How do I stay strong for my kids during and after divorce?

How do I stay strong for my kids during and after divorce?

As a psychologist who specializes in helping parents through divorce, I know deep down in my soul the extent to which watching your children experience divorce is painful and one of the most challenging areas of getting through divorce.

The thing about resilience in children is that divorce alone doesn't mean that children are going to have a difficult future or that they're not going to be emotionally unhealthy. It doesn't mean that at all. What is harmful to children is conflict between parents and feelings of stress and instability.  Those are areas we can draw our attention to and make a difference in order to support our children. The things that mean the most for our children's well-being are actually within our control. That is a good thing.

Taking steps to help our children also helps us to move forward.

Gabriella, a newly divorced mom of 4 said,  "I'll survive this, but what have I done to their life?"  We can continue to give our children a good life and a happy childhood after divorce and every member of the family can grow in meaningful and positive ways. As a family, you have moved into a transition. Families have developmental cycles just like humans do and all of the members of the family influence each other as they grow and change.

Knowing this helps us to move forward with more peace. Our own expanding inner peace further contributes to making their days a secure learning experience. Our own growth will contribute to our children's growth. As we take care of ourselves, we are taking care of our children, who need us to be well.

As we change our relationship with our ex from spouse to spouse to co-parent to co-parent we must additionally change our communication patterns. This is necessary in order to move out of the spouse roles and into the more businesslike coparent roles. Our communication must align with our parenting roles. Intimacy, the good or bad, of our prior communication patterns, no longer serves us as we move to change or our children, who need congruence between what we tell them and what they see.

We choose our words and choose not to speak to our ex in the way we spoke when we were married. Neither of us are entitled to that level of intimacy.  We are entitled to emotional privacy.

Another way to help children is to create a parenting plan that enables children to know what's going to come up next in their schedules. A big calendar on the wall which notes times with mom and times with dad.  Rituals for before and after parent transfers and certain days of the week enable children to anchor their experience in time. When they have a sense of what is to come they can feel excited in a secure way about their time in both of their parents' homes.

Enlightened CoParenting focuses on minimizing children's exposure to conflict between parents, as that is the most harmful experience for children. We can realistically minimize opportunities for conflict by creating parenting plans that do not leave room for multiple interpretations of the provisions. We want the plan to logistically support  parents each having the opportunity to have meaningful time with children as well as sufficient time for work and other important commitments. 

The third prong of enlightened coparenting is emotion focused parenting. Emotion focused parenting increases resilience by helping children understand and process their emotions and feel safety and security as a result. 

The last but no less critical element is to allow ourselves time to heal and to take care of our basic needs. We can't be there for our children if we are not well ourselves.

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