The book What about the Kids by Judith Wallenstein and Sandra Blakeslee is a good place to start when unpacking the personal impact of separation. See my notes here that I recorded while reading and using this resource in support group facilitation.

Introduction

• After a divorce, you find yourself feeling alone, confused, in a state of shock. You struggle to get out  of bed each day, and must deal with your whimpering, red-eyed children who haven’t slept.
• A divorce can be described as technicolour. What lies ahead?
• A marriage licence makes any kind of marriage possible, and a divorce sets in motion the post-divorce family.
• How will you and your spouse get along after the breakup?
• The first challenge is to get your life under control, to literally restore yourself and rebuild your social supports.
• The second challenge involves you and your children. You must prepare them for the breakup and to support them through the crisis.
• The third challenge is to create a new relationship between you and your ex-partner.
• All three challenges begin the day you decide to divorce and lasts until death. It’s for this reason that divorces can be so hard and have no benefits.
• If you meet all three challenges, you open yourself up to new opportunities in life and put the disappointments of marriage behind you.
• The turning points are numerous, the danger points are unexpected, but so are the opportunities.    
• Many things change when you divorce and go to college graduations, weddings, visits with grandchildren, etc.
• Parenting is always a hazardous undertake.
• Parenting in a divorced or remarried family is harder. You are blinded by emotions and events out of your control.
• How could a child not be affected by the major changes that divorce and remarriage bring?
• Divorced families are altogether different from intact families.
• Your relationships with your children change the day you separate.
• Crisis peaks when divorce papers are filed.
• Does an outgoing personality help?
• If you’re in the thick of a crisis, you can look up specific ideas about your three-year-old who won’t go to bed, your eight-year-old who is having trouble at school, or your fifteen-year-old who is angry all the time.
• One reason divorced families have problems is because most people don’t have the help that they need.
• If you’re a child of divorce, your own journey down this road will be complicated by your earlier life experiences.
• Stay cool when telling the children; avoid the blame game but take responsibility for the breakdown.
• Be honest and recognize the gravity of the situation; this allows children to begin the process that they must inevitably go through without feeling guilty or responsible.
• Explain to them that they will always have their family- the family will change though.
• Encourage them to say what they are fearing, or questioning-children are often very pragmatic and as they reach adolescence can be judgmental.
• Provide the short- and medium-term plans; but be prepared for pushback- especially from preteens onward.
• Consider their feedback seriously- appreciate their input- be receptive but don’t forfeit your parental responsibility.
• Try to maintain routines in the short-term plans- commitments to activities, etc.
• Try to be appropriately positive about your joint commitment to ensure joint parenting in some form.
• Be pragmatic with an element of flexibility- it can be overwhelming.
• Remember your children are very different and have different parent child relationships. Children may desire different parenting arrangements and even split with their siblings.

