Part-Time Dads Make the Most of Summer

Ever since the divorce revolution, many children have been shipped off in the summer to spend considerable chunks of time with a relative they don’t know all that well: Dad.

For most of the nation’s 15 million single mothers, this offers a much-needed break. But for long-distance fathers, it’s a matter of switching into high gear through unfamiliar emotional terrain.

Patrick Batchelder, creator of a Boulder, Colo.-based newsletter for single dads, contends that most men usually figure out how to handle the extra meals, carpet spills and dirty beach towels. The more serious and responsible fathers also learn to plan ahead to schedule activities with friends, camp, or find quality child care if needed.

The real challenges arise when they try to cram all the love and values and fly-fishing lessons they ever hoped to give their children into a few precious weeks, attempting to compensate for the guilt, conscious or not, they feel for not being there the rest of the year.

Problems can start on Day One. Said Batchelder: “Say he’s having high expectations, or some fantasy that the kids will fly down the gangplank into his arms and he’s going to be the dad he wanted to be, the dad he never had. And the kids are excited about it too, even if they’re acting a little bit standoffish. Then they try to push the buttons they push on Mom and before the day’s over, there are a lot of tears. . . .

“All a dad needs to hear is, ‘I miss Mom.’ You automatically think, ‘Apparently I’m not making up for it. They’d rather be with her.’ ”

Batchelder advises dads to let the kids call Mom every night if necessary. “I say, do whatever it takes to make things work for them.” Remember, too, he says, that it takes effort to reconnect with children who are growing and changing, and that “you’re just a dad; they’re just kids. That’s all you need to be to each other.”

Harry Goldman, a Massachusetts neurologist, said his sons, now 8 and 13, have returned from Minnesota the past five summers to live with him, his new wife and stepdaughter. “In the early times, it was very frightening to think maybe this won’t work. Maybe they’ll forget about me,” he said. Even though he stayed in touch most every day by phone, he said the boys were angry. The first summer the youngest boy had temper tantrums, screaming and crying for his mother.

Now, summers are the best of times, he said, “when our family is whole.” He tries to make clear to his sons that “this is their family, which is every bit as legitimate as their family in Minnesota. There are times we have lousy days, it’s raining and there are no friends to play with. They’re cranky and bored. That’s fine. There are days that are incredible and great. The important thing to making it work is the length of time, so it feels that way,” he said.

While most experts warn against becoming the Disneyland Dad who offers treats and late bedtimes to compensate for his guilt, Batchelder said what the heck, it’s summer, isn’t it?

“If you want to take them out for ice cream and a movie every night, do it. Go and laugh. Do it. Let go and enjoy each other.” Why do laundry when the weather’s good, the creek is high and you’ve got inner tubes? “It all goes so fast,” he said. “Somewhere around October, you can analyze the guilt.”

These are also the times to take pictures for the kids to put in their albums to show their friends and remind themselves throughout the year who their father is.

Often, the most difficult part of summers with Dad, the part that doesn’t get any easier, is the end.

Said Goldman: “I just tell myself the things I’ve said to them--’It’s OK. I know you’re coming back. It’s been OK in the past, and it will be OK in the future. Although there’s an element of time and distance between us, nothing is ever going to change the fact that I am your father, and you are my sons.’ ”