The whole “It’s an accomplishment/it’s not an accomplishment” discussion is bonkers to me. Toddlers don’t have accomplishments. They don’t need to. They’re more like puppies than adults. They’re figuring out how the world works and how to be kind and curious and funny and all the other things they’ve got to do. Preschool is wonderful and important and should be free for everyone at that age, of course–but finishing it isn’t an “accomplishment,” any more than having a birthday or going to the doctor or falling asleep an accomplishment.
If the graduation is meaningful, it’s probably as a transition ceremony, marking the child’s move from one school to another. If people are treating it as a ceremony to honor an accomplishment, they’re fundamentally misunderstanding kids in a way that I worry will put weird and stressful pressure on the kid.
First day of kindergarten was a milestone as well. Mostly because they took the big yellow school bus! Also for me as it was all day every day in the elementary school building.
Consider the poor kids in a famiIy I know. They had eight kids and adopted two. Then had twins. Then had another one. Dreadful, simply dreadful.
No such thing as pre-K when/where I was that age. And neither kindergarten, sixth grade, nor eighth grade (at any of the three junior highs I attended) ended with graduation ceremonies. The whole idea strikes me as ridiculous.
Yet another possibility that @Babale didn’t consider is that the SO getting the Master’s degree is the child’s other parent, and they’ve been a stable family unit since the time the child was born, or before. OK, having a child while in grad school maybe isn’t the best timing, but I’m not sure there really is a “best timing” for having kids.
Do you think you’ve been responding to the actual OP rather than a caricature? A lot of what you’ve written comes across as way over-the-top and making unwarranted assumptions about situation described in the OP.
I’m saying that by your own statement, requiring that your one kid assume the entirety of your emotional bandwidth definitionally precludes adding anyone else to your family, including a second kid.
Speaking as a married father of twins who just graduated high school (the twins, not me), I don’t think there has been a point in the past 18 years of my life when my “emotional bandwidth” was not split among multiple people.
Although many marriages come unglued when one parent (commonly bit not necessarily Mom) transfers 100% of their emotional bandwidth to the kids and the other parent (commonly Dad) is effectively first pushed out of the marriage, and then out of the whole family.
Folks can be single-minded devoted to their kid(s). That doesn’t mean they should be. IMO hyper-parenting is toxic to everyone within earshot.
My statement was that specifically courting and pursuing a new relationship with some who does not have kids and is not going through the same parenting experience you are going through is something that takes a lot of time and energy that I can’t imagine having as an involved parent of young kids.
Spending time and effort on your family, even new members of your family or the partner you’re building the family with, is not the same as taking time off from your family to date.
When your kid is a little bit older, I think it’s much more appropriate. But, even then, your priority should remain your kid. At older ages, the biggest danger I see is bringing people into your kid’s life, making them form emotional connections with those people, and then splitting up with them. Processing those emotions can be difficult for an adult; it can be positively traumatic for a kid.
I’m certainly not saying that you can have no interests or hobbies while your kid is in their rist few years of life, or that you can never date again. But I do think if the second you and your ex split up (or much worse, if she died, as some people suggested as if this makes it better) you run out to find a new partner, that reveals a lot about your priorities, and none of it is good.
Sounds like a parent who is emotionally detached from his family thus your seeing the other parent overcompensate for the distance between a father and his children. It’s his responsibility to foster a relationship with his kids not the mom who must pull the strings to get the kids to want to be with dad
Just to be clear: do you think this is measured, reasonable language to describe someone who is in a romantic relationship some years after their previous relationship ended?
Yes, I do. I think that if you have a young kid, running out to find a new relationship within a handful of years of your partner passing away showcases some serious issues with the way you’ve set your priorities.
In the story from the OP, the girl is 4. If we give him as much time as possible and say the mom died in childbirth, I think that’s very fast to already have grieved for your dead partner, found a replacement, and got involved seriously enough that you’d even consider skipping on your kid’s event for your partner. All while you’re supposedly raising said kid.
I’m kind of torn as well. You’re right that the kids won’t remember the graduation, and if they do, it’ll be as some sort of hazy footnote in their early childhood.
