What Happens When Kids Share Your Co-Parent’s Favorite Routines With You: Real Parenting Lessons
The dishwasher was half loaded, my temples throbbed from a day of back-to-back work calls, and my oldest was supposed to be asleep 12 minutes earlier when I heard the soft thud of socked feet on the hallway floor. I wiped pasta sauce off my sweatpants and turned to find both my 4-year-old and 6-year-old crammed in the kitchen doorway, clutching their most-loved stuffed animals, grinning like they’d pulled off a bank heist.
“Mom,” my 6-year-old said, leaning in like it was top secret. “We have a show for you.”
I leaned against the counter and told them to bring it on, already mentally running through the list of things I still needed to do before bed: fold the laundry, reply to that last email, patch the hole in the 4-year-old’s rabbit’s ear. I expected the usual knock-knock jokes or a half-remembered dance from soccer practice. Instead, they took a deep breath in unison and started singing.
It was the garbage truck song. The one their dad makes up when he puts them to bed on his weekends. I’d heard them mention it a hundred times, but I’d never actually heard it. They messed up half the words, got the tune wrong twice, and yelled the chorus about the garbage truck that only eats peanut butter sandwiches so loud the dog ran out of the living room. When they finished, they bowed, and I felt tears start rolling down my face before I even realized what was happening.
They froze immediately. “Did we make you sad?” my 4-year-old whispered, tightening her grip on her rabbit. I shook my head and sat down on the cold kitchen floor, patting the tile next to me so they’d come over. I couldn’t explain it right then, the way that silly little song felt like a gift instead of a reminder of what’s different about our family now.
For the first year and a half after our divorce, I carried a quiet insecurity I didn’t even name out loud. As their primary caregiver, I’d built all our daily routines: the same after-school popcorn, the same three lullabies I’ve sung since they were babies, the same silly rhyme we use to brush teeth. I thought that to be their safe place, I had to be the source of all their favorite little things. When they came home talking about dad’s pancake recipe or his bedtime songs, I’d smile and nod, then quickly pivot to talking about our weekend plans. I didn’t mean to shut them out, but that little twinge of “am I not enough?” made me pull back without noticing.
What that night taught me is that kids don’t think about love like we do. They don’t see it as a limited thing, where liking one parent’s song means they love the other less. They just have things that matter to them, and they want to share all of those things with all of the people they love. My kids weren’t showing me that they preferred their dad’s song over mine. They were giving me a piece of the time they have with him that’s important to them, because they wanted me to have it too.
After that night, I made one small change that’s made a bigger difference than any big parenting shift I’ve tried. Instead of asking “did you have fun with dad?” when they get home on Sundays, I ask one specific question about his routines. It’s usually “what song did dad sing this weekend?” or “did you get extra chocolate chips in your pancakes?” It takes 10 seconds, and it gives them space to talk about the part of their life they have with him without me making them feel like they have to skip over it to make me happy. I also wrote all the words to the garbage truck song down in my phone notes, so I can sing it when they’re having a bad day or miss dad mid-week. I still mess up the verse about the stop sign half the time, but the kids just yell the correct words at me and laugh, and that’s better than getting it right anyway.
This isn’t just for co-parents going through a divorce, either. I’ve talked to a friend who’s a stepmom, and she says she felt the same way when her stepkid first started talking about his mom’s bedtime routines. Even married friends I know get that little twinge when their kid says they’d rather have dad read the bedtime story than mom. It’s easy to see that preference as a rejection, but it’s not. It’s just your kid getting to have all the different good things that come from having different people who love them.
I still get that little twinge sometimes. Last week, my 6-year-old told me dad’s chocolate chip cookies are way better than mine, and I had to bite my tongue not to make a snarky comment. But now I just ask him what makes them better, and he tells me dad lets him lick the bowl twice, and I nod and make a mental note to let him lick the bowl twice next time I bake. It’s a small thing, but it lets him know that all parts of him, all parts of his life, are welcome here.
Last night we were stuck in traffic on the way to early soccer practice, and all three of us were singing the garbage truck song off key, adding new verses about the soccer ball that the garbage truck ate. My headache was back, we were going to be late, and my coffee had gone cold an hour earlier. I still don’t have all this figured out. There are still days I worry I’m messing it up. But right now, this works. We don’t need all the routines to be mine. We just need all of our kid’s favorite things to have a place here.
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