Divorce and two homes Lesson 516 of the everyday course of Mova's primary school: 46 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 When parents divorce or separate, they stop being a couple, but they never stop being parents. 1 Ruby-Lou has two homes: Mum's flat on school days and Dad's house at weekends. 2 It's Monday, it's PE, and her kit is in a heap on Dad's bedroom floor. 3 «Again?!» says Mrs Bell. 4 Ruby-Lou goes red. 5 That night Dad helps her write a checklist (PE kit, reading book, inhaler, charger) and buys a bright yellow travel bag that goes wherever she goes. 6 She still forgets things sometimes, but much less. 7 The night before Dad moved out, Ashley had a row with him about her bedtime. 8 For weeks she thought, «It's because of me.» In the end she said it out loud, and Mum sat on her bed: «Grown-ups split up for grown-up reasons, petal. 9 Never because of a bedtime. 10 Not you, never you.» Dad said exactly the same on the phone. 12 Two homes often mean two sets of rules. 13 At Dad's, Ruaridh gets pizza and stays up till ten. 14 At Mum's it's veg and lights out at half eight. 15 «Dad's house is way better, it's bussin',» he says, and Mum's face drops. 17 «That means good, does it? 18 Well, Dad's is a holiday, love. 19 Mum's is the everyday.» Hester has two rooms: Da's has fairy lights, Mam's is plain. 20 She feels bad for liking Da's more, until she tells Mam. 21 Mam laughs, and they buy fairy lights for her room too. 22 Some things are just hard. 23 Jamie-Leigh goes to Dad's in Edinburgh every other weekend: an hour on the train each way. 24 «Aw, it's a pure trek,» she groans; in Scotland «pure» can mean really. 25 She tells them, and now on some Sundays Dad comes to her instead. 26 At every handover Tanner's mum and dad snipe at each other (little sharp, mean remarks), and Tanner stares at the floor. 27 One day he says, «Can yous not do that in front of me?» («yous» = you lot). 28 Some weeks they manage. 29 Some weeks they don't. 30 Not everything gets fixed. 31 Leo-James's mum has a boyfriend, Craig, who says, «Shoes off, sunshine, my rules.» Leo-James shouts, «You're not my dad!» Mum tells Leo he's right, and that he can say it without shouting; Craig backs off and stops giving orders. 33 A kind lady from the court comes to ask what he thinks: children are listened to, but they don't have to choose; the grown-ups decide. 34 And sometimes the end is gentle: Avery's mum and dad sit side by side at her school play. 35 «They're mates now,» Avery tells everyone. 36 Frida gets Christmas at Mum's and Boxing Day at Dad's. 37 «Double presents!» says her pal. 38 «Double car journeys, more like,» says Frida, grinning anyway. 39 Divorce or separation means parents stop being a couple; they are still both the child's parents. 40 Divorce is never the child's fault; parents split up for grown-up reasons. 41 Many children live in two homes, for example school days with one parent and weekends with the other. 42 A checklist and a travel bag help children stop leaving things at the other home. 43 Two homes can have different rules; comparing them out loud can hurt a parent. 45 Long journeys between homes are tiring; children can say so, and plans can sometimes change. 46 Parents arguing at handovers puts a child in the middle; a child may ask them to stop, though it doesn't always work. 47 A parent's new partner is not a replacement parent, and it takes time to get used to them. 48 When parents can't agree, a family court may decide where children live; children are listened to but do not have to choose. 49 Some separated parents become friends, and some never get on. ← previous Mum on her own, Dad on his ownnext → The parent who left, and a new partner↑ back to Everyday This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/516-divorce-and-two-homes/