Divorce can be hard on your family, but if you make sure to prioritize spending quality time with your children, it can help ease some of those difficulties. Although you may spend time with your children in the day to day, that doesn't mean that you're spending good quality time with them. Below are a few great ways that you can make sure you have bonding time with your children following a divorce.
Go on Day Trips
Day trips are a great way to bond, especially if you're not the 75% of dads or 25% of moms who are not the main custodial parent. Unlike a full vacation, you won't need to do as much planning with your coparent to have a day trip. Day trips that are with just you and your child also show your child or children that things are definitely different now, but that difference doesn't have to be a bad thing.
For your day trip, consider going to someplace you know your child will enjoy whether or not they've been there before. You can go to a park, a beach, an amusement park, a museum, or any other location that isn't too far of a drive and is age-appropriate for your child.
A Full Vacation
On the other side of a day trip is a full vacation with your child or children. This will definitely take more planning, but you also will have more quality time with your kids. You can go for a week, a weekend, or any other length of time that you and your coparent agree on. Before you go, make sure that you're choosing a vacation spot that has age-appropriate activities for you and your children to do while you're away.
Complete a Home Project
if you want to stay a little closer to home, completing a home project is a great way to engage your children and improve your home at the same time. This is a great route to go if your family moved because of the divorce -- it will help the new house feel like home since your children will have a hand in helping with it.
You can have a paint party where you paint a room in your house, build furniture together, or do a craft that can be displayed in the house. Make sure you take their age into account when choosing a home improvement activity so that they can actually help you and you don't end up doing all of the work while they watch.
You can also bring fun facts into the activity. For example, if you're painting a room together, you can tell them how the first people to paint the walls of their rooms were cave dwellers 30,000 years ago.
Do Crafts
Crafts, even if they aren't meant for home decor, are a great way to spend quality time together. Pinterest is a great place to find crafts and DIY projects that are perfect for kids of any age. You can make crafting a weekly event too since there are so many projects out there to choose from. If you start running out of ideas, you can always try seasonally appropriate crafts for any upcoming holidays or events that you have coming up.
Do an Outdoor Activity
Physical activities are a great bonding experience because you can spend quality time together and create great memories with your children. If you live in an area that has hiking or nature walks, that's a great place to start -- you can make many hikes and walks in a few hours, so you can easily make them a part of a day trip. You can also try other outdoor activities, like fishing. Fishing had 11.6 million participants between six and 17 in 2017, so it really can be tailored to any age. If you have more time with your kids, you can also take them camping. Camping trips are a great way to bond with your children since you're out in nature for a night or weekend with little to no technology.
Game Night
Game nights are a great family activity that can easily be changed to accommodate any interest or age level. You can try out different games or play the same game week after week if that's what your kids want. When you're choosing your game, make sure to consider the number of family members that will play and the age recommendations on the game.
Cook or Bake Together
Cooking with your kids is a great way to bond with them. For younger kids, you can have them help with tasks like stirring or mixing, or if your children are older, you can help them chop vegetables or do other more advanced tasks. In addition to this being a great bonding activity, you're also teaching them life skills that they'll use in the future.
Baking is also a very fun and easy way to spend quality time with your kids. You may need to bake in moderation since most baked goods are sweet, but it could be a great activity that feels like a treat. If you have any special family recipes, like your mom's gingerbread cookies, you can create great memories while teaching them the recipe.
If you have more than one child, you can also do this as a one-on-one activity and make something with each of your kids. For example, you could have each of them help with one course of a meal, like the appetizers, main dish, and dessert.
Family Dinner
Whether you cook your dinner as a family or if you prepare all the food yourself, you can all sit down together and eat together. If you have older kids, you can make a rule about no tech at the table so that no one is on their phone for the entire meal. A "no tech, just talk" rule may annoy your teenager now, but in the future, they'll be grateful that they had time spent with you and not their phone.
If your kids tend to grunt in response to you asking them how their day went, you can also start the tradition of playing "rose, bud, and thorn" during dinner. For this game, you all say the rose of your day, or the best part of your day, your thorn, or what you didn't like about the day, and your bud, or what you're excited for. It can help start some great conversations about the specifics of your children's days.
Although divorce can be difficult, you can use it as an opportunity to get closer with your children. Trying any of these forms of quality time are great ways to bond with your children following your divorce and make you more closely-knit than ever before.
