MAKING THE MOST OF IT: WEEKEND DADS SPEND QUALITY TIME

Hank Sessoms wrestled with his son Trey in the living room on a Saturday afternoon.

It's Saturday and for Hank Sessoms, that means spending time with his 7-year-old son, Trey.

"Watch this," Trey says to his father. Trey is sitting in front of the television playing video games, one of his favorite things to do.

Hank walks over to his son and ruffles his hair. "Yeah," Hank says, looking at the television. "That's neat."

When Hank and Trey's mother separated three years ago, it meant that Hank would only get to see Trey on the weekends. He said that it was difficult to get used to but he just decided to make the best of a bad situation.

"Sure it's hard," Hank said. "But it's been three years, you can't dwell on it. You have to get used to it."

The way Hank deals with it is by making sure that the time he and Trey spend together is special.

Trey is on a soccer team and is involved in that almost every weekend. After that, Hank might take Trey to the park or the library. At night, they might take in a movie or go to Videos and Creme.

And sometimes, they just sit around.

"It doesn't really matter what we do as long as we do something together," Hank said.

Hank and Trey's situation is not unique. Thousands of Americans are divorced each year. And in a great many of those instances, children are involved.

It's very common, said Associate Circuit Judge Peter Statler. In almost all divorces involving children, one parent gets primary custody and the other gets standard visitation.

The non-custodial parent usually gets to see the child every other weekend and one day during the week. The parents also divide up the holidays and get several weeks during the summer, Statler said.

There is no question that special attention needs to be provided to the children when one of their parents suddenly becomes a part-time parent, said Christy Unger, a clinical psychologist with the Cape Girardeau Community Counseling Center.

The best thing a part-time parent can do is to spend quality time with the children, Unger said.

"Spend activities together as a family," Unger said. "You have to make them feel like a part of that family system, not like they're coming over for a visit."

Weekend parents can stay involved in their children's lives even when they are apart, Unger said. She suggested that parents tape themselves reading books. She also said that children can keep a manila folder with school work and reminders of things that the child would like to share with his or her parent.

"And most importantly, let the children know you love them," Unger said. "Give them a lot of reassuring and let them know that the feelings they are having are normal."

And the situation may get more difficult when the parents marry other people, Unger said. The new stepfamilies have no shared family histories or shared ways of doing things, and they may even have different beliefs.

Developing a good stepfamily relationship requires a lot of effort.

According to child and adolescent psychiatrists, a youngster may feel torn between the parent he or she lives with and the other parent who lives somewhere else.

According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, families can help develop strong bonds among themselves by:

* Mourning their losses

* Developing new skills in making decisions as a family

* Supporting one another in maintaining original parent-child relationships

* Fostering and strengthening new relationships between parents, as well as stepparent-to-stepchild and stepsibling-to-stepsibling

While facing these issues may be difficult, most stepfamilies do work out their problems by consulting grandparents, clergy, support groups and other community-based programs.

But parents should consider getting a psychiatric evaluation when any family member persistently feels:

* Alone dealing with losses

* Torn between two parents or two households

* Excluded

* Isolated by feeling of guilt or anger

* Uncomfortable with any member of the original family or stepfamily.