Take Care of Yourself

• Parents can’t help their children until they’ve thought about themselves, about where they’re coming from.
• Once you’ve decided that it’s really over, you’ll have set into motion the task of becoming a different person, and to your surprise, a different kind of parent.
• Your decision to divorce not only marks the end of a marriage, but the formation of a new kind of family.
• What you’re feeling today is probably not going to be relevant to your life in three, five, or ten years from now.
• There are steps you can take to ease our immediate pain, but the really hard work comes one day and then one year at a time with changes that ricochet into your life and into the lives of your children.
• You can’t become an effective parent until you’ve regained your footing and begun to repair the damage done by the failed marriage and the inevitable stresses of the divorce.
• How far or fast it all happens depends on how you respond to the challenges and frustrations that lie ahead.
• If you get caught up in the image of having failed in your marriage your parenting will be burdened.
• If you find yourself raging at your husband or wife, it doesn’t matter if you’re right. What matters is being enraged will eclipse your ability to be a good parent. It clouds your judgement and makes it hard to take care of your children or see your children as being separate from you. You have different needs and priorities at different ages. It also makes it harder to be a compassionate parent.
• In a normal situation, only one partner wants to get a divorce.
• Divorce creates two separate single parents with two homes, two sets of furniture, two refrigerators, and separate insurance policies.
• You are responsible for the well-being, discipline and entertainment of the children under your roof.
• Co-parenting after divorce is not the same as within a marriage.
• Divorce forces you to become a new person.
• A birth certificate didn’t turn you into a parent, you remade yourself into a parent.
• You find yourself waking up in the middle of the night to carry out new and unfamiliar duties.
• Many psychological changes occur over time in both you and your ex-partner. After weeks, months or even years, of feeling shaky and bewildered, there comes a psychological moment when you become this new person.
• You are a new person when you finally stop feeling like a failure, and you feel free, even hopeful, and can make decisions without trembling inside.
• At some point, every person must face up to the hurt and disappointment that go with a failed marriage and the continuing tensions of the divorce.
• In a divorce, it’s letting go of the memories collected over many years of being together.
• Mourning loss is a process that takes time. But you must know that after divorce you enter a new attachment with your former partner, one that is not born of love but one that arises from the role of co-parenting.
• Divorce is the end of love and the persistence of attachment.
• As human beings, we’re blessed and damned with memories.
• Before you can give your children the attention they need, you need to gain control of your own emotions in general.
• People who have been wonderful parents and rarely raised their voices in anger slam doors on their children, cry in closets, and erupt in anger over nothing in particular.
• Your children often remind you that you have big responsibilities, and that is the last thing you want to think about. Many children are terrified by the change in a parent’s behaviour.
• In your weakened condition, you are called on to be wiser than you’ve ever been before.
• The more chaos, the crankier your children become, the more they scream at each other, and the more you’re going to lose self-control.
• Men and women face different challenges when telling the kids.   
• If you’re a man who never took care of your kids day-to-day, welcome to Home Economics 101.
• Whether you do or don’t get along, the ties that bind you together still hold.
• You have financial obligations with less power.
• Your task is to make the most of a part-time role that you share with a woman who is no longer central in your life.
• You cannot decide on an impulse to take the kids to Disneyland.
• You can’t suddenly decide to change their schedules, diet, or bedtime.
• If you’re a mother, you also continue to be responsible for your children but you’ll have less power in deciding how to raise them.
• It won’t do any good to tell the something if you are worrying about it in your mind.

On Anger

• If you’ve been betrayed, you may feel ashamed and wounded.
• Many people find that anger makes them feel good. It can make you feel righteous, if not saintly. You can first use your anger to mobilize yourself.
• You may enjoy blaming the other as arch villain and this can block you.
• You’re free to organize your new life as you see fit.
• Anger can persuade you that you’ll do things differently this time around.
• You can regain self-control and understand the roots of the fury that had spilled onto your innocent child.
• You can’t help your children make decisions after if you’re driven by rage.
• No one can overcome your anger for you. Most people let go of anger to regain control.
• If you’re alone and unhappy while your ex-partner is dating other people, your mind can turn any relationship into a torrid romance.
• If you are the victim of jealous fantasies and threats have been made against you, you are urged to take them seriously and seek protection from the police.
• If your energy goes into how hurt you are, how can you gather the strength to move forward in your life?
• Anger blocks the kind of self-scrutiny that you need in order to change. 
• There is no substitute for what you say to yourself.
• Most people can help make the transition to the “new you”.
• Being a good parent during this transition helps diminish the grief, guilt, and tremendous upheaval that divorce causes.

Setting Routines and Structure

• Children must feel safe going back and forth between homes.
• The must learn to master the calendar, going to and from houses.
• The ability to do so depends on how quickly the household is restored.
• Routines are disrupted after the divorce. Bedtime often becomes hit or miss.
• Many school-aged children get themselves up in the morning, make lunch, take themselves to class, clothes don’t get washed regularly.
• A suggestion box is a good way to share ideas and make sure everyone’s thoughts are heard.
• A chores and rules chart is a good way to keep track.
• Orderliness is important.
• Young children miss you and don’t understand why you’re always gone.
• They must understand why you need money and why it’s important for you to work.
• If you work more hours than before, explain to your children that you’re more available to work more now and that you need the money.
• Regular bedtime is very important.
• People who have experienced radical changes in their lives make transitions difficult.
• Rituals aren’t expendable just because you feel pressed for time.
• Rituals such as kissing your child good-bye are important.
• Children have to know who will be home for dinner, and what hour dinner is at.
• Child who worry about rituals can’t sit comfortably through class.
• They may be worried, having observed your frantic pace of life.
• Assign chores to each child and reward them.
• Provide pleasures to offset the pain of the breakup.
• Asking older children to help with younger ones is ok, as long as you realize that they are still children too.
• Make sure the lines of discipline are the same across both parents.
• Reduce conflict by arranging after-school activities for each child.
• Keep an eye on younger children.
• After a divorce, older children are often given power to exert over younger children.
• Dinner represents a time of coming together of the family. It should not be a dreary time, or a time of watching tv.
• Try to get up early enough to help your children get ready for school.
• Children of divorce often show up at school without lunches or proper clothes for the weather.
• Strict control is more important after divorce but harder to enforce. This is the time to rein in your child.
• Each child should know your cell number and how to reach you in an emergency. This relieves anxiety.
• Tell them that if anything ever goes wrong, you’re only a phone call away.
• The need for structure addresses both parents. Both of you must provide this kind of help, however, only one of you may be able to provide this.
• Feeding your children before they leave is very important.
• The only person you can control is you, not your ex.
• Set aside intimate time to spend with just you and your child.
• It is very important to bring some pleasure and fun and laughter back to the family.
• Make a habit of stepping back and asking yourself how your children are doing in this new life.
• Do not berate yourself.
• If you’re honest with yourself, you may realize that in the chaos of the divorce, you overlooked your children without meaning to.
• Many children live in distraught worlds of their own while their parents are too wrapped up in their own problems to notice.
• Have you left them on their own?
• Is there any real pleasure in their lives?
• Children of all ages have fantasies of reconciliation right from the beginning.
• “Mom smiled at dad when he dropped me off last night. I bet that means they like each other.”
• Young children feel cut off by divorce and fantasies help them feel whole.
• All efforts to restore routines after divorce bring needed stability to your children’s lives.
• It’s important for them to have a sense of order and regularity.

