At any age, children experience many complicated emotions when dealing with the challenges of divorce. Parents sometimes struggle with determining how to give their children the right support.
Although this transitional time will involve some hardship, parents can help children avoid stress by striving to maintain a good working relationship with the other parent. Additional ways to help children during this unsettling time include providing:
Reassurance
Assure your children that the divorce is not their fault.
Assure your children that both parents love them.
Tell your children that it is okay to feel sad because they miss their other parent.
Stability
Maintain the individual relationships you have with each of your children. Encourage the other parent to do the same.
Stick to a daily routine with your children.
Make changes in your children’s lives slowly, letting them discuss these changes with you.
Encouragement
Encourage your children to interact with friends and participate in other age appropriate activities.
Encourage your children to continue to pursue their interests.
Fairness
Do not ask your children, either directly or indirectly, which parent they love more.
Be fair in sharing your children’s time with their other parent.
Honesty
Acknowledge that your children may want you and your former spouse to reunite. Do not encourage or support this wish.
Talk with your children honestly about any changes that will affect them, before they occur.
Support
Support your children’s need to visit the other parent.
Support your children’s desire to love both of you. Tell them it’s okay.
Security
Avoid using your children a counselor or source of emotional support. Seeing parents as needy and dependent may make children feel insecure. Find an adult who can fulfill these needs for you.
Remind your children that you and your former spouse will still take care of them and that they will never be alone.
Trust
Show your children that you trust their ability to adapt to these changes.
Demonstrate to your children that they can trust in what you say, and that you will honor your promises.
Ask yourself…in this whole process…who gets to act like a child? You? Or your children?
~Patricia Campbell: Dayton Divorce Attorney. Practicing exclusively in divorce, child support, child custody, family law, military divorce & marriage dissolution her service area includes Beavercreek, Fairborn, Kettering, Centerville, Dayton, Ohio and surrounding areas.
~Patricia Campbell: Attorney practicing exclusively in divorce, child support, child custody, family law, military divorce & marriage dissolution. Practice includes Beavercreek, Fairborn, Kettering, Centerville, Dayton and surrounding areas.
