Newly single people often make personal new years’ resolutions. Lose weight, eat healthier, visit friends. In addition to working towards your better self, you may consider creating a new years’ resolution towards or with your co-parent.
These resolutions may be based on your children, or something more personal.
1. Forgiving your co-parent: If you are still angry with your ex, it could complicate your wish for your children to have a healthy relationship with them. To be the best person and parent for your children, you will have to find a way to make progress towards forgiving them.
2. Revisit your co-parent agreement: If your child is picking up a new instrument or a new sport this semester, be sure to set up a meeting with your ex soon about changes to the schedule.
3. Consider kindness: Consider doing one nice thing for your co-parent this year, whether a small birthday present or sending them a piece of your children’s artwork for their fridge.
4. Find a way to help: If your co-parent is having difficulty with a home project, such as installing a new faucet or mending the hem on a curtain, consider volunteering your services. It could set an excellent example for your children.
5. Seek understanding: If you and your co-parent are currently in a heated argument, make an extra effort this year to truly empathize with them and try to see where they are coming from. If there is a way you can adjust your approach, consider doing so.
6. Seek internal peace: Your ex probably knows exactly the buttons to push that simply infuriate you. This may be the year you discover why that topic bothers you. Not in how your ex says it, or that they said it in front of your children, but why you personally react to that topic. Identifying that sore spot may help you on the road to healing.
7. Resolve to remember: A scrapbook or photo album may be the perfect way to reflect on the good and the bad last year. Compartmentalizing your memories could help you separate the waves of emotion often brought on by divorce and help you conjure happy memories easier.
2019 could be the year you and your co-parent find enough of a rhythm to create a sense of normalcy for your children, and it could begin by taking the smallest of steps.