But I feel like graduate school graduation ceremonies are equally absurd. I only went to one of mine, and that because my entire MBA cohort was all going, and because my parents wanted to come. I wouldn’t have gone otherwise, and didn’t for the second Master’s.
I do think the argument that the kid’s with him forever, while the girlfriend may or may not be is worth considering. I mean, I’d be really upset if I missed my kid’s anything for a girlfriend who I ended up splitting up with later on.
Okay. So “the second you and your ex split up” is synonymous with “within a handful of years.” Right? It’s certainly not how I interpreted the phrase, but if that’s the clarification, then that’s the clarification.
According to you, how many years must pass before a single parent with a young child may reasonably be interested in romance? And what’s your basis for that number?
For myself: it’s none of my business, and there’s no number. One person might find themselves falling head over heels in love with someone the month after their separation. Another person might leave a partner for someone else, and make it work. A third person might start dating a year later. A fourth person might wait a decade. It’s not about the elapsed time, it’s about how they handle things.
And I have a strong suspicion that if the mom in Babadook had started dating sooner, there wouldn’t have been a movie.
I see you weren’t necessarily referencing only the dead spouse situation, my bad - so let me give my take on how I’d weigh my options in that scenario.
Clearly, my record in picking partbers isn’t great if I’m in this situation to begin with. My goal is to give my kid the best life possible, and through my poor decision making i prevented them from starting off with one of the best predictors for success - a stable home with both parents.
Given that, my goal now should be to minimize further harm by putting all my focus on creating the most stable environment possible for my kid. Inherently, things are already less stable than they could be, so I have my work cut out for me.
Absolutely the last thing I should be doing is bringing a rotating cast of characters around for my kid to meet, grow attached to, and lose. So any dating I do should be kept very separate from my kid, unless I think it’s at the level of “serious” where I’d be spending at least the rest of my kid’s childhood with this person.
And I wouldn’t be worrying about any of that until my kid is older - probably around school age.
No, but if he started dating this girl three months ago, he absolutely shouldn’t be going to her fucking graduation over his own daughter’s.
If there’s such a strong expectation that he should be coming to her event, then it’s a serious and long term relationship.
It depends on the situation. I don’t think there’s a specific number of years. I just don’t buy that you can go through everything you need to and get deep enough into a relationship that there’s some strong expectation you show up for Graduation all in four years.
Sure, and it’s a free country. Far be it from me to tell anyone else how they should act.
I’m sharing my opinion on what is and isn’t appropriate. If you disagree, and think everything might be appropriate under some circumstances, then great. I disagree. We can have different opinions on that.
Sometimes people change, that can be one party changes more than the other & you’re not a great couple anymore or sometimes one can change negatively, which could mean abusive or addiction so bad they’re using the rent/mortgage money & your life is unstable because of it.
Once I’ve decided someone isn’t who I want to spend my life with I’ve ended it & moved on. That has been as short as halfway thru the first drink to months to years. I’ve also been on the other of that in my life & had relationships ended on me; take the appropriate amount of time to lick your wounds & move on.
I don’t think anybody dates, proposes/says yes, & gets married thinking, “s/he’ll make a great ex some day”.
I think most if not all here agree not to introduce the new flame to the kids but at some point the new flame becomes the SO; what if they’ve been dating for a year, or 18 months, or two years already; should he not introduce her to his kids when it’s stable & long-term, & serious or do you think he needs to propose first?
ISTM that if I have kids and I’m dating, then about the time the relationship becomes anything beyond a known-to-be-short-term fling I need to introduce flame to kid(s) and kid(s) to flame.
If we are to become a couple, the kids will be in there too. We will have a three-way relationship; that’s built-in. Getting all the way to considering becoming engaged to the SO before the kids even meet them seems like a recipe for major problems. Not a way to avoid major problems.
So sometime after “just a fling” and before “We should get married; whadaya think? OK. Deal.”
He absolutely shouldn’t propose without first taking a nice long time to introduce his SO and kids and make sure everyone is compatible. And again, the kids should come first, here.
If he’s been dating this person for this long before introducing them to his kid, we are once again running out of time on the other hand, with how he got himself in this situation.