A New Kind of Father

• Divorce transforms the experience of being a mother or father. The fundament nature of parenting shifts.
• These changes are different for men and women.
• When marriage ended, no one told you what it would feel like to be a father in a divorced family.
• You must understand the changes to enjoy the new chapter of your life.
• This road is less predictable than you ever imagined.
• How do you go about being a good father?
• You always knew exactly who you were and so did your children.
• Fathering post-divorce is different because you don’t have the supports you had in the marriage.
• After divorce, you’re in a vacuum.
• “How central am I? What does being a divorced father mean? What does being a co-parent mean? Am I a playmate? A Dutch uncle? A friend or guy who helps with the math homework? Who sets the discipline? What sets the goals?”
• You may have to learn to divide your time between your second marriage children and your first marriage children.
• “Divorce calls for a total redefinition of who you are as a father and challenges you to come up with a plan for how to maintain or surpass the relationship you had with your children during your marriage.”
• In an intact family, you didn’t have to define your role.
• If you had a very close relationship with your children before the divorce, you must work it out with your ex to make sure this relationship continues.
• Your lives may demand change and flexibility.
• Even if you weren’t ‘close’ with your children before the breakup they still cry for you. Closeness is a dangerous term for it implies a certain judgment about a parent’s relationship with their child. It is a term that would eliminate many fathers from their children.
• Post-divorce you must consider the relationship you wish to maintain with your children.
• You have the choice, and in the first few years after a divorce you have to renew your relationship with your children- in many ways for a dad it is a cross roads where hopefully you will do whatever is required from you to be the dad that your children require of you in these changing circumstances.
• “Your relationship with your children is not dependent on how much time you spend together based on the divorce settlement.”
• “Your relationship is only measured by how much your child feels your love, your commitment, and what you’re able to bring to that relationship.”
• “An Indian legend that says the father’s job is to carry the child to the top of the mountain and face the child away from home toward the bigger landscape. That’s poetic but its only true if the father carries the child carefully and does not drop them on the climb.”
• Organize your life so that you give the plan priority.
• When the children are in their early years, the decisions that govern your relationship aren’t the same when they grow up.
• A mother and father under the same roof are different than a mother and father under separate roofs.
• Parents in a reasonably, positive intact relationship carry out daily dialogue about their children.
• Conversation must cease between you and your ex about whether to correct the children or ignore grandma after a divorce.
• Mothers, more so than fathers, interpret what children want inside of an intact family.
• Mothers often play the go-between between young children and their fathers.
• Developmental stages in your child’s life effect the tenor of your relationship.
• They want their moms around.
• A father may lose access to parts of his children’s lives because their mother no longer shares a home with you.
• Fathers may sometimes take on the role of the mother with great sensitivity and heroism.
• A father can play a significant role in the lives of their daughters even in their daughter’s adolescent years. Some experts suggest otherwise. But, it can be done provided the commitment is made to play that part in their life. (Recommend seeing the film: Eighth Grade)
• Observe your children carefully.
• Spend simple down-time together.
• “What mistakes can you make? The most common one is that you can give up too soon. As an experienced father, you must learn new skills and just be there.”
• Lots of fathers make no changes after their divorce. They expect children to fit into their lives and spend time together in the easiest way possible.
• Shared activities have results.
• Some fathers didn’t ever have the experience of a role model fatherly figure.
• “What defeats many fathers is their thin skin.” When they suffer defeat, they lose their jobs. Some become easily discouraged and back away from the fathering role. “I have nothing to offer.”
• Your child’s need for you is in no way diminished by your divorce.
• If you lose your job, don’t let it translate to the loss of a relationship with your child.
• You children are a priority and you can’t compromise.
• Children never confuse their father with their stepfather.
• Some fathers attempt to remain close with children, but end up experience feelings of loss.
• A comment in a support group from a separated dad: “I think you’re saying that despite your great efforts, you all share the fear that no matter what you did, no matter how hard you tried, you still felt in danger of being marginalized.”
• “Man of the house” can’t be recreated after divorce in a joint custody case.
• Some fathers bounce in and out of their children’s lives. Some return to court to assert parental rights and blame ex-wives that their children don’t want to see them anymore.
• If you don’t visit your children, you owe them an explanation as to why.
• Start to rebuild a relationship with your children which takes into account the changes in their development.
• “The greatest gift you can give your child is a sense that you’re a “forever father” who’s deeply committed to parenting.”
• Your children both need you and need to grow away from you.
• “The main purpose of parenting is to help children grow into independence.”
• Your centrality in your children’s lives never diminishes, even as they move in and out of adolescence.
• The father-daughter relationship in intact and divorced families serves as the template for a daughter’s view of men.
• “Will you protect her? Are you willing to make sacrifices for your relationship? Do you respect her ideas? Do you have confidence in her abilities? Have you told her how proud you are to be her father?”
• Fathers provide sons with a template as to what it means to be a man.
• You must feel secure and sure with how important you are in your children’s lives.
• Your role doesn’t disappear when your child enters adulthood.
• Father-child relationships tend to grow apart as they age, way more so than in intact families.
• Building a forever relationship is a generational journey if you get it right.

