Summer Dads Time With Your Children Is Special; How You Spend That Time Makes All The Difference

Phil Holman wanted to be “the Disneyland Dad.” It was his first summer since the divorce, and the Michigan father of two had planned a whirlwind experience for his young sons: amusement parks, zoos, baseball games, the state fair and evenings at the movies.

It didn’t work out. With school over, the last thing his kids wanted was a schedule to meet. To them, a good summer consisted of a wellstocked refrigerator and plenty of time with their friends.

Now, five years later, Holman has learned his lesson. As he and millions of other divorced or separated fathers prepare to welcome their kids for the summer, Holman says he has no more ambition than to be a loving, trusted guide for his children.

“I no longer try to buy their loyalty; I no longer try to make everything perfect,” he says. “I’ve learned to separate my own needs from what’s best for them.”

He’s learned a lot of other things as well. Holman and other experienced “summer dads” offer the following suggestions on how to make summers with the kids a satisfying experience.

Breaking the ice: “At the beginning of the summer, we’re all establishing our territories,” says Charles Metzker, a Kentucky father of sons Kenneth, 13, and Luke, 10. “It takes time to find the comfort zone.” It may take anywhere from three days to three weeks before new summer routines are established. To make the transition easier, talk with the kids on the phone before they arrive about what activities they’re interested in, and what they can expect from child-care arrangements, Dad’s work schedule, and day-to-day life at their father’s house.

“The moms can really help in this,” says Metzker, 44, whose kids live during the school year in upstate New York. “I have a good relationship with my ex-wife, and she makes a big difference by building up positive expectations as the kids prepare to come live with me.”

Blending your lives: Some fathers make the mistake of taking off huge chunks of work time in the summer, only to find that their kids have other things they’d prefer to do than hang out with a parent.

Fathers should reduce their daily work hours, if possible, and take some vacation time, according to those who have been through it. But they also should try to retain most of their ordinary lives. “While their parents are important to them, kids don’t want constant attention, especially as they get older,” Holman says. Holman’s kids, Bennett, 14, and Gregory, 10, “want to sleep over at their friends’ houses, and spend a lot of time on their own,” he says. “I’m always reminding myself not to hold on too tight.”

Choosing your activities: Disneyland and other attractions can be fun, but such entertainment can also maintain a distance between parents and children. Hiking, canoeing, building treehouses and other outdoor activities, on the other hand, tend to promote intimacy.

Henry Tyszka, 47, of Michigan, took his son and daughter camping when they lived with him one recent summer, and they’re still talking about it, he says. “We all found hiking sticks, and put bluejay feathers on them,” Tyszka says. Now, “those sticks are waiting in the corner … for the kids to come back.”

Tyszka also found that his children, Victoria, 9, and Aleksander, 6 - who live in Paris, France, most of the year - had rarely been in the countryside on a clear night. “One night, we grabbed a blanket and laid down and just looked up at the sky,” he says. “In my mind, poetically, I gave my kids the stars.”

Treating them as individuals: Children react very differently to divorce, depending on their personality and their age at the time of the separation. Summer is the time for fathers to talk individually with each child about how he or she is feeling, says John Davis of San Diego, a summer dad for more than a decade.

Davis says one of his sons became quiet and sullen after the divorce, while the other went through an emotional upheaval almost every summer.

“Usually, his anger would surface over something, often around setting limits,” Davis says. “Eventually, we’d both end up in tears, hugging one another. It was cathartic. It was the acknowledgment that we missed each other.”

In addition to the heavy conversations, most kids like to spend some fun time alone with their father. Metzker says he asks friends and relatives to care for one of his sons so he can be alone with the other.

His boys, he says, act very differently when they’re one-on-one with him. “They don’t have to perform or sulk to try to get my attention,” he says. “So you have the true flowering of the kid’s personality.”

Saying goodbye: “There’s a point where you start to cry when you feel the pain of the separation,” Metzker says. The kids feel it, too, so it’s important to acknowledge what’s happening, and to say goodbye in an intentional way.

Metzker does it by saving a special trip for the end of the summer. He also likes to travel with his kids on the trip home to their mother, who lives several hundred miles away. Holman takes time, usually on the weekend before they move out, to sit down with his kids and talk about how things went, and what each person will carry with them through the year.

“It’s a lot like a grief process,” he says. “The tendency is to ignore it, avoid it. But I think it’s best to recognize it, and take it as a rite of passage.”

MEMO: Neil Chethik is author of “VoiceMale,” a syndicated column about men’s lives. He lives in Lexington, Ky.