This is a really touchy situation from the mailbox.

First, I would recommend finding support - either through this site or the other sites out there geared towards long distance parenting. Via these resources, start to put together a realistic idea of what you’re facing before you make your final decision. It’s a hard road to hack and not every parenting relationship is cut out to handle it.

If there is one thing I work with on a regular basis with my life coaching clients who are parents, it is to walk the walk. Kids are smart and they read more between the lines then they actually do the lines themselves.. because let’s face it… they don’t listen to a word we say.

If you’ve decided to move, you HAVE to be able to see it as a positive yourself or you are not going to be able to convince your child to see the positives. If you see it as a horrible thing, your child will pick up on that and see it as a…

As a result of travel costs being higher on that particular weekend, I was unable to visit my daughter on her birthday this year.  I was able to go a few weeks later and bring presents but I wanted to do something extra special for her on that day.  I arranged to have balloons delivered to her school.  I did not tell her in advance about the surprise.  This was such a big hit with her that I’ve already decided to make it a birthday tradition!  

If anyone has creative ideas for celebrating birthdays, holidays, or any other special day, please let us know! 

~Holly

The end result is a binder that your child can pull out any time they want to write a letter to you - and have everything they need. This makes them have less need to rely upon the custodial parents to allow letter writing and gives them something fun to do from you.

Long distance parenting can be expensive. As part of my continuous quest to find affordable airfare and to make the traveling experience as pleasant as possible, I have …

So you’ve got your webcam set up and you are both seeing each other. Now what? Here are some activities that work well for internet visitation.

1. Read a book. Before my son could read, I would read to him. Eventually, he started reading to ME. When I read to him, I would hold the book up so that he could see the pictures while I read. When he read to me, if he came across a word he didn’t know, he could spell it for me or type it out and I could help him with it. This morning, I got a link from a site visitor to the International Children’s Digital Library
2. Play a game! MSN Messenger comes with a pretty decent selection of free games that you can play with your chat partner. There are some easy ones like tic tac toe, some classics like UNO and some harder ones like checkers and chess. They are built for online partner play and they are easy to figure out. They don’t require any installation other than…