Breakups are almost like deaths, and so it’s never easy to keep it moving. But when you have kids involved, getting out your feelings is not an option, shawty.

Remember,

that your relationship with your ex is not your kids’ relationship with your ex. Treat them as two separate relationships. Get with the program!

Kids often take on our problems as if they’re the ones to blame for why things turned out the way they did.

Carve out some time to explain to your

mini-me’s that you and your ex’s breakup wasn’t their fault. They’ll need for you to keep it real with them.

Whatever you do, please don’t be that parent who talks sh*t about your ex with your kids in ear shot.

It’s not cute.

Okay, so you just got out of a relationship that you thought would last forever, but you still have to get up at the crack of dawn to feed your

kiddos breakfast, and get them on the bus, all while getting yourself together from 8 hours of tears and Merlot the night before?

 Do yourself a favor and eat all

the twinkies in the world, inhale down entire gallons of ice cream and throw back glass after glass of wine...but only after the kids are in bed.

It’s not like

you’re in the age of your pre-kid breakups when you could wallow in your pain the whole day. You have to keep it together for them or else 25 years

down the line they’ll be spilling all the tea to their therapist.

Now that you’re solo dolo, you have so much more time to kick it with your youngins. From getting on the floor with them and playing tea party to taking

them out to the movies, you now have more time to dedicate to them.

You both are dealing with major change, and spending time together is like your “woosah” moment.

Okay, so with the exception of the shade that you may throw your ex’s way on social media or while venting to your homie, if ya’ll have kids together, you

def have to improve your communication game.

It’s time to level up, and you can do this. Because your kids are forever the life force that connects you two, you

need to be able to converse without insulting their mother or bringing up how incompetent they are.

Do what ya’ll have to for the sake of the kids, but keep

the roast sessions to a minimum.

Maintaining even an ounce of respect for someone is incredibly difficult when you feel like that person took a butcher’s knife and drove it right through your heart.

I get

it. But, once you’ve made a child together, things changed. You now have to adult your way through conversations and even disagreements.

At least, let the respect come from

the simple fact that your child loves your ex. Let that motivate you.

Your kid is getting in your car from spending the weekend with your ex, and you are anxious to know who he/she had around your kid since you stalked their

Instagram page and noticed that indeed, they do have a new side piece.

All you want to do is to see what your baby knows about your ex’s new flame.

 But I beg of you, please resist.

Your baby is not a pawn for you to maneuver for your own interests. Let it go, sis.

The time has arrived to get back to you! You know all the things you have wanted to do and everything that you have been putting on the back burner?

You need to go for it.

No more excuses and no more putting off starting something until you create your New Year’s resolutions list, which you’ll also put off. Now

has always been the time to do for you.

Co-parenting is most definitely an art waiting to be mastered by you. It’s not some myth or abstract idea that you can find obsessed over in the same book that

explores the Loch Ness Monster and yetis. It’s real and a tool of this generation. So, use it!

At the end of the day, it’s all about the kids. Approach

every situation in which you have to deal with your ex by thinking of the kids first. And everything else, should be smooth like butter. Well, it’s never that smooth

with an ex, but the attempt is all that matters.