I write from the point of view of a divorced parent.  Keeping this in mind, it’s important to remember that you aren’t the only single parent in the family.  When you become single, there are a couple of options when it comes to the custody of your children.  You may have physical custody, with the father having weekend and holiday visits, or it may be reversed, you may be the one who is the part time parent.  You may have split joint custody with the year divided evenly between both homes for the children.  You may even have a situation where the father or yourself live far from the children and there is only limited visitation for a few a weeks a year and occasional holidays.

Whatever your custody and visitation situation is, the most important thing to consider is consistency.  I’m speaking of rules and disciplinary actions.  The major rules should be upheld in both homes.  I don’t mean that one parent can make all the rules and the other parent needs to follow them.  If possible, you need to sit down and discuss what are the most important, or the major rules, and which ones are not major.  Letting Johnny have an ice cream an hour before dinner is not going hurt him, but letting him invite friends in while you leave him home alone for 8 hours while you work may not be the wisest idea.

Deciding which rules are the most important depends on the responsibilities you want to teach your children.  They also depend on how much you want them to learn to respect rules in the future when they are grown.  And most of all, you want them to understand that they won’t get away with doing things in one home that they wouldn’t get away with in the other home.  Consistency in punishment, and carrying the punishment from one home to the other, needs to be agreed upon as well.  If Mom grounds Johnny for a week, and Dad has a visit with Johnny over the weekend during that week, he should up hold the grounding, if that is what you have agreed upon.  The same goes if the punishment comes from Dad’s home back to Mom’s.

The upside of a partnership with the father on this matter is that there is one less thing for the parents of the children to be at arms over.  This helps the children adjust to going from one home to the other. There will be some changes in the lifestyle of living with either parent, but knowing that both parents are in agreement over the rules and punishment helps give consistency to the children’s lives.  This holds true with dinner times, bed times, television viewing, video games, and computer time.  Whatever the rules were that help to form a child into the adult he will become while in a two parent home, should still exist in the single parent home.  In the best interest of the children, rules are good and should be consistent. Everywhere.