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What to do when your ex doesn't show up for visitation?

For the last ten years, I have been dealing with my children's visitation schedule with their father. As a part of this, there are the times when he just doesn't show up. Also, we often deal with him being up to two hours late to pick up the children. Occasionally, he shows up early and is angry that we aren't ready for him.

Once I got a handle on my own feelings about it, helping the children deal with this roller coaster experience called visitation has been more manageable. How I handle the situation is the key to how well my children manage, because I believe this visitation dilemma is closely linked to my role as their mother.

My perspective on this comes from being a woman who fully expected to stay married to my husband through worse and better, as well as being completely devoted to mothering our three children. Right after my ex filed for divorce, in my shock phase, I had the horrifying experience of hearing a divorced mother council several other unhappily married women to consider divorce as it would make going back to school so easy since the children would be out of their hair during visitation with the fathers.

Since the divorce, the feelings I have had to get a handle on were about being inconvenienced by my ex. It helped me to realize that if there had been no divorce, I would have my children pretty much full-time, given the long hours my ex's job demands. I had to reconnect with the realization of why I had the children, because I genuinely wanted to be a full-time parent.

Now I choose to keep my own interests and schedules as flexible as if the children weren't away every other weekend and weekday visitation and part of their summers. And my availability comes across to them. Yes, sometimes the children are very disappointed, especially when their dad cancels their time together. But usually we are just dealing with his lateness. So as I have gotten better at welcoming this extra time rather than resenting it, the children take it in stride too, and we just do what we need(and want) to do until we hear from their father. Recently, I even had a commitment I could not be late for, so I simply took the children with me, and when their father called, explained the situation asking that he pick them up at the different location.

In this fragmented feeling post-divorce world, I have chosen to welcome any extra time with my children and to avoid anger at my ex about this issue. These choices to 'take the high road' about my ex not showing up when expected have helped my children have a steadier relationship with me and with their father.

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