits that they're forced into since they barely know the person at the other end of the trip.
Some parents are very strict about visitation, and it can cause major issues if the kids can't/won't make it, but others are fairly loosey-goosey. If the two parents in question have different outlooks, it can cause a lot of conflict. Maybe Mom thinks Dad should be spending more time with his children, but Dad has a crazy job and doesn't think it's a big deal if he only misses two weekends a month, or maybe Dad is trying to keep the kids on track with their extracurriculars but Mom would rather have them in her house than at practice. If the visitation is court-mandated, things can get even more tense, and whether or not the children have a say in what goes on can lessen or increase the conflict exponentially.
When the visits are more frequent, feelings about visits might be more inconsistent and dependent on the Mood of the Week. My brother and I are supposed to visit my father biweekly, but it switches up sometimes as our weekends fill up with extracurricular activities, two weeks on, two weeks off, week on, week off, week on, three weeks off.... (our family, you might say, is full of loose geese.)
Sometimes we look forward to going, sometimes we feel like it's a chore. How things are going in our heads and on the calendar impact the feelings greatly; during the school year, it can feel like an opportunity to get homework done or like a draw FROM homework (they don't have internet, which makes certain projects difficult--though perhaps your character's visitation parent is the only one WITH internet, which could certainly be a reason to enjoy/tolerate going), and in the summer it can feel like time well-spent with family out by the grill, or it can seem like time I could be spending doing something with more lasting effects.
3. Parents who are separated can have a myriad of different relationships--there are the unhealthy he-said-she-said types, the hateful don't-listen-to-them types, the laid back it-just-didn't-work types, the exasperated we're-so-done-I-don't-even-care-anymore types, etc. etc.
My own parents get along pretty well--better than they ever did while they were married--but there's still friction from time-to-time. My father can get paranoid, and he's very susceptible to the suggestions of his live-in brother and mother (disclosure: my uncle is not the best person) so sometimes there are misunderstandings and hang-ups that leave my brother and I in the middle and angry.
4. But by no means does this have to be the dynamic between the parents in your book! By all means, experiment, change things up! I get a little tired of the very cut-and-dry "I hate/love this parent and love/hate this other parent." A lot of the time it's a lot more complicated than that, and I think it's important to make that complication more evident.
Try drawing from your own experiences, or the experiences of your friends or family members (your own children, if the shoe fits). It's a pretty safe bet that some individual in your life is or has been in a dual-household situation. Ask around! Unless their experience is particularly painful, most people won't be too hesitant to talk about it. Hell, you could ask me, or someone else on the internet. It's worth a shot!
If you have any thoughts, tips, advice, or input on the subject, let me know! The more experiences shared, the better!
No comments:
Post a Comment