Kids First Co-Parenting with Dr. Royster

Holiday Series: How To Handle Nosy Relatives And Protect Your Kids On Thanksgiving

• Dr. Karalynn Royster • Season 1 • Episode 15

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Holiday tables can be tender ground when you’re parenting from two homes. We dig into practical, child-first strategies to keep Thanksgiving calm and drama-free, and be connected to the people that although they are being nosey...probably care a lot too. From boundary-setting texts you can send before you arrive to on-the-spot scripts that shut down gossip, comparisons, and invasive questions, this conversation gives you the exact words and plans you need.

We start by reframing the season around regulation and safety, then map out how to brief relatives, protect kids from loyalty binds, and redirect when someone slips. You’ll hear short, repeatable lines to keep adult topics off the menu, ways to validate a loved one’s concern without unpacking the divorce at the table, and gentle non-answers you can use when asked about dating, custody, or who “got the house.” We also cover how to introduce a new partner thoughtfully and how to intervene when family tries to extract details from your child or compare “mom’s house vs dad’s house.”

As the day unfolds, structure matters. You’ll learn when to shorten visits, arrive just for dinner, or create new, simpler traditions that meet your bandwidth. We share quick, neutral responses for kids’ questions about split holidays and guidance on saving deeper conversations for a calmer moment. If you’re attending solo this year, these same scripts protect your peace and model healthy boundaries. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s steady, grounded presence and a holiday your child remembers for comfort, not conflict.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Kids First Co-Parenting Podcast, the podcast for smart, intentional, millennial moms raising resilient kids after separation and divorce. I'm Dr. Carolyn Royster, a child psychologist coach, and a mom. After thousands of therapy hours with kids caught in the middle of high-conflict households, I'm here to help moms like you do it differently. From peaceful co-parenting to total chaos, I've got you. Here we talk boundaries, regulation, and how to raise a great kid, even if your ex is beyond difficult. We blend science with real life, and as always, keep focused where it matters on raising great kids. This is Kids First Co-Parenting. Thanksgiving after divorce brings two kinds of visitors. The people who knew you before and the people who just arrived. Both stir grief and ask messy and awkward and invasive questions. On today's episode, we're going to keep it really simple and work on child first boundaries, scripts, and a plan that you can plan ahead of time for how to handle these really difficult conversations around the Thanksgiving table. I am so happy you're here. Thanks for joining me again today. We are diving deep today into what I'm going to call our holiday series because the holidays when you are separated or divorced can bring just a lot of stuff for our kids and a lot of stuff for you. These next couple of weeks, over the end of the year, we're going to really dive deep into some of the very specific issues that come up for kids from two homes, particularly those that are higher conflict, around the holidays. Today's episode is really going to focus on extended family. I kind of chuckle because, of course, that's a huge issue, and I couldn't get to all of it today, even if I wanted to. However, I want to give you some tools and some guides on how to handle extended family around holidays like Thanksgiving. Because this is a November episode, I am going to heavily focus on Thanksgiving. Obviously, I'm aware not everybody celebrates that. For me personally, it is a big day. We love Thanksgiving in our house. I love to cook. It's a whole, it's a whole affair. And I really, I really treasure that holiday. I have had moms in the membership talk about the difficulties and the grief for them around not celebrating some of these holidays that they treasure so much with their children. And so we'll talk about your own grief as a parent. We'll talk about handling your children's grief. We'll talk about nosy family members, out-of-place questions, and difficult questions from your kids over the course of the next several episodes through the end of the year. We're entering pretty heavy-duty holiday season here. By the end of this episode, my hope for you is that you will have a little bit better idea or have thought ahead a little bit about how to handle extended family and friends at Thanksgiving, what to say about new partners, what to say about old relatives, and how to respond to comments and questions, and how to have this really rich, beautiful family time without bringing inappropriate topics to the table, quite literally, to the table when little ones are listening. I mean, a lot of times these are holidays where you see someone maybe once or twice a year. They genuinely care about you and they want to know how are you doing? Are you seeing anybody? Uh, what was that divorce like? How are you hanging in there? Right. And those are beautiful questions. And we invite you to be honest and vulnerable, of course, with your family and close friends. But of course, when there's little ears around, you have to be a little bit more thoughtful. And if they're literally sitting at the table, or even if they're at the kids' table next to you, you really have to be thoughtful. The first tip that I have for you around Thanksgiving and holidays in general, Christmas dinner, Hanukkah dinner, whatever it is you're celebrating, is I really want you to think about setting your boundaries and setting your rules and doing so early. So at the table, when your mother brings up your ex is not the first time that you should be having a conversation with her about how and what you're willing to talk about. So it may be really helpful if you're going as a guest or if you're hosting to send something ahead of time, whether it be a text or an email or a phone conversation where you just say, like, hey, look, I know things have been awful. I know you have walked with me through some really hard stuff with my co-parent. I know how you feel about them. Please try really hard when the kids are around to be pretty neutral and to keep your language respectful. That in itself is an example of setting a really clean, clear boundary. Okay. You're saying to your sister, to your cousin, whoever it might be, I love you. I appreciate that you have my back. I know we have had these vulnerable conversations, and I know I've shared a lot with you, but I need you to know that this type of conversation that we typically have around this can't happen in front of my kids. Trying to really keep it pretty clear what is okay and what's not. If you know somebody is going to be like, well, you know, he's such this and he's such that, and I can't believe she's doing this to you or he's doing this to you, that might be a little bit of a more direct conversation to have ahead of time. Something along the lines of, I know you get really defensive. I know you have a lot to say. We, you know, I want to hear that, but not at Thanksgiving. Okay. Um, if you're gonna have a new partner attend, maybe you're dating again, maybe this is the first holidays you're sharing your family or this experience with them. I recommend giving everybody a heads up so it's not like, oh my gosh. And even just as they meet the new person, they're not saying things like, I never liked that guy anyway, and you're so much better looking, or you're so much kinder. And it may be that you haven't shared the full extent of what happened with your ex with this person. And so you might want to set some boundaries too. Things like, we're just gonna do quick introductions today, or like, we don't need to go into all the family history and drama today. Thanks, mom. You know, that kind of thing can be really, really helpful. It may be helpful for you as a parent, as a mom, to journal before you go, to maybe write a little like sticky note, a little whiteboard note, a little note on the mirror. I like to keep notes on my phone. So maybe a little note on your phone that just says, like, keep it focused on the kids. You don't need to talk about your ex today. You know, things like that that can help you stay grounded as you're going. Point number two, how are you gonna handle when the inevitable comments come up about your ex? My family, as many of you know, is from the Midwest. There's often a decent amount of alcohol and food and football and games. We also like to play, you know, games after dinner and stuff. And as people get more comfortable with one another, and as they get more comfortable with each other, sometimes as the day progresses for various reasons, their filters might go down a little bit. Your filter might go down a little bit. What you need to have ready to go is how you're gonna shut down conversations that happen in an effort to protect your kids. Because remember, this is all about making sure the kids are not overhearing other people comment about their dad or their parent. When you hear disparagement, you need to have a phrase ready to go. Get a paper and pen ready. If you want to write this down, you can. You might do something like, We are trying really hard to not talk bad about so and so. This one I love. It's a little Thanksgiving pun for you. So we're trying to keep adult topics off the menu today. Kind of funny, right? This is Dr. Royster coming in to you to let you know, my wonderful listeners, that we've made some really exciting changes to the kids first co-parenting system. Because co-parenting with a difficult ex is not something that you go through a program and you come out the other side and it just magically works. That's not how this works, unfortunately. And so we've revamped the kids first co-parenting system to be a membership. Come in, get your first month half off, get all the lessons, get your video coaching with the group and myself, of course. Stay as many months as you need. Use the code ProtectKids at checkout at learnwithlittlehouse.com and join us. Get the support you know that you need. We are here for you. We're inside the community. We've made it a membership so that it can be so much more accessible and affordable for moms just like you. Join us today. And then I think it's important to see these comments in some ways for what they are, which in a lot of ways is someone trying to be supportive of you. They're trying to validate you, like this was really messed up, what you went through. Or I love you so much, and I'm still like pretty angry on your behalf. And so I think it is helpful to add a little piece when you're talking to folks about how you you would like to talk to them about it another time, but just now is not the appropriate time. That's the boundary you're setting. You may pull them aside and just be like, look, I actually do really want to talk to you about this. And I do want to share with you, but I just I really can't right now. Let's set up a coffee date for next week, or I'll give you a call later and tell you everything that happened, or I'll send you a Voxer or a polo. I use Marco Polo, but that type of thing. If there's prying, it's, you know, there's a couple strategies you can use. Sometimes people will come back with kind of a funny quip or a response, just kind of like, wow, you know, I haven't even had my dessert yet. And you're asking me about this. You know, this kind of clear, but not so clear. If you need to be really direct, you can say things like, I'd prefer not to talk about that at a family meal. We can touch base about it later. Let's say that it's more, you're more picking up on a relative or a friend that's trying to kind of put your kid in a weird position, either asking the child for too much information or sort of putting them in a position of comparing your two homes. And this can be really subtle. This can be things like, well, your dad never liked Thanksgiving and we're all here, and it's, you know, your mom loves having you here, or aren't you happy you can be with mom this year, kiddo? Really subtle things, but you still, as the mom, kind of need to step in to make sure your child isn't being made to feel as though they need to choose, or that it's wrong or bad, or somehow betraying you if they if they do miss their dad or they do wish they were with dad, that it can be both things. They can be having a great time with you and your family, and also really missing your ex, or really missing parts of your ex, or not missing them at all. The point here is that it's none of this extended family's business, and it's not their place when you are being so thoughtful about trying not to put your kid in these weird positions. You very likely will have to be kind of direct with folks around how they can also not put your children in these tough positions where they feel like they need to choose or say something negative about one parent or kind of anything in that ballpark. A common one around Thanksgiving and Christmas, for example, is oh, well, your mom gets Thanksgiving, but she doesn't get you on Christmas. Some sort of comparison between the two holidays. Some families really like Thanksgiving, some families really prefer Christmas. And I'm just using these two. I'm obviously, you know, Hanukkah, Kwanza, there's many different important holidays, but sort of comparing, oh well, this year, you know, we get the dud holiday and your dad gets the good holiday, or whatever it might be. And so again, it's these very subtle, often sort of well-intentioned comments, but these ones are a little bit less well-intentioned, I would say. And so you may have to have a phrase really ready to go, something along the lines of, you know, we really don't ask her to compare our two homes or how each family does Thanksgiving or what they do on Thanksgiving. Uh, let's talk about the football game or let's talk about how much, and you could come up with something crazy, very off task, but the point is that you're sending a clear message to this person of, we're not talking about that. Let's talk about literally anything else. Let's talk about the pie. Let's talk about your wish list for the holidays, let's talk about your school concert coming up, just changing the subject very clearly on behalf of your kiddo. But they also get the benefit of hearing you say, we are not asking you to do this, right? Even if I, as your mom, subtly am putting you in that position, I do want you to hear me say that I'm trying hard to not put you in the position of needing to feel torn between the two of us. Let's talk about this. Answering awkward, invasive questions from relatives in particular, potentially about things that you do not maybe want to share with your kids or wish to share with your kids, or is appropriate to share with your kids. Things like, are you seeing anyone? Who got the house? Does is he has he moved on yet? Is he dating someone else? Uh, oh, I heard she's pregnant. You know, any sort of thing that you're kind of like, I don't want to go into this. You want to do just a very gentle non-answer. So things like, I'm taking my time. Today I'm here just to celebrate being together and I want to hang out with you. Didn't really answer your question. Or, you know, it's something I've started to think about, but I really want to focus today on spending time with my nieces and nephews, who I don't get to see very often. It's a very kind of gentle and clear way of saying we're not going there. We're not talking about this. If the question is a little more pressing, I would redirect it very similarly to what we talked about before. You might even be like, yeah, there is some stuff to tell you there, but I can't really go into it right now. We can talk about it later. Or that's really not a conversation I'm gonna have right now or today. But when we hang out later or after the kids go back to dads, I'm happy to chat with you about some of what's been going on or how things how things happened. Really, really neutral, as if your child is standing next to you, essentially. If the awkward or difficult questions come from your kids, those are a little bit of um a bigger topic, and we will talk about that in this holiday series. But I want to give you kind of a quick answer if you're struggling with this, you know, next week at Thanksgiving. Something along the lines of right now we split up our holidays. You're gonna see dad tonight, or you're gonna see him tomorrow, or he's gonna have you Thanksgiving Eve, and you guys are gonna go to your grandparents. You're gonna have that great stuffing that your grandma makes, and then we'll be together