The picture on our Web Site captures the hope for every dad- separated or intact-it doesn’t change. It is about holding your child’s or grandchild’s hand, sometimes firmly and other times lightly, protecting and encouraging, educating and inspiring.

To love and be loved is the greatest human gift. The strange aspect of a separation with children is that it clarifies what is most important in our lives.

A New Kind of Mother

• Motherhood after divorce changes profoundly your view of yourself, your children, the kind of care that you provide; and the day to day stresses create a whole new parenting environment;
• Most mothers are aware of everything going on in their child’s daily life;
• ‘your children remain an integral part of your psychological make-up’;
• In the intact family, when they are with their dad, you likely feel they are continuing to be in your care; you receive a run down of their outing from your parenting partner and/or the children;
• Post-separation this information flow may be non-existent from the other parent;
• Children may view your questioning as intrusive or worry that it is part of the separation conflict between their parents;
• Serious negative outcomes for children and parents occur when children sense the conflict all around them;
• This questioning can be heightened once the dad thinks about or initiates dating; the ‘great fear’ about a parent having a diminished parenting role appears more real;
• You are unable to provide the full-time care and awareness of everything child, as you likely provided in the intact family;
• There is an ‘aloneness’ to parenting in a single parent home; it is a shared response of mothers and fathers, who must continue with life when the child is with their other parent;
• Absent from the new mom’s house, dad’s house scenario, is the emotional support that is part of the intact, parenting partnership; often, the breakdown of an intimate relationship begins in the intact marriage with the loss of emotional support;
• The loss of this support in the intact home (aloneness) is unlikely to change in two homes, at least in the early months, years;
• Parenting is challenging and joyful; support may now be found from different sources- parents, friends, new relationships, etc.
• ‘In the end it comes from you and no one else’.
• Very few separated parents are satisfied with their parenting in the short term; mothers tend to judge themselves in the immediate time frame, in part, because our lives tend to be lived on a day to day basis;
• Their will be a time when you will look back at your parenting journey and see your successes through your children.
• If each separated parent recognizes their similar parenting journey in their changed family, the opportunity to regain a cooperative and supportive partnership becomes a possibility.
• The ‘guilt burden’ is found in many mothers and may continue for decades; divorce is not the cause of all the perceived problems of your adult children;

‘Try to forgive yourself for your real and imagined sins of commission and omission. Try to be a gentler person with yourself. Take pride in the enormity of your accomplishment. Whatever your aspirations, you can’t do it all. Give yourself a break from your self-accusations.’ (Wallerstein)