My wife and I have a very structured, organized, and well-run family. We have calendars of planned activities, pre-decided well balanced meals, homework places at the table, reading logs, and regularly scheduled bedtimes.

However, every other year we take a major vacation and go to Disney World or some other exciting place and do the unthinkable. I let the kids sleep in the same bed, eat out several times a day–extremely fattening food–stay up late, sometimes they even miss a bath, and I give them unexpected gifts.

Why do I do this? I dedicate this time to spend 24/7 with my kids. I love and miss them very much when I have to work a lot, and vacations are my time to break the rules. We all look forward to it!

Let’s consider a traveling father in a nuclear family who comes home from his out of town work, kisses his wife, sneaks into his kids’ bedrooms and wakes them up. He pulls out gifts he bought, loads them into the car in pajamas and takes them to get a big fat banana split.

His wife says, “Honey, it’s an hour past their bedtime. They don’t need the sugar and they have school in the morning.”

He says, “Yeah, but I missed them.”

She smiles, he leaves, and she thinks to herself, “He’s such a good daddy. He misses our kids. I’ll get them back on schedule tomorrow.” She forgives him and gives him some grace.

Non-custodial parents are often hurting, missing their kids and wanting to make up for lost time. They want to enjoy the kids and we, the structured custodial parents, are bitter about “getting them back on schedule tomorrow.”