with Nana and Peppa on Thursday for Thanksgiving. Plenty of time for you to celebrate with everybody you care about. You may use it to have a deeper conversation at another time. If your child is asking you things such as, why did you get divorced? I heard it was your fault, dad wanted to stay married and you didn't, and now we have to celebrate Thanksgiving separately, that's gonna alert your brain that we need to have a different, deeper conversation. You may go back and listen to the two narratives episode or the tough questions, but we'll talk more about how to address that specifically in regards to holidays in our coming episodes. So the other major, kind of the overarching theme, the last tip that I want to leave you with is your kids' regulation and well-being comes before all else. And so if that means that instead of spending the whole day at your parents' house for Thanksgiving, you decide we're gonna spend half the day or we're gonna come at dinner and we're gonna stay for dinner and then we're gonna go. Or if that that might mean we decide not to go because my brother's gonna be there and my brother can't keep his mouth shut and he says all kinds of crazy stuff. And so this year we're gonna do our own tradition. If that means you have to step in and say something you've never said to anybody before, right? Your crazy grandpa who runs his mouth and says wild shit that you typically are just like, wow, that was a grandpa, whatever. This year you may have to be like, hey gramps, we're not doing that. You need to keep your mouth shut or we're gonna have to leave. You probably wouldn't say it like that. Most people wouldn't. Um again, I can get a little feisty. However, I'm giving you permission to really think less with these kinds of old narratives that sometimes happen around holidays, such as this is how we've always done it, this is the unspoken expectation, that's just the way my family is, that's just the way my extended family is, this is the way we've always done it, this is the way we're always gonna do it. Those sorts of things I give you permission to dismiss if it's what's best for your kid. Okay. It's one day, it's one holiday. It may be that you this year make a decision to do something different and you desperately miss the way it was, and that's okay. Next year you can do it different. You are allowed to change, you are allowed to say things and do things to keep your kids feeling good during this very tender time. They're in grief and holidays bring up a lot of grief. Okay. And so if you need to do things a little bit different, do them a little different, you know? If you want them to be able to play on their iPads so you can cook dinner with your mom because you really need that this year, and it's like what your heart and soul needs, then do it. You need to be regulated, they need to be regulated. And that may involve a couple pretty courageous conversations on your part, but I believe that it will benefit you as you do that and as they see you trying to protect their peace as well and to protect their regulation. I mean, in some ways, separation and divorce gives you permission to do things differently than perhaps you've done for several years. This is the chance to be like, well, you know, I don't have to drive to that one place anymore that I hated going. Or there's no reason we have to get out of our bed and put on, you know, make a big brunch Thanksgiving morning before we go to this other place. Like, I don't want to do that. I want to get donuts and I want to stay in our pajamas and watch a movie. And then we're ready, we'll go over to so-and-so's house. In some ways, the big changes in your family can make changing your holiday routine a little bit different and a little bit, a little bit better. These boundaries that I went through today can also be helpful if you're spending the holidays without your kids and you're used to having them there. It's really easy for us to put boundaries in place when it comes to our kids. It's not as easy for ourselves. But you can use a lot of these scripts for yourself as well. If you're solo at Thanksgiving and you're used to being there with your ex and all your kids, and your weird uncle comes over and starts asking you all these detailed questions and you don't want to answer them, you can still use this script. You can still say, you know, I'm yeah, I'm I am healing, but I don't really want to talk about that today. Can we talk about how your new job is going? You get to decide, is what I'm basically saying. As always, I'm very grateful you're here. We're here to support you. If you're interested in the membership, please check the show notes for a special code for podcast listeners. If you have questions, send them in to me, and I will see you on the next episode. Thanks, my friends. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Kids First Co-Parenting. The best way you can support the show is by following, rating, and reviewing wherever you listen to podcasts, and by sharing it with another mom who could use the support. You can also connect with me on Instagram and Facebook at Learn with Little House, where I share daily tips and encouragement for moms raising kids through high conflict divorce. And if you're ready to go deep and get more tools, scripts, personalized support, and coaching, come join us inside the Kids First co parenting community. You'll find the details at LearnwithLittlehouse.com. Until next time, remember your kids don't need you to be perfect. They just need you to be steady and grounded, and as always, to put them first. Thanks for being here.