Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Staying true to the process

Many times I find that I get very frustrated with the legal process, its seemingly bias slant towards custody with mom's regardless of their abilities. I get frustrated with the laws that are written to protect against "dead beat dads" and therefore punish those of us that try and be good dads and are involved in the lives of our children. I find that the more I try and get involved the more difficult it is. With the distance between me and my children, it is very difficult to be at every event, every game, practice, recital, etc. And when I try to make it to these events, I am not allowed any time with my children. "It is not your weekend" or "This is not your scheduled time." and it goes on and on.

By trying to stay true to our legal allowed time, we build the relationship over time, regardless of how difficult and painful it is at times, I keep reminding myself that the small things I do now will pay dividends later. Assuming that all of us live to older ages, we will have a much longer relationship with our children as adults than we will as children. Knowing this I try and build traditions and activities around things we can do regardless of age. I try and spend time with them doing things we can still do when they are adults.

For example, my son loves to fish and hunt, so we spend a lot of our time together doing these activities, and I take the opportunity to remind him that this is good time, and that when he is older and I am just plain old, I will no longer be taking him fishing but he can take me.

It is all I have to hold on to, missing the things now hurt but cannot be helped. But by trying to establish these traditions will enable us to have something we can do together when he is an adult and we can carry these through other